And Hypocrites

This Terry Schaivo case... ugh. When are people on the right going to start getting sick of their own side's pandering and hypocrisy?

Let that poor woman's body die for heaven's sake... As I see it, her soul is long gone (thank goodness for that). All that remains is this drama in which people stake out their positions as vicious ideologues or people willing to deal with reality. And the reality is that she's in a persistent vegetative state, and that her husband has the legal right to determine what happens next. Her parents are being exploited by so-called "pro-life" forces. How sad that they would subject their own daughter to all this as a result.

Pro-life is a joke. They could care less about actual human lives. Bunch of grandstanding, intrusive hypocrites.

Human behavior sure can be repulsive.

Nation of Pharisees

Not like we weren't already pretty far down that road already, but we seem to have taken a few more steps: the Senate is poised to pass legislation to toughen existing bankruptcy laws -- something credit card companies have been pushing for for years but which Democrats have been blocking, until the last election -- that will penalize the poor and middle-class but exempts the wealthy and corporations.

A Christian nation, indeed. As Abraham Lincoln put it, "I tremble for my species when I think that God is just."

Oddly enough, many Americans think we ought to be invading other people's countries and telling them how to live.

One consolation is that, while 50.5% of voters voted for Bush in November, 49.5% did not -- and when you consider how our elections are determined by the massive amounts of PR and propaganda that shape public opinion, that indicates that a lot of people aren't drinking the Kool-Aid. I imagine that more Germans voted for Hitler.

As some of the Right's most loyal supporters are those most likely to be screwed in the new "sharecropper society," it will be interesting to see what happens in November 2006. Perhaps the red states will vote for the right to start eating their children, even more than they already are.

Note to Congress: just because people aren't very smart and don't have tons of money, that doesn't mean it's right to trick them and exploit them and imperil their children.

Wealth Transfer

That's the phrase we liberals need to start using to describe the U.S. military presence in Iraq and Medicare "reform," among other things. Also the Administration's attempt at Social Security "reform," although I agree with Paul Krugman when he argues that the true goal of movement conservatives is to dismantle the system, because they ideologically oppose it.

We can't have people thinking that government can actually improve their lives or anything, because those in power are interested in holding on to it. People might start thinking that all kinds of change and progress are possible, including food and medical care for all and even world peace. Which would really fuck up the economy, and run counter to the transformation of our country into a third world consumer plantation.*

(This isn't my idea; I borrowed it from Bill Hicks. Even though he died more than a decade ago, these catchphrases are more relevant than ever.)

As my husband pointed out to me, where there's a plantation, there's always a big house. A movement conservative is one who intends to live in it.