Longtime readers of this here cereal box know that a persistent (if intermittent) theme here, in between all the f-bombs and fat-cat rants, is the idea of possible pasts. Playing the "what if" game is useful as a strategic, speculative pursuit, as it forces us to think about alternative outcomes.
More specifically, it's the notion that fate sometimes turns on a dime, that a seemingly small event can have a catalytic "butterfly" effect on its surroundings. One such example is the death in 2009 of Senator Ted Kennedy, as his passing took place at a critical point in "negotiations" over what would eventually become the Affordable Care Act.
Somehow, the Democrats managed to lose the seat that Kennedy had held for nearly half a century, due to a spectacularly inept and tone-deaf campaign by Martha Coakley. Coakley lost the seat -- and with it, the Democratic supermajority in the Senate to one Scott Brown, a photogenic, amiable doofus that the Republicans seem to grow on trees. Brown proved to be the linchpin in what became the now-standard GOP practice of might be called ABWOW -- Anything But What Obama Wants.
Only in a turgid industry like politics would pure, stupid obstructionism for its own sake be considered a strategy, but that and the constant threat of filibustering is all that has kept the Republicans going since 2009. Brown filled the Senate seat just long enough to force Obama to accept a ham-fisted, loophole-riddled sack of shit whose primary purpose is to hold doors in place on windy days.
Had Kennedy lived even a year longer, chances are that the supermajority could have forced through the public option, the single-payer system that is the standard in every other industrialized nation. Sure, your betters in the corner offices might not get the nine-figure salaries they so richly deserve, but the last five years of impossibly wealthy corporations and owners whinging over every fucking dime would not have happened.
Let's accept as a given that regulatory legislation written primarily by the industry it's designed to regulate is guaranteed to either be useless or more harmful than the situation it's intended to remedy. This was seen as a feature, rather than a flaw, by Brown and his cohort. And now we have what we have, which is another layer of bureaucracy in the IRS, a health-care racket whose pricing structure is exactly as much of a theft mechanism as it ever was, a baroque clusterfuck of industries bloated with lobbyists and marketers, gouging their captive markets and laughing all the way to the bank.
So now this week, we have one of the more bizarre eructations resulting from the ACA. Some dipshit craft store has decided -- based on its own ignorant interpretation of how certain birth-control options actually work -- that it cannot, in good conscience, be party to the IUD holocaust, or whatever it is these overbreeding, Christofascist weirdos call it.
Legalistic and moralistic angels-on-the-head-of-a-pin arguments aside, what sucks about this is that it gives license for any and every business, whether for reasons of mere penny-pinching or for some fanciful interpretation of Bronze Age legends, some bullshit excuse to duck out of something that could and should have been very simple and easy. No, now because someone "believes" something that is empirically not true, they can weasel out of it. Yeah, that's gonna work.
The public option would have worked, and well, because it would have disintermediated all the parasitic middlemen who drive up costs with marketing, admin, and sales. Ask yourself how well your grandmother's cancer was abated by fucking admin.
None of this had to happen. And now Brown is running for Jeanne Shaheen's seat in neighboring New Hampshire, because there is always more damage to do, more precious money to be made. People will die, and other people will go broke, because the health-care system in this country is an abomination, something that should be strapped into an electric chair and fried like an egg.
But as long as Scott Brown and his benefactors continue to make money and make a flawed process even worse, I guess it's okey-doke. I mean, hell, Jeanne Shaheen is just an Obama puppet, and he's evil. Some 80-year-old fart in Nashua said so, so it must be true. Cool, pops, pay for your own fucking bypass, then. Frankly, I have no interest in subsidizing these morons. Talk about doing the impossible for the ungrateful.
Whenever the post-mortem on this country and this species is written, whether it's five or fifty or 500 years from now, the thing our successors will note about us will be exactly what we noted about the previous civilizations we've unearthed, thinking that we've surpassed them with our intellect, might, and technology. That thing is the tendency to be our own worst enemies, to undermine our own rational self-interest for the sake of superficial qualities of glad-handing and smiling contempt. Your mastery of Candy Crush on your smart phone does not make up for not seeing what is right in front of you.
When Mitt Romney smiles, I see nothing but discomfort -- the inner pain of a man who regards the unrich as another species, and does not understand why the customs of this society compel the best and brightest to break bread with such people, to pretend that they like or even comprehend them. For every rich guy with a conscience, there are a hundred Mitt Romneys -- and because they sincerely regard their infestation of the political process as a bulwark against takeover by the rabble, they're the ones that actually run the show.
