Time for a rant. I'm pissed.
The election season is getting to me. I've been trying so hard to maintain an opaque outer shell and keep my mouth shut. I even posted something on Facebook last week encouraging people to do something for others when they feel like they want to spout crap about politics.
But I'm really pissed off and I'm so tired of the parroting of unsubstantiated lame-ass bullshit coming from people who have no clue whatsofucking ever about how we came to be in the mess we're in. And the reason they don't have a clue is not because they were born without brains or lack the basic education to be able to think critically, but they refuse to use the organ that resides inside their skull.
I have a family gathering coming up on my husband's side and most of them will be among the parroters, and I am absolutely dreading it, because I want to smack them down on their ignorance but I'll keep the peace by telling them simply not to go there with me, then spitting out the shredded pieces of my own tongue afterwards. I'm going to be civil to keep the peace with my in-laws.
But this is my blog and I don't feel like being a damn bit civil, except for saying we're dealing with unreasonable children here and they need guidance! But you know as well as I do that tactic won't work. Not in these times.
This morning the
editor of the local paper wrote about how he'd been barraged with angry phone calls by people who claimed "liberal media bias" because the local paper covered Obama's visit to town and didn't cover much of the RNC convention. The editor said few of them wanted to listen, they just wanted to be heard. And that he explained that because Obama's visit was local news, it was covered extensively.
If a Republican president had come to town, they would have received the same coverage. He said that next week's DNC convention will get equal coverage to the RNC. Which is, not too much. Fine with me. I can get that on the Internet.
So Josh Awtry asks, Is there no room left for civility in conversation? My answer is, you cannot have a civil conversation with people who refuse to deal in reality.
Last week I already had the nauseating experience of having to work while an all day patient of mine was watching the Republican convention pageantry on the little TV in her chair. I was hearing bits and pieces of the B.S. they were dramatizing. One little snippet I caught was when someone in the little box mentioned repealing Obamacare. The patient was nodding like a bobblehead to all the crap they were saying.
Wah, wah, wah, Obamacare, Obamacare, like it's the devil and is to blame for all of our ills, as if everyone who is alive now and needs health care can blame their personal health woes on Barack Obama. As if Obamacare has been around for generations. As if Obamacare is the Zombie Apocalypse incarnate. Give me a fucking break.
It's really hard to be exposed to that shit raining down while you're held hostage, taking care of this patient, enduring the noise coming from the little box, and thinking, those people in that little box don't care that you can't afford the treatment you're getting, they don't even care if you can get it at all. They'd rather throw you out on the street and let you die.
Sometimes I think I should get hazard pay for this, exposure to toxins on the job. Sort of makes my chemo cart look like a lemonade stand.
Interesting little snippet of entertainment is
Fareed Zakaria on CNN interviewing Grover Norquist, the Grand Wizard of all Taxophobes and probably wears a white sheet when he's not on TV. But mostly, Norquist is just a fool. A fool that an entire political party would take seriously enough to have based their own platform on his juvenile ideas.
We have a system that DOES NOT WORK. It is not working for us and we are getting deeper in trouble and we need to do something about it. And no, Barack Obama isn't going to be able to fix it, and neither is Mitt Romney or Ronald Reagan or Jeb Bush or Ron Paul or Jesus Christ or any one person, or any one Congress. It just doesn't work that way! We have dug ourselves into a hole and we need to dig ourselves out. And relying on politicians to do that for us is the dumbest idea since...Grover Norquist.
It is absolutely long past time the grownups put their foot down and explained to these cognitively-impaired zealots that when you spend more money than you have, you have to borrow money, and then you're in debt. And the cost of that debt gets bigger and bigger, in addition to the amount you borrowed.
If you don't make everyone pay enough taxes, you can't raise the revenue you need to make things work. You have to borrow money. Trickle down economics does not work and cutting taxes does not work to increase economic growth. All it does is secure the rich people's fortunes at the expense of everyone else. Vouchers end up putting money in some corporate pocket, not in the U.S. Treasury where it can be distributed more equitably among citizens and our infrastructure.
And that is precisely the problem we're having, because these taxophobic morons cannot stop lying to the public, which is also cognitively impaired and unable to do simple math and has a short memory. People who would rather let those in power think for them and tell them what to think.
If Mitt Romney makes $100 million a year, and he's taxed at 14%, then he pays 14 million in taxes. If he's taxed at 50%, he'd pay 50 million in taxes. He'd still have $50 million dollars left! Whatever he does with it, please explain to me how that is conscionable when people are scraping bottom everywhere? How can you spend $50 million dollars?
If a middle class family makes $100,000, and has to pay 15% in taxes, that leaves them $85,000 for the year. And that much money will provide a fairly comfortable existence for a couple, without any extravagant spending. They can probably pay the mortgage, a car payment, save a little money, and stay out of debt, but add a kid or two and that $85,000 won't go very far. And then what about the millions who live in poverty? Don't you think that some professional athletes' contracts and CEO bonuses could be distributed among all of those people and give them maybe a few dollars to live on?
Meanwhile there are gazillions of people such as those CEOs and professional athletes, making huge sums of money and not contributing their share of the cost of running this country. Wealthy people are citizens too, they have a stake in society just as much as middle class and impoverished people do. But they're getting off too easy.
Call me Socialist, Communist, Marxist, whatever the hell you want to, but there is enough wealth to go around for everyone in this country to have a decent standard of living. Unfortunately it is being sequestered in places like the Cayman Islands by a relative handful, of a very large hand, of wealthy people who are not being good citizens. They need to pay it back.
I laugh when these barfbags of the same party call themselves patriotic and fly their little American Flag lapel pins. If you're so damn patriotic, then take your money out and put it into the US Treasury and invest in your own damn country! Why doesn't the RNC platform change to "I've got mine, fuck you."
And don't think for a second that there isn't a contingent from the Democratic Party who does the same thing. They are lying hypocrites and I expect fully to see their hypocrisy dramatized in little talking boxes at work this coming week. And I'll have my own choice words for the party for which I usually vote, unless they can start acting like grownups and start the honest conversation rolling.
As if that would ever happen...and monkeys might fly out of my butt!
I wonder if it's going to come down to outright civil war in his country. Which is pretty scary because the one side tends to be a little more enamored of guns than the other, and I belong to the other.
Maybe I feel a little better, but I'm still pissed off.
