As I sat down and read one of the books I got for Christmas, I found this passage and cried.
We want to live. What is government for, it not to help us do so? Indeed, Mr. Churchill, the responsibility for the public safety is absolute and requires no mandate...
...Uninsured working-class Americans have a 40 percent higher risk of death than their privately insured counterparts. People, in short, are dying for lack of money.
...It is hard enough to recover, to fight past pain, and to stave off death, if just for a season or a week or a day. It is so hard that eventually for you, for me, for this president, for these Blue Dogs, for these protesters -- it is so hard to recover that for all of us, there will come a time when we will not recover.
So why are we making it harder?
(1) (emphasis added)
The self-described "idiot with glasses" (2) who wrote this, wrote it about healthcare.
But it's true for all of Austerity America, isn't it?
Women are having a harder time even getting something that's incredibly popular...birth control. A woman, a private citizen who dared to speak out, not in favor of birth control in general, but in favor of birth control pill use to preserve women's future fertility to Congress, was attacked for days by a failed sports commentator, and his party was too cowardly to call him on it.
Health care is still incredibly hard to get. Just look at the states that have thrown, or plan to throw, low-income Americans off their Medicaid rolls, including those who have died because they could not get desperately needed organ transplants.
More and more Americans are getting food assistance from food stamp programs, but those programs are increasingly under assault by Republicans as only serving "blah people," or because food stamp recipients don't buy the kinds of foods the judgemental think they should.
I don't know all the answers as to why so many people who should know better decide to work for policies and vote for politicians who will work against their best interests, but I do have one from my own experience.
Hate.
Pure hate.
Excerpts/summaries from real face-to-face conversations I've had with conservative voters:
"I don't want everyone to have health care, 'cause then queers would get it for AIDS."
"I want there to be no welfare, because I Know A Guy(3) who was on it For No Reason."
Hate. Hatred of gay people is enough for you to want to deny me, your neighbor, healthcare. Hatred of a few people gaming the system (and here's news for you, friend...there's always someone gaming the system) is enough to burn down the system, not to, say, reform it and monitor it for fraud.
They're working so hard to make everything harder. Want a job? Give up all of your privacy, if, of course, you can apply at all given the discrimination against the long-term unemployed. Why? Probably because I Know a Guy who was a bad employee, and his boss found out by looking at Facebook. Or because I Know a Guy who was long-term unemployed, and he was a bad employee, thus all long-term unemployed people are lazy.
So I'm asking you to keep fighting, hard, to get to a world where all of us finally have enough. Not everything. I just want enough for all of us. I remember back when I had health insurance, and my husband got injured and needed to see a doctor. I worried about him and getting time off from work to get him there, but not about if I could afford to take the time off or if we could afford to have a doctor see him. I didn't worry about how we could pay for the medication he'd need.
I don't think that's too much to ask. Nor is having a place to live, or a job that can sustain two aging people, or not having to worry when your husband loses his job that you'll lose your home.
I don't even think it's too much to ask that everyone get at least two weeks off a year and be paid enough to afford to take a real vacation (maybe to a lovely place off Lake Michigan, say).
Let's work hard this election year. Because enough is enough, and life is hard, and we need each other.
Oh, and if you want to help our family, including my long-term unemployed but very creative and hard-working husband, I'd suggest checking out our Etsy site in my signature. If you want to help our country, I'd suggest planning to vote Democratic this fall, agitate, occupy, and organize.
Thank you. Sincerely, thank you. Because our love is strong. And I think it will make all the difference. It has to. We're dying out here.
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(1) pp. 180, 185, 197 of Pitchforks and Torches by Keith Olbermann
(2) At least one episode of Countdown with Keith Olbermann on MSNBC.
(3) "I know a guy who..." Usually completely specious excuse for nonsense the Right pushes.
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Mostly Made-Up Bio
Allergywoman is a dynamic figure who was born in a hospital she built with her own two hands. At age seven, she became very angry that her parents wouldn't let her vote for John Anderson, even though women could vote then. Ever since, she's been the kind of pinko commie lefty liberal that women want to be and men want to be with. Or is that the other way around? She has the privilege and distinction of having met both Paul Simon and Markos Moulitsas, and hopes some day to let her Democratic House Representative meet her, though s/he does not yet, technically, exist. The House Representative, we mean. Allergywoman technically exists, which her CPA, Hermes Conrad, assures her is the best kind of existence. Thank you and goodnight, and please don't forget to tip your waitstaff...they really do need it.