Thoughtful posts on why the neopaleolithic viewpoint, while perhaps valid for its adherents, is yet not the way I want my country run.
Since the Congress is determined to throw healthcare in the country into a death spiral, I thought it would be worth asking:
What is your plan to protect the gains we have made in providing health coverage to our citizens?
I of course do not expect a response. These people do not actually care what their constituents think.
A friend rather foolishly clicked on a link in a spam email yesterday.
Fortunately,[1] it just leads to a webpage that first asks you to make sure you have your sound on, and then proceeds to auto-play a slideshow that is nothing but text, which the narrator then reads out loud to us. Oy. It also says that it’s only six minutes long, but as I type this it’s been way over fifteen and it’s still going.
I will now pause to let you guess what the presentation is actually about.
The presentation is about _____
A) a quasi-military organization plotting a coup, thereby enabling Clinton’s accession to the presidency
B) a super-secret cabal which will engineer the president-elect’s impeachment before the inauguration, thereby enabling Clinton’s accession to the presidency
C) an ad for a “free” book on secret cures for cancer, Alzheimer’s, arthritis, etc.
If you guessed C, congratulations.
Yes, it’s true, boys and girls.[2] Hillary Clinton conspired twenty-three years ago to kill off 31,000 patriots a year with the pharmaceutical cartel. Their plot was to put her in the White House, where she would allow them “access to the power and money” of the U.S. government something something drugs.
How exactly this is different from our current healthcare situation is unclear, but IT’S SCARY, KENNETH! Hillary Clinton! Cartel! There is so much ooga-booga in the first five minutes of this thing that I cannot remember it all—and I’m not going back to listen to it again. It hits all the notes: Clinton, conspiracy, patriotism, threat of death, etc. There is no documentation or proof, just blunt assertions about “knowing” stuff that NO ONE ELSE KNOWS, KENNETH!
[The presentation is still running in another browser window. Six minutes my ass.]
The speaker finally reveals his affiliation: HSI, Health Science Institute. A more wretched hive of scum and villainy, etc., etc.
Why do I say that? The target audience for this pitch is those of us over 55, who combine the traits the HSI values: intractable health issues, not-very-solid reasoning capacities, distrust of institutional healthcare, and increasing fear of death. (And a whole bunch of us have an irrational fear/hatred of Hillary Clinton, so that’s a bonus.) The pitch is deliberately crafted to engage the amygdala and its irrational fears—and create a sense of panic and urgency so that the poor senior citizen clicks on that link to receive the “free” booklet.
I’m guessing that in order to receive your free book, you have to give the HSI not only your mailing address, but also your email address and probably your phone number. You will then receive pitch after pitch for their products WHICH WILL CURE YOUR CANCER THE NATURAL WAY WITHOUT SIDE EFFECTS, KENNETH! These people are evil.
The only way to make sure is to click on that link. Which I’m not going to do.[3]
—————
[1] For differing values of “fortunate.”
[2] It’s not true.
[3] I have written this entire blog post and the presentation is still running and still has not given me the information to receive my free book. We’re now into the second free gift.
I for one am not even astonished that the Congress is looking to fund the president-elect’s “wall.” So what if the man said that “Mexico will pay for it”? Apparently nothing he said on the campaign trail matters.[1]
It also doesn’t seem to matter that the party of “fiscal responsibility” and “small government” now wants to jumpstart the biggest boondoggle since the Iraq war.
But I do have some questions for my elected representatives.
Or, bluntly, is the congressman’s vote based purely on the symbolic vindictiveness that seems to characterize his party?
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[1] It doesn’t matter because the only thing that matters to the Republicker party is that they now have a patsy in the White House.
It is worth noting that my new Congressional Representative, one Drew Ferguson, has emerged from his pod and will now be receiving some very simple questions with simple answers alongside Sen. David Perdue and Sen. Johnny Isakson.
That is all. Carry on.
I have been reading Mirrors, by Eduardo Galeano. I have come to believe that there is a thread of evil running through human history that will not die but must be fought against without stint or let.
In the middle of a series of disquisitions about slavery and its never-ending end in the 18th and 19th centuries, I came across this:
When Iqbal Maiz was four, his parents sold him for fifteen dollars.
He was bought by a rug maker. He worked chained to the loom fourteen hours a day. At the age of ten, Iqbal was a hunchback with the lungs of an old man.
Then he escaped and became the spokesman for Pakistan’s child slaves.
In 1995, when he was twelve years old, a fatal bullet knocked him from his bicycle.
[pp. 190-191]
In 1995.
Evil.
Evil is not having sex with someone to whom you are not married or is the same gender as you. Evil is not realizing your brain is not the same gender as your body. Evil is not praying to some other deity than you and your neighbors.
Evil is cruelty to anyone with less power than you.
Period.
Not in my name, not in my country. Speak up.
I don’t even really know how to phrase this in the form of a question.
The president-elect tweeted this morning:
What are your thoughts about this man’s message? Do you think this is appropriate for our nation’s leader? Do you support this attitude?
Given that I have not had an answer to most of my easy questions, I don’t expect to hear from either of my senators on this one either. (Still waiting for my new representative to emerge from his pod.)
The precedent-elect [sic] has been tweeting again, so again I turn to my elected officials to see if they agree with him.
The president-elect has tweeted that the U.S. must “greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes.”
Do you agree that our nation should spend its resources on re-triggering the nuclear arms race?
…
So Newt Gingrich, who started our nation’s slide into hyperpartisanship and truthiness, was interviewed on NPR on Monday, and essentially he put it out there for normalization: the president-elect is so rich, so incredibly rich, such an unbelievably successful businessman, that we should not expect him to have to follow our federal ethics laws.
::sigh::
Off to the representatives we go:
On Monday, Newt Gingrich said that the president-elect can’t be expected to follow current ethics rules.
Do you agree that the president-elect should be allowed to ignore federal ethics rules?
And again we wait.
…I think my elected officials are just trolling me.
Here’s Senator Johnny Isakson’s email:
Thank you for contacting my office regarding federal policy. I appreciate your thoughts and the opportunity to respond.
As a member of the United States Senate, I am pleased to see constituents, such as you, taking the time to share your thoughts and concerns about the federal government and its policies. Your letter will be helpful to me as the Senate considers legislation dealing with the issues facing our great nation.
Thank you again for contacting me, and I hope you will not hesitate to call on me in the future if I can be of assistance to you.
Again, not only is this not an answer to any question I’ve asked, I can’t even tell which question it’s in response to.
Putz.
I got this email from Senator David Perdue yesterday:
Thank you for contacting me with your concerns regarding the 2016 Presidential Election. I always appreciate the opportunity to hear from my fellow Georgians.
The American people sent a strong message in November about the kind of leadership our country needs. Voters are tired of constant gridlock and lack of results from career politicians and have given a successful businessman, Donald Trump, an opportunity to bring some common sense to Washington. Our nation faces a skyrocketing federal debt, stagnant economy, and global security crisis, and I look forward to working with President-Elect Trump to tackle these issues.
Again, thank you for taking the time to contact me about these issues as your thoughts are important to me.
Blah blah blah.
Not only is this not an answer to any question I have sent to Sen. Perdue, I can’t even tell which question it’s not an answer to.
This is the quintessence of non-responsive government.