How?
Why? Ho...Wha....WHY!? It's as if the Republican party is trying to find a bottom that will cause their constituents to notice the insanity. But they never do. This is somehow a new bottom. This complete fabrication of a freshman senator who has been proven to have lied about everything on his resume and likely committed felonies and is being asked to step down even by the ever slimming margin of reasonable Republicans has just been placed on subcommittees by the new Republican speaker of the house. This is insane. There's no reason to have done this. There is no bottom. A few weeks ago I saw something like:
"Landlords play an important part in the housing market, just like scalpers play an important part of the ticket sales market." And it hasn't left my head. Feels like there's more truth there than most monied people or landlords would ever want to admit. With housing and rental prices being the way they are...with giant corporate entities creating portfolios of houses by a larger percentage year over year lately...with overseas entities swooping up swaths of housing and condos simply as a way to "park money" somewhere... ...how do we not have a better "family-oriented" solution to this yet? Doesn't this sound like the kind of problem that is screaming for bi-partisan support? Or is this just another hole we aren't allowed to fix in our society because people are going to scream about "freedom" and "free market" to hell-and-back, no matter how big the tire fire gets? I'm pretty sure a majority of Americans think they agree with the sentence: "Live and Let Live".
Yet, we are at a moment, where over the last few days both representative Marjorie Taylor Greene and then Donald Trump a day later went mask-off in openly supporting "Christian Nationalism". I can't believe I have to have this kind of conversation out loud to my fellow Americans, but it's really not okay to decide you are a Christian Nationalist. Please don't just parse it for it's root words without understanding it's meaning. Please understand there is real context, history and insanity to that phrase. Please understand what is suddenly being openly supported by sitting members of our government after 5 years of dog-whistling in this direction. If you sincerely look at our nation and think the problem holding us back is a need to be more like a middle-eastern theocratic county, then I dare you to tell me why. Can you tell me without imposing your personal beliefs as the answer? In this huge world of 7 billion people, full of countless religions and cultures and histories and backgrounds, to impose your personal religious beliefs on others is insanely selfish on a personal level, and to do it by rule of law or proxy is a historical recipe for disaster. Not everyone thinks like you and not everyone believes like you and the reasonable way to exist in this world is to be okay with that simple reality. "Live and Let Live." "Do Unto Others as You Would Have Them Do Unto You.." The Golden Rule, in whatever form you know it, exists in almost all religions. Shared ethical principles find a common thread among religions of all backgrounds for a reason. But nothing good has ever come from human history in imposing your own version of subjective beliefs over others. I can't believe I have to have this conversation with America in 2022. If you have been brought up where your concept of morality is irreversibly connected to your religion, that's yours to own. That is your understanding of the world. But please understand that the concept of "ethics" actually stands on its own merits far outside of any one persons religion. Ethics and the study of morality have a grandiose history of philosophy outside of your personal religion or outside of any religion at all. Your single-minded view with fantastical stories from thousands of years ago, that stand on the same basis as anyone else's religion, should not be imposed on everyone else. If you have ever known me I feel pretty confident you've known me to be a pretty reasonable person in your direction. I make great effort to be tempered, nice, and at my best actively trying to make your world happier or easier. Yet, some portion of people reading this might be surprised to know that I've spent my entire adult life an atheist/agnostic. I don't mention my atheism/agnostic perspective much because, to put it simply, it didn't seem to be a helpful topic of conversation in my early adult life, no matter how much I wanted it to be. It's not a status that causes thoughtful conversation, as I fool-hardily hoped for far too long, but a status that is more likely met with vitriol based on actively motivated misunderstanding. But most people --- most people simply didn't want to have that kind of conversation. But not for some terrible or self-righteous reason. They were busy with life. They had to worry about more base concepts than have a "deep" conversation unprovoked. A conversation that was forced that would brush up against foundational concepts of ones self. that they may not have focused on in years or with great intensity. Or because they were simply busy -- had to worry about getting food on the table more. Or figuring out their future. Figuring out the next day -- there wasn't a luxury of overanalyzing broader concepts. But all this just to say -- not everyone is like you. Or me. Not everyone is at the same moment in their life, their year, their existence, as where you currently sit. Or have had the priviledge of being brought up in. Or the hardships that you've weathered through. We are all so different and for good reasons and the only way you make this world work is by accepting that and learning to make your table bigger. Not put up walls and force your momentary, subjective rules on others. But if it's helpful for you to understand that ethical nice people of all kinds, come from every walk-of-life, in every religion, in every country, and every background around the world, just know that I've been an Atheist the whole time you've known me. So if you are someone that somehow doesn't see the scary road that talk