Aug
12
To the Blindingly Stupid American
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Much of the time, I try to convince myself you’re not out there. That you’re only misguided, and with a little bit more education and understanding you would come to your senses. But really, I can only abide such willful, intentionally stubborn ignorance for so long.
- Michelle Malkin, your assertion that getting health insurance coverage is merely about “priorities” is ridiculously insulting. I will tell you about MY priorities. In prioritizing my mental health, I can not afford to pay for the care of possibly serious physical ailments. Those of your ilk have told me that if it were really so important, I’d get a second job….. Possibly aggravating said physical ailment further in order to PAY FOR TREATMENT.
- “Well, you shouldn’t be at the doctor so much” – Another ridiculously ignorant, flippant statement made by people who have health insurance and don’t want to see the system change…. Obviously you’ve never met numerous coworkers of mine who have serious physical ailments that require biweekly doctors visits and costly tests. “Priorities” will also get them nowhere, as insurance agencies refuse to cover them. Getting second jobs in their condition is NOT POSSIBLE.
- “Personal responsibility” doesn’t make a WHIT OF DIFFERENCE IF YOU SIMPLY CAN’T AFFORD TO PAY!!!
- Justifying the care you get and its quality based on your “worth to society” in terms of how much you make, and justifying others NOT receiving the quality care they need because they don’t make enough – you are scum.
- Your beloved “liberal media” is out there smearing the Canadian system and the idea of single payer health care because it has a vested, CORPORATE interest in the status quo. THIS IS NOT ABOUT LIBERAL OR CONSERVATIVE. It’s about seven corporations owning our news outlets, looking out for CORPORATE INTERESTS.
- I consider myself to be, at the very least, a SOCIALIST. Yes, I said a super scary word that Americans will forever live in fear of without educating themselves about what it TRULY IS. So while you spout your misinformed propaganda about the US “turning into Russia or China” please understand that systems like Canada’s are NOT SOCIALIST.
- While I advocate a system like Canada’s, I do believe 100% that the US government WILL fuck up this health care reform because the system is too compromised by lobbyists – insurance and pharmaceuticals who don’t give a shit about the human factor, and will count every profit making penny despite the person on the other end who needs medical care. As much as I’d like to think this will ease a huge burden for me in the future, I HIGHLY DOUBT IT.
- For a “Christian Nation”, as many of your ilk like to claim, the current system is certainly the embodiment of Jesus’ principles! But Socialism, and making sure people’s needs are met is godless….. quite a switch.
- For once, the advice to “get out if you don’t like it” sounds like a GREAT idea. It would be nice to go to a place that’s informed by policy and citizens that CARE ABOUT HUMAN BEINGS AND NOT ABOUT PROFITS.
I know it’s difficult to believe that the world is not always so neat and tidy, that it doesn’t fit into a view that uses buzzwords like “priorities” and “personal responsibility.” I am tired of the blinding stupidity and ignorance, the mulish refusal to think critically. I am also tired of the selfishness and the “fuck you, I’ve got mine” mentality that permeates America like rot. Fuck terrorists – we’re doing an amazing job of destroying this country on our own.
MYTHBUSTING CANADIAN HEALTHCARE
Aug
25
Been slowwwwwwwwwly reading my way through Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky, a compilation of talks Noam Chomsky has given and came across this today…. feel like it really pertains to my last post:
Look, there isn’t any true capitalist society in the world, it couldn’t survive for ten minutes, but there are variations on capitalism, and the U.S. is towards the capitalist end of the world spectrum – not very far towards it, I should say, but towards it at least in values. And if you had a truly capitalist society, everything would be a commodity, including freedom: there would be as much of it as you can buy. Well, since the U.S. is towards that end of the spectrum, it means there’s an awful lot of freedom around if you can afford it. So, if you’re a black organizer in the ghetto, you don’t have much of it, and you’re in trouble – they can send the Chicago police in to murder you, like they did with Fred Hampton [a Black Panther assassinated by the F.B.I. in 1969]. But if you’re a white professional like me, you can buy a lot of freedom.
Aug
9
Well. In the previous post I tried to weave a common thread through a bunch of things, but I’m not sure I really succeeded. I’m sick of this idea that freedom and democracy are about having the “choice” to own things like an SUV and about the “right” to consume an inordinate amount of the world’s resources while others pay for it in very serious ways. While narrowing access to birth control, weakening civil rights, and the torture and rape of men and women in overseas prisons isn’t a violation of any of this, as long as you can drive your choice of car and disturb places you have no business going. I feel like our idea of the concepts of freedom and choice, our rights, has become completely twisted, and I wanted to share one of the quotes that first directed me towards that line of thinking. (Favorite part bolded.)
