Comment on Tea Partiers and Racism

dude1394 wrote:

When dissent is racist it's time to ignore ALL accusations of racism. This is nothing more than an attempt to silence critics, it's disgusting to throw the race card every single time someone disagrees with you.
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What are they protesting? What in the health care bill is bad? The reason Colbert King writes this piece is that the Tea Party group just aren't making sense if you take them at face value. They claim Obama is socializing health care when he's not. Health care is still directly provided by independent hospitals, and the means to pay for health care is still provided by independent insurance companies.

Tea Party protesters claim that they want to reduce the deficit, but that's exactly what this bill does. The money we spend now on health care is so inefficiently and wastefully spent that, if we do things smarter, we will all save money. And this is what the CBO has projected.

So, if it's not really about socialism and it's not really about the deficit, there are only a few things it can be about.

1 - The Tea Party protesters are uncompromisingly stupid, and don't know what socialism and the deficit are. They're simply confused or misled.

2 - The Tea Party group just doesn't like the tax increases on the wealthy that help to pay for this plan. This likely accounts for a large amount of the protesters, but it's an argument as old as taxes themselves - so why the vitriol now? In a government controlled by Democrats, expect higher taxes on the rich and greater benefits for the poor.

3 - Tea Partiers are motivated by some other impulse. This is the question King ponders in his editorial, and he finds striking resemblance between the current movement and those who protested civil rights. Is it coincidence that these similarities occur when we have a black president? Or when the issue in question similarly takes an exclusive right of the wealthy (health care) and gives it to the poor? I do think King is on to something here, and I can understand if you don't, but I don't think you can reasonably claim that he has no basis to think this way. He is, after all, operating under the assumption that there is some sense to the Tea Partiers.

The bottom line is that this bill is a capitalist bill through and through. It provides a social safety net which helps encourage people to seek better jobs and be more daring in the work place. It also decreases the burden on those of us who have insurance, so that we get a larger portion of our paycheck to spend in the free market each month. The second a Tea Party protester can argue those points without bringing up socialism or the deficit, I'm all ears.

A Quotation

Here's something I came across that I think pretty aptly characterizes the Republican attitude about health care especially, and government in general:

"It is when I see others degraded that I rejoice knowing it is better to be me than the scum of 'the people.' Whenever men are equal, without that difference, happiness cannot exist. So you wouldn't aid the humble, the unhappy. In all the world no voluptuousness flatters the senses more than social privilege."

It's from 120 Days of Sodom, a movie based on writings by The Marquis de Sade which I encountered in high school. As disgusting a quotation as it is, it made me feel sort of at peace with the opponents of health care reform; at least it's a logical statement, and doesn't try to mask it's true feelings. Fascist? Yes. But at least unabashedly so.

Lost

I've figured out the problem with the new season - not enough Ben. Early in the show there was the drama of acclimating to the island and growing used to not being rescued, but then there needed to be another driving force of the show. That came in Ben Linus. The bulk of Lost has been driven by Ben Linus - the things he knows, the things he's capable of, and ultimately whether his motivations were good or evil. This season has felt limp because Ben has been castrated and relegated to the background. Instead we get the Temple, and Lennon and Dogen, and Jacob and MIB, and we don't have any kind of investment in these types.

Based on the teaser, Ben will die next week. Let me be the first to say that, while the writers have earned my trust thus far, if Ben Linus isn't an important player in the endgame of Lost, it will be a HUGE disappointment.

Getting Old(!)

So, I'm turning 26 in a week and a half. That's not so old, I suppose, but I just had my first serious encounter with an object from my past that makes me feel positively ancient. My car. Here I was, innocently reading an article on lithium ion battery production (too many startups and discounts) when I started to think about when I would buy my next car. I got my car in college, and still think of it as a new car. It's a 2004 Honda Element. But wait... 2004 was six years ago now. My car is six years old. That means that if I had a kid at the same time I got my car, it would almost be six years old! It would be going into kindergarten, or first grade. Sure, there are other things that make me feel old, like the fact that The Fragile by Nine Inch Nails came out in 1999, but I was still a kid at the time. Lots of people are having kids when they're 20, which is how old I was when I got my car, and so it's perfectly plausible to come to this realization.

In summary, I could be the parent of a six year old human being right now. And that makes me feel old. Katie and I don't plan to have kids for another 3 or 4 years (after she graduates and gets settled into a career), which I think is entirely appropriate. It's one of the luxuries of living in the developed world that you can choose when to have children. Besides, there is a bright side to my brief moment of quarter life crisis - my car is almost six years old, which means that it'll be prime time to get a new one just as the second or third generation of electric cars are hitting showrooms! Sweet...