disturbing the comfortable

I had an op-ed piece in our local daily. In it I tried to counter the rabid-right's bullshit about health care reform. Death panels, bankrupting the economy, government coming between patients and doctors—you know, the same ol' same ol'. Christ, we spend more on military spending than all the other countries in the world put together. All of them. And our military budget keeps going up year after year. America spends nearly $10 billion a year on "defense" alone. And our biggest threat, these days, are a bunch of nationalists with old Russian Ak-47s, and some newer weapons that we gave them. We've been fighting them for eight years now. Makes you wonder what the Sioux or Apaches could have done with automatic weapons...

Anyhow, some person responded to my ediorial with one of his own. Death panels, bankrupting the economy, goverment coming between patients and doctors...and, of course, the phrase "socialized medicine" waved around like a bloody battle flag. So, obviously, we're dealing with a belief system—like the Intelligent Design Cadres, or the birthers or the militia freaks.

Then I stopped writing this to watch a video of some congressperson from Texas (yeah, no need to say it) gabbling on about putting condoms on wild horses. He was the same one sitting at Obama's address on health care with a sign saying "What bill?" on his lap. Jesus.

Years back, commentators talked about how the hard core christian nuts were determined to take over the Republican Party. They did. We're living with (and in spite of) the results.