of accepting "Christian Nationalism" leads to, please take a moment to reflect. To google. To understand what that means and in the context of history and this country and this world. It's ties to White Nationalism and the KKK. It's obvious and direct reflection to "radical islam" that is born of the same type of often conservative, often misogynistic, often nationalist, often racially motivated mandated beliefs. It feels so odd to have to beg with adults to please not impose your bullshit on me and others from a governmental level. I thought we had some baselines in this country that weren't nearly this fragile. All this shouting of "freedom" and "Don't Tread on Me" is so crazily biased to how one side sees it, those words have no meaning when the people who mindlessly chant those concepts are the ones who push in this direction. And the continued deterioration in this direction is what leads to atrocity. That is what leads to backwards nations doing terrible things and create cycles of violence and in-fighting that self-perpetuates. Where people end up living in fear of having open discussions and free thoughts about who they really are. This is how you break previously free and open systems due to litmus tests and grotesque concepts of "loyalty" over buzz-words and cults of personality. Please. Please understand that a vote for anyone standing with the Cult of Trump is a continued vote in a very dangerous direction that holds many people captive. And for what? Ask yourself; "For what? What is the end game of this type of talk?" Because there isn't a peaceful end game to this type of talk. Because this isn't new. History is repeating itself. And this isn't a path you want humanity to run its course with. I've heard 2 different stories in the last week, about people I know personally, who are avoiding health-care they likely need due to monetary reasons. Both people are not the momentarily-demonized people-of-the-moment who may still be on unemployment because poverty wages aren't tempting enough to return to the workforce.
No, both of them are gainfully employed and make well above minimum wage -- yet our culture and society still creates a situation where we incentivize a pound of cure where an ounce of prevention would have worked. Not to mention the mental stress of delaying needed surgeries or checkups. Progressive agenda items are intriguing to talk about and all -- minimum wage hikes -- UBI -- but none of them will ever feel as necessary, universally healthy for our society at large, or have less accidental disincentives as much as some form of Single-Payer Health Care. We need to stop playing the lottery with everyone's lives and final moments and anguish. It's a broken record thing to say, but we say it over and over again because it's true and there's no excuse for it: FOR BEING THE RICHEST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD, THERE IS NO EXCUSE TO BE THE ONLY FIRST WORLD COUNTRY WHERE PEOPLE GO BANKRUPT OR BANKRUPT THEIR FAMILIES FROM BEING SICK AND DYING. This is dumb. And incredibly sad. I've heard too many stories from people directly in my life that showcase the insanely unethical system everyone allows to continue simply for de-facto purposes. The only reason they exist is because we are too apathetic as a country to believe we can make changes and legislation that is actually FOR THE PEOPLE in this country. Please help. Please believe. Set your sites higher than some bullshit "boot-strap" platitude based on Reaganomics and Mad-Max bullshit and instead realize that Star Trek is the goal. Believe we can be better. This society we are living in makes fantastic, dramatic leaps forward in capability, technology and wealth every decade for over 100 years now. The only thing holding us back from sharing in it is our denial of the fact that the future is still steam rolling ahead, but our zeitgeist of selfish motifs about "Not in my backyard", "Don't tread on me", "boot-straps", 'immigrant demonization', and "Freedommmmm!" is at best a distraction from real conversation. At worst a self contradictory mesh of motives that equal nothing more than "Don't yell at me about making big-boomy noises when I want to" and "make liberals cry" blind inherited politics. Actual freedom to me is not being geographically paralyzed while pregnant because of health-care/job concerns. It's not having your final thoughts be about your families financials and how much your final days are "costing them". It's not having families with still-borns have hospital bill reminders for years afterwards. It's not having people ration their insulin and then still accidentally die because we as a country aren't willing to stop profiteering from a drug that was given away to the public by its inventor. That sounds like freedom from a tyrannical "rich" society who has no morals, to me. For the first time in my life, I'm about to have employee provided health care. At the age of 35. I have had a wildly successful, interesting, constant work life since the age of 16. And I have simply been lucky to have not been ruined by the state of healthcare in this country. That luck is not something to champion. I am an example of survivor-bias nonsense. This needs to be fixed. Small companies who can't compete with larger ones for labor would be great beneficiaries of health-care-for-all. Cutting out the needless middle-men of insurers, actually using regulatory powers to police vulture patent abuses, or eliminating the need for hospitals and small practices to hire more paper-pushers and insurance chasers than they do nurses are all examples of why study after study show it would save this country so much money and pain to ACTUALLY TRY TO FIX THIS PROBLEM. It's a fact that we pay almost twice as much for healthcare for worse results in this country. And the reasons are obvious. Please pay attention. #MedicareForAll |
The Author
is a thirty-something guy who hasn't been able to look away from politics since 2010. Around the time he got tired of staring at religion. Archives
June 2020
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