I still have to punch myself in the face every few minutes in order to wake myself up from the twisted, completely fucked up Orwellian daymare that our existence has become.
The level of Stockholm syndrome that the majority of Americans exhibit is absolutely, positively astonishing.
We’ve been conditioned so well that we not only accept being fucked over for the benefit of multinational corporations, but we APPLAUD our so-called leaders for doing it. They look us (the camera) in the eye and say “it’s progress”, so tickle my ass with a goddamn power drill, IT MUST BE PROGRESS!
It’s branding 101. Nothing matters outside of the linguistics and the aesthetics. If you call a piece of fucking flaming shit a bar of gold often enough, with the right smile, the right tone of voice, and the right party logo beneath it, you will fool approximately half of the people ALL of the time, which is EXACTLY the point. When we’re divided 50/50 against ourselves, we are powerless against them, and they count on that.
People simply can not be bothered with details any more. Hell, Congressman John Conyers thinks that it’s absurd that the serfs expect the Lords to, you know…actually READ the fucking legislation before it’s passed.
So, the details of the health insurance “reform” bill don’t matter. All that matters is that people who claim to be progressives get to feel good about themselves because their team beat the other team, and the people on the other side get to be pissed off because their team just lost. It’s a lot like being a Yankees fan, or a Phillies fan. You’re really just rooting for a color. Most people don’t want or care to understand that WE ALL JUST LOST. Those people wearing the other color are in the same sinking boat as you, and it’s going to keep on sinking until you realize that we all need to start bailing TOGETHER, or we’ll all drown.
And I just want to make it clear that I understand that this cuts BOTH ways.
Most Republicans don’t even know why they don’t like the health insurance bill, they just know that they’re not supposed to like it, and hey, this is America, and we do what’s expected of us.
My favorite criticism from the right is the “this bill is socialism/communism” meme.
Well guys, you’re sort of right; but you’re also very wrong. This bill IS socialism, but it’s socialism for the wealthy. When the state enacts laws demanding that people purchase a product from privately owned corporations, that is socialism for the rich. I’ll even go one step further and suggest that it’s a foundation stone for fascism, which Mussolini once defined as “the merger of state and corporate power”.
So if you’re going to piss and moan about people getting a “free handout”, at least get your facts straight and piss and moan about an industry with already soaring profits being guaranteed even more profits at the expense of tax payers.
I know that nobody wearing the same color jersey as you (red, in this case), is telling you to be pissed off at those rich bastards with their grubby hands in your pockets, but they WON’T tell you that, because then you’d no longer be the useful idiots that they need you to be.
Oh cripes. I wrote WAY more than I intended, but I’m still going to attach the Chris Floyd piece, because he’s brilliant and deserves to be heard by more people.
Closing Time: An Historic Confirmation of Corporate Power
Written by Chris Floyd |
Tuesday, 23 March 2010 14:34 |
It looks like heaven but it feels like death; It’s something in between, I guess: It’s closing time. — Leonard Cohen Official transcript of remarks by President Barack Obama after the March 21 vote in the House of Representatives on H.R.3590: Motion to Concur in Senate Amendments to Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act: My fellow Americans. As many of our more serious commentators have noted, Democrats and progressives have sought genuine reform of our broken, bloated, unjust health care system for almost a hundred years. Today, I am proud to say that we have brought that century-long struggle to a close. Together with our visionary partners in the House and the Senate, we have finally killed genuine health care reform for many years to come — perhaps even for another century! The struggle is over, the deal is done, the fix is in, and corporate power — unbridled, unchallenged, coddled, protected, and larded with the endless pork of government-guaranteed profit — has triumphed at last. This is an historic achievement. This is a mighty legacy we will bequeath to future generations. This, my friends, is what change looks like. Now, you know and I know that such change never comes easily. It never comes without opposition. It never comes without controversy. Even in this hour of victory, we know that the doom-sayers will be out in force. And I’m not speaking here of the Republicans, whose opposition has simply been a lurid, baseless “Red Dawn” fantasy about “communism” coming to America. “Communism” — in a bill that has been written by our visionary partners in the corporate community, by our hyper-capitalist friends and patrons on Wall Street, by the lobbyists and bagmen of Big Money! It’s true there is a tinge of socialism in the bill, but it is, of course, the only kind of socialism that is tolerated in America: socialism for the rich, where the masses shoulder the risks — and the costs — while the wealthy reap the profits for themselves. The health-care barons, the bailed-out banks, the farm-devouring agriconglomerates, the war profiteers … we’ve got plenty of boardroom bolsheviki out there — but it sure ain’t “communism” like Castro used to make! So let them hoot and holler down this false trail all they like; for as I learned back in my Senate days, when I was considered part of the “anti-war” faction, opposition without substance only entrenches the status quo. No, what we must look out for are all those — or rather, those very few — nattering nabobs of negativism who have opposed our historic corporate empowerment bill out of — get this — principle. Like barnacles hanging onto the butt of the Titanic, they have clung to the idea of truly universal, equal, single-payer health care, a system that is less expensive, more efficient, more secure, more democratic, more popular and more effective than the heroic measure we have passed here today. These poor wretches — who now must face the wrath of Kos and the wroth of Rahm for their tragic apostasy — are simply not savvy enough to see that our 2,000-page boondogglepalooza, riddled with fine-print exceptions, toothless regulations (which we will ‘enforce’ every bit as rigorously as Wall Street has been regulated all these years), impenetrable phase-in and phase-out schedules, and mild benefits that won’t even begin kicking in for years — and that even after a decade will still leave millions of people uncovered — is much better than a simple, streamlined system that could be implemented by the end of this year, bringing genuine relief from intolerable, life-degrading financial burdens and medical problems to millions and millions of people in dire need right away. Or as that avatar of negativity, Ralph Nader put it:
Then there’s this Chris Hedges guy. He used to be a “serious” journalist, reporting on the imperial wars for our corporate partners in the stovepiping community — what old-timers and barnacles still like to call the “news media.” But he went off the rails a long time ago and joined the carpers and cranks on the sidelines, those malcontents who, unlike so many of our progressive partners today, have never imbibed the timeless wisdom of Warren G. Harding: “Don’t knock, boost!” Just get a load of Hedges here, making the big-whoop observation that our historic bill is just a bloated version of the already-failed, Republican-created Massachusetts plan:
So who cares if the plan “fails”? Who cares, if, as you say,
And when this plan fails — as it will, as it will — then you rig up another boondoggle, another “great debate” full of sound and fury, signifying zilch, to keep the rubes at bay. Meanwhile, we can get on to the real job our corporate colleagues and patrons want us to do — bringing that other old dream of social amelioration for the common folk to an end at last: Social Security. Scalpel, Nurse! The doctor is in! |
Leave a comment
No comments yet.
Leave a comment