As always, people who willingly vote for politicians who can barely conceal their contempt get exactly what they deserve.
More specifically, it's the notion that fate sometimes turns on a dime, that a seemingly small event can have a catalytic "butterfly" effect on its surroundings. One such example is the death in 2009 of Senator Ted Kennedy, as his passing took place at a critical point in "negotiations" over what would eventually become the Affordable Care Act.
Somehow, the Democrats managed to lose the seat that Kennedy had held for nearly half a century, due to a spectacularly inept and tone-deaf campaign by Martha Coakley. Coakley lost the seat -- and with it, the Democratic supermajority in the Senate to one Scott Brown, a photogenic, amiable doofus that the Republicans seem to grow on trees. Brown proved to be the linchpin in what became the now-standard GOP practice of might be called ABWOW -- Anything But What Obama Wants.
Only in a turgid industry like politics would pure, stupid obstructionism for its own sake be considered a strategy, but that and the constant threat of filibustering is all that has kept the Republicans going since 2009. Brown filled the Senate seat just long enough to force Obama to accept a ham-fisted, loophole-riddled sack of shit whose primary purpose is to hold doors in place on windy days.
Had Kennedy lived even a year longer, chances are that the supermajority could have forced through the public option, the single-payer system that is the standard in every other industrialized nation. Sure, your betters in the corner offices might not get the nine-figure salaries they so richly deserve, but the last five years of impossibly wealthy corporations and owners whinging over every fucking dime would not have happened.
Let's accept as a given that regulatory legislation written primarily by the industry it's designed to regulate is guaranteed to either be useless or more harmful than the situation it's intended to remedy. This was seen as a feature, rather than a flaw, by Brown and his cohort. And now we have what we have, which is another layer of bureaucracy in the IRS, a health-care racket whose pricing structure is exactly as much of a theft mechanism as it ever was, a baroque clusterfuck of industries bloated with lobbyists and marketers, gouging their captive markets and laughing all the way to the bank.
So now this week, we have one of the more bizarre eructations resulting from the ACA. Some dipshit craft store has decided -- based on its own ignorant interpretation of how certain birth-control options actually work -- that it cannot, in good conscience, be party to the IUD holocaust, or whatever it is these overbreeding, Christofascist weirdos call it.
Legalistic and moralistic angels-on-the-head-of-a-pin arguments aside, what sucks about this is that it gives license for any and every business, whether for reasons of mere penny-pinching or for some fanciful interpretation of Bronze Age legends, some bullshit excuse to duck out of something that could and should have been very simple and easy. No, now because someone "believes" something that is empirically not true, they can weasel out of it. Yeah, that's gonna work.
The public option would have worked, and well, because it would have disintermediated all the parasitic middlemen who drive up costs with marketing, admin, and sales. Ask yourself how well your grandmother's cancer was abated by fucking admin.
None of this had to happen. And now Brown is running for Jeanne Shaheen's seat in neighboring New Hampshire, because there is always more damage to do, more precious money to be made. People will die, and other people will go broke, because the health-care system in this country is an abomination, something that should be strapped into an electric chair and fried like an egg.
But as long as Scott Brown and his benefactors continue to make money and make a flawed process even worse, I guess it's okey-doke. I mean, hell, Jeanne Shaheen is just an Obama puppet, and he's evil. Some 80-year-old fart in Nashua said so, so it must be true. Cool, pops, pay for your own fucking bypass, then. Frankly, I have no interest in subsidizing these morons. Talk about doing the impossible for the ungrateful.
Whenever the post-mortem on this country and this species is written, whether it's five or fifty or 500 years from now, the thing our successors will note about us will be exactly what we noted about the previous civilizations we've unearthed, thinking that we've surpassed them with our intellect, might, and technology. That thing is the tendency to be our own worst enemies, to undermine our own rational self-interest for the sake of superficial qualities of glad-handing and smiling contempt. Your mastery of Candy Crush on your smart phone does not make up for not seeing what is right in front of you.
When Mitt Romney smiles, I see nothing but discomfort -- the inner pain of a man who regards the unrich as another species, and does not understand why the customs of this society compel the best and brightest to break bread with such people, to pretend that they like or even comprehend them. For every rich guy with a conscience, there are a hundred Mitt Romneys -- and because they sincerely regard their infestation of the political process as a bulwark against takeover by the rabble, they're the ones that actually run the show.
As always, people who willingly vote for politicians who can barely conceal their contempt get exactly what they deserve.
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