I can only articulate my understanding of the laws that have survived and been bequeathed to me. I understand that the laws were obeyed not through armed force that was alienated from the people – such as the police, army, etc. – but rather because the people agreed with the laws. In fact, they formulated them in the best interests of the community.
Therefore I can understand democracy. The will of the people was sacred to our leaders. This is one of our strongest traditions. No Native person accepts his or her leader’s direction as a command. Conversely, only fools accept that a society that requires force to ensure proper social conduct is a democratic one. Without the voice of the trammelled and the dispossessed, democracy is but an echo in the canyons of the minds of lunatics.
I understand that my foremothers were an austere, disciplined people and were absolutely opposed to waste of any sort. Their standards of honesty were established by those people who contributed most to the well-being of the community and the nation as a whole. It was criminal to use another to enrich oneself; by this, I understand that exploitation of the land or people, in the interest of profit, was prohibited.
- I am Woman: A Native Perspective on Sociology and Feminism
Aug
1
Today a coworker alerted me to the latest development of Bush and the Christian Right’s bid to declare official ownership of my reproductive organs. Apparently they are considering a ruling that will classify birth control as abortion, making it more difficult to get.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is poised to put in place new barriers to accessing common forms of contraception like birth control pills, emergency contraception and IUDs by labeling them “abortion.” These proposed regulations set to be released next week will allow healthcare providers to refuse to provide contraception to women who need it.
…
These rules pose a serious threat to providers and uninsured and low-income Americans seeking care. They could prevent providers of federally-funded family planning services, like Medicaid and Title X, from guaranteeing their patients access to the full range of comprehensive family planning services. They’ll also build significant barriers to counseling, education, contraception and preventive health services for those who need it most: low-income and uninsured women and men.
I know it’s a general difficulty to grasp, but please consider that I’m a human being and not a walking fetus incubator. Another more technical post about it here – HHS Moves to Define Contraception as Abortion.
I’ve been encountering more of the “It’s my right to own an SUV” set lately when I listen to Sean Hannity’s show on the way home from work. They were lambasting Obama today because he was suggesting that – get this – people should take responsibility for the maintenance of their cars so they use less gas. Wait, what? Taking responsibility for something?? These people don’t seem to get the idea of responsibility unless they’re shoving it down someone else’s throat. (But then, apparently birth control isn’t good enough. Apologies for missing the patriarchal purity ball, but I’m not interested in abstinence.)
I love the continuous strain that runs through the show of how they (The radical environmentalists and radical left – don’t you know radical is a compliment?) are “taking away our freedoms.” They want to stop you from driving your SUVs! The environmental extremists won’t let us drill in ANWR!!! They’re stopping us from developing nuclear power!!!!! Speaking of ANWR, I found a lovely post the other day on the subject of drilling in ANWR.
Apparently their take on freedom is “I’m a well off white person and they’re not letting me consume as much as I want.” What it takes to maintain this standard of living and carry out these things is apparently inconsequential. That the planned storage site for nuclear waste is Yucca Mountain, Navajo ancestral lands? To be concerned about that would mean you’d have to think of someone other than yourself, and furthermore, people of color. Would also mean you’d have to stop being discriminatory towards Native American religious beliefs, but that’s not something we hear about in the news – especially with a “war on Christmas” to fight. ANWR Drilling would mean possibly destroying the Gwinich’in tribe’s way of life, as it is dependent upon the caribou and their migration patterns. According to the previous link, 229 tribes oppose ANWR drilling. (Shit, now I’m really being a hippy treehugger, huh?)
The Patriot Act, Guantanamo Bay (This had been a prison for Haitians with AIDs before its infamy – can be read about in Paul Farmer’s book Pathologies of Power.), and Abu Ghraib on the other hand, do not factor into these people’s definition of freedom. At least some of you can sleep better at night thinking that narrowing civil liberties and torturing/raping people will actually protect one’s way of life (As always, others rot for it and bear the brunt of it – but maybe not for long at this rate.) from terrorism. And while we can’t seem to get our dander up over the violation of these living people’s rights and freedoms we’ll count every (white) fetus that has been aborted (murdered!), whether through the procedure itself or goddess forbid – an egg does not get implanted on the uterine lining because of BIRTH CONTROL! (1. There is NO scientific proof of that. and 2. THAT’S THE POINT.)
Squawking about personal responsibility is just fine when you’re trying to force abstinence on women, scoffing at those who can’t get by on their Wal Mart minimum wage or demonizing immigrants. But when it comes to your damn SUV, your American right (freedom!) to guzzle gas, and a fine cocktail of ignorance and manifest destiny, step aside.
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