I don't think I have much that's new and brilliant to say about the state of Amerika today. I could say I completely foretold that this presidency - note that I did not say this 'president' - would engender the most cataclysmic divide in American culture since the 60's. I did in fact blog about that nearly two years ago. I could say that I accurately predicted that Obama's decision making process would dig us deeper into a morass in foreign affairs. With the number of unmanned drone killings ordered by B.O at a shockingly high level, and a new vitriol creeping into the relationship with Karzai in AfghanVietnamistan, plus a rather quiet decision to reverse course on having an open trial for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in civilian court but rather to retreat to the cozy military tribunal forum at the not as yet and maybe never to be closed Gitmo, Obama is finding that campaign promises are a bit like the questions you answer for your online dating pages.
You gotta say you like moonlit walks on the beach, romantic candlelit dinners, that you are well read, love your family and friends and have done the 'work' you need to do on yourself to enter into a 'real' relationship. Oh yeah, and loving animals helps too.
And this is where I get to my point. A lotta people wanted to date this guy with the fabulous online profile. And those who didn't want to climb in the sack with him hated him with a visceral hatred not seen in a very long time.
There is no other way to look at it - the incredible level of threat and savagery associated with the passage of the health INSURANCE reform bill - this was by no means a health CARE reform bill - has nothing to do with the content of the bill but the color of its' skin. This is 1964 all over again.
Frank Rich nailed it in a recent column in the NY TImes:
"The apocalyptic predictions then, like those about health care now, were all framed in constitutional pieties, of course. Barry Goldwater, running for president in ’64, drew on the counsel of two young legal allies, William Rehnquist and Robert Bork, to characterize the bill as a “threat to the very essence of our basic system” and a “usurpation” of states’ rights that “would force you to admit drunks, a known murderer or an insane person into your place of business”. Richard Russell, the segregationist Democratic senator from Georgia, said the bill “would destroy the free enterprise system.” David Lawrence, a widely syndicated conservative columnist, bemoaned the establishment of “a federal dictatorship.”"
Of course it isn't just the color of the skin of the man in the big house. Like the Civil Rights Act, the very idea of a reformed health care system (which I repeat, we did not get in this bill) threatens to empower a vast number of minorities. Oh my god. You could be sitting in your doctors office in Alabama with Grampa Howard and a wad of tobacco stuck up your gullet and a black woman with 18 children from 45 different fathers could come in and the end of the world is upon us.
What absolutely blows my mind is that the Tea Party movement (aren't they embarrassed about calling themselves tea baggers?) which appears genuinely to consist of working and middle class Americans is so determined to act against their own interests. In favor of corporations. In favor of insurance companies against whom they have undoubtedly railed in fury when being turned down for an insurance claim, in favor of business over workers. That is the ultimate tragedy of this Amerikan history moment.
That while over twenty decent human beings have perished in an entirely avoidable mining explosion in a Virginia mine run by a company with a slew of safety violations, a loudmouthed right wing cabal is turning working people into a contorted self hate group that sees it's future bound up with the 'owners' of the greatest wealth instead of the 'producers' of the great wealth - themselves. And at the same time harnessing one of Amerika's greatest fears to do it. The same fear that was unleashed by the equalization of the lunch counters.
It is a sad and sorry place to be. Even though I live in one of the most glorious, most beautiful places in the world, in one of the most progressive places in the world, I watch this roiling bloodlust with horror. And with the news that a 60 something white man, Charles Alan Wilson, left numerous violent threats at the office of Washington Senator Patty Murray - I am holding my breath. Perhaps when there is a killing, the conservatives creating this pus filled abcess will see that the stain they are leaving is not tea colored but a dark sticky red.
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