This is what is so ignorant about the claim health care reform represents a government takeover of private enterprise and by extension the United States' way of life: It is actually the opposite.
What just passed was a victory for corporate America, in this case the insurance companies, and by extension the free market system. That is, if you mean free to continue their cheating, profiteering ways.
By rejecting any effective public option, we are still at the medical mercy of the greedy ones. They get to set almost all the rules and cleverly sidestep the few new ones a writhing Congress did pass. All they did was to gloss over the reality we're still at the mercy of bottom line feeding corporations.
They literally couldn't care less if we live or die, or are healthy, as long as they have great quarterly reports.
Nevertheless, let's repeat loud and clear: Violence is wrong. And it is stupid. People who resort to it have ignorance as a pre-existing condition.
Having said that, our resentment is justified, just misplaced. We have been had all right. Not by those who want to regulate commerce, but by those who have taken advantage of the lack of restrictions to engaged in financial abuse and what amounts to legalized thievery.
We should be downright bitter about how the banks, the investment houses the industrialists have manipulated the
system with its lack of restraints. They have cheated us out of our hard-earned money or frittered it away with their grandiose incompetence.
We should be outraged at how they mightily resist even minimally cooperating with efforts to let the people they've left desperate even keep a roof over their heads.
Primarily we should be furious about their collusion with the pathetic politicians who do their bidding. They thwart effective change for small change and do the bidding of their wealthy patrons. What survives is meaningless mush.
Worst of all, are their agents of deception, who take their cut by using web sites and irresponsibly incendiary distortions to scare already frightened people into mobs, frenzied by words like "Socialism" or "Marxism" or "Government Takeover"
There is nothing resembling a government takeover here. The oligarchs and their political enforcers are still running things. At the expense of everyone else.
There's plenty about which to be upset but we cannot upset our own apple carts. When we are taunted into violence and threats we play right into their hands.
Those who hold the power and abuse it are succeeding, at the moment, in dividing and conquering the powerless by pushing the buttons that incite people to march against each other instead of banding together for effective action against their common grievances.
We have so much in common. For instance, we are constantly on guard to protect our rights from an intrusive government. We should be demanding that government assumes its proper role as a barrier against the kind of economic abuse, which, sad to say, has become the American way of life.
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I suspect the same forces of manipulation are involved. After all, the frenzied seek reasons to become enraged. And the worshippers seek reasons to become enthralled. So they are both very satisfied with this legislation.
Sad... both extremes.