I can't say I have been overwhelmed by comments in various venues in which "Clear The Mist" posts appear. But perhaps I can. And so sadly, it seems that irrational thinkers, people that simply cannot think "out of the box" or act from a place of compassion balanced with some degree of practicality, can too easily overwhelm real democratic speech and social progress.
To the lobbying firms, and those that have hired them, that have been organizing the fascist brown shirt thugs that believe more in disrupting democratic town hall meetings rather than engaging in rational discourse, you won't succeed in turning the United States into 1930s/40s Italy or Germany - unless we fail to take their threat to our freedoms seriously, take a stand and say "ENOUGH!"
I can't say I have been overwhelmed by comments in various venues in which "Clear The Mist" posts appear. But perhaps I can. And so sadly, it seems that irrational thinkers, people that simply cannot think "out of the box" or act from a place of compassion balanced with some degree of practicality, can too easily overwhelm real democratic speech and social progress.
Oh gee, am I talking about Republican and conservative politicians, whose only ability to speak is derived from someone else's "talking points? You all know the ones. Thems that have money and don't want anyone to share in prosperity? Thems that blindly follow mythically epic blatant lies about proposed health care legislation, including but not limited to "old folks will have to choose how they want to die" or "Medicare is NOT socialized health care" or "the government will step between the patient and physician" - my personal favorite, though the old folks must die canard is picking up points.
Them great thinkers, the same ones that sold us on the Iraq War and cost us thousands of sons and daughters, not to mention tens of thousands (if not far far more) Iraqi lives. The ones that believe that torture is just fine so long as we are doing the torture. And yes, the ones, that have no concept of what it took us in terms of government intervention in the economy to jump-start America and begin to dig us out of the Great Depression, painting FDR as some Great Satan and Herbert Hoover as a hero.
Some people should get over their own narrow-minded, myth-based concept of reality.
Are deepening federal deficits, not to mention state deficits, a good thing? Surely not. But they are necessary and in the long-run can be resolved in many ways.
Is a substantial and comprehensive overhaul of our clearly broken health care system long overdue and necessary for the health of Americans AND the health of businesses? No question whatsoever. Medicare needs some tweaks and not much more. Then it will be "ready for primetime" and can be held up as an example of how health care should be practiced and delivered in the United States.
Those who believe that merely tinkering with the current for-profit insurance industry delivered system will solve the problems are sadly mistaken, be they Republican or Democrat. You want to whine about the myth that government will step between you and quality health care with rationing and whatever else. But you don't whine about insurance companies doing precisely that.
If you actually have health insurance, how many times have you experienced - or even heard from a relative or friend or neighbor - an insurance company denying benefits for a diagnostic procedure or a particular treatment, or even a simple drug? It happens every day!
To the lobbying firms, and those that have hired them, that have been organizing the fascist brown shirt thugs that believe more in disrupting democratic town hall meetings rather than engaging in rational discourse, you won't succeed in turning the United States into 1930s/40s Italy or Germany - unless we fail to take their threat to our freedoms seriously, take a stand and say "ENOUGH!"
These fringe elements do not speak for the great majority of Americans who, poll after poll since before the 2008 election clearly show, want reform. We are finished with neoCON Republican and conservative lies and liars.
Or at least we should be.
Cary J Polevoy
clearthemist.blogspot.com