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The US Healthcare act
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IanB
IanB
6761 posts

Edited Sep 24, 2009, 16:09
Re: The US Healthcare act
Sep 24, 2009, 10:31
Lawrence wrote:
I don't think we're gonna get an answer to that from the intellectual coward giantleech...


In right wing circles there seems to be a lot of what Martin Amis termed "tramp dread".

It's so deeply ingrained that I find it hard to believe that anything that Obama and Clinton achieve will be more than a Potemkin Village for the media to either marvel at or rail against with equal vigour.

The American upper middle class (how they delude themselves!) seems so afraid of what their nation's poor represent (the threat, the possibility, the "there but for the grace of God go I" factor ) that they demonise and marginalise to the point of creating a national ghetto class of the under-nourished, the disenfranchised and the ill-educated. It has started here too. People who we are encouraged to despise as a homogenous underclass rather than feel compassion for. So much easier then to cut the financial ties and obligations that bind us to them. So much easier to kick a few more grasping hands away from the life boat.

The left are as bad in their own way (so often apologetic, self-hating and patronising in their expressions of care) but at least the core value is compassionate. Those on the right speak of the poor the way we (as a culture) tend to talk about people who die from particularly nasty illnesses. We speak of both as if they have failed to win a fight they might have won with a bit more effort. As if the failure is entirely their own doing and their fate entirely in their own hands. How much more comforting it must be to see the world that way. And if you know your history the next step after revulsion is what?

So much for the "lamp beside the golden door" ....
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