This started as a Facebook rant precipitated by several Friends posting things today that got me a bit steaming. I wrote this out, then had second thoughts about posting it to FB. So I'm dropping it here for now, and I'm just wondering what people think of it, if they have suggestions, if I should post it or not, etc.
Anyway, have at it below the orange doohicky.
Some might note that I've got some strong feelings about what's been going on in DC these days. My feelings on this come from two angles - the ACA (aka Obamacare), and the government shutdown and furloughing public employees without pay.
First, the ACA. My feelings here are not so much whether I'm in favor or not, so much as I have little tolerance for lying, stupidity and hypocrisy, which the ACA seems to have brought out in a certain political party in abundance. I've mentioned this before, but it's worth repeating again -- the primary tenets of the ACA were bedrock GOP gospel as little as five years ago (when, all of a sudden, they did complete reversal and this same bedrock gospel became the worst thing that's ever happened, anywhere in the known universe, ever). Call me silly, but it seems awfully fucking coincidental that the same plans that the GOP had been pushing since Bush Senior was in office suddenly became the Second Coming of Hitler when those same plans are supported by a Democratic President. Yeah, I ain't buyin' it, but it sure surprises the hell out of me that so many people apparently do. And it makes me question the true motives of a political party, if they are so quick to not just abandon but actively demonize as evil a plan they had supported for so long. This tells me they are either liars or fools, and I have little tolerance for either, especially when in positions of power.
The second is the whole budget issue, which I admit due to my own position as a public (though not federal) employee, I am rather sensitive to. The GOP, in it's zeal to strangle their own newborn in the crib rather than have it adopted by someone else, has precipitated a budget crisis that has shut down most of the government.
This has put hundreds of thousands of people out of work through no fault of their own, simply to satisfy one faction of one political party's political tantrum at not getting their way. These people have families, they have bills, many of them are serious about their careers in public service. And, despite the misleading term of being a "non-essential" employee, I daresay the vast majority of Americans don't know fuck-all about what most public employees actually do. They certainly don't know enough to make an educated decision about whether someone is "essential" or "non-essential". Unfortunately, to a disturbingly large segment of the population, a government employee is "essential" only when it's a case of "what do they do for ME, personally, as a tangible benefit right this minute?"
And while some people feel the government taxes too much and spends too much, that's what elections are about, and if you lose the election, then you work to convince the voting public that you are right and you try to win the next one - what you DON'T do is deliberately kneecap the government in a hissy fit and precipitously dump thousands of people out into the street without paychecks. And if you're pissed about how much you pay in taxes and don't want your taxes going to Program X or Y, you fucking well convince people to vote for members of Congress who will repeal those offending programs. And in the meantime, you realize that you are, in fact, part of a larger society that may, in fact, have a different viewpoint from yours, and who might actually LIKE Program X or Y. I had to pay taxes to support George W's Trillion Dollar A Day Bogus Journey into Iraq (in the interest of fairness, I'll note that I did support going into Afghanistan) despite my being incredibly skeptical of the whole adventure from Day One, so you can damn well pay to fund NASA and the Smithsonian and the National Institute of Health.