The health care debate rages on, and the conservative right never ceases to amaze me with their idiotic and bigoted statements about a social issue that was solved decades ago by poorer, ‘less advanced,’ less developed, supposedly less progressive countries who enjoy national universal health care that (despite the media hype) is in many ways better and is definitely more available and affordable than our richly bloated American health care system, which might be technologically superior but is universally mis-managed for the gluttonous profit of giant insurance corporations, pharmaceutical corporations, and private industry rather than for the benefit of our hard working, underpaid, under appreciated American citizens. 

We don’t need to look far, if we look fairly (witness the universal health care systems of Canada and the U.K., both staunch allies with ideologies and economies not so far fetched from ours) to see that socialized medicine is neither fascist propaganda nor an Orwellian death trap.   We also now have a President who is half black and half white; a man; a good man; a U.S. President caricatured by some as a monkey who deserves to be shot; and compared to Adolf Hitler by others. 

Idiocy and intolerant, bombastic, mean spirited, awful bigoted bullshit.   I am embarrassed for my country.   I am embarrassed and disgusted by how insanely bigoted and narrow minded some people are here in the ‘land of the free,’ which isn’t.

And this is but part of the sad state of affairs we find ourselves enmeshed in.  The rich ruling elite would have every one of us become thoroughly impoverished and in bottomless debt and total despair, relying upon our small stash of paper money that is every day becoming more and more difficult to earn and yet more and more worthless.  We are uninsured and unable to afford decent medical care in a health care system that is based upon DISease rather than health; we are uncertain of the political process to the point that we question even the votes we cast in our national elections; amazed and horrified and disgusted and outraged that our Congress is giving away hundreds of billions to financial institutions who over indulged in ruinous, self serving business practices and are then handsomely rewarded (even by the current administration) for being irresponsible and unaccountable; all in the transparent guise of saving our national economy. 

We are living in an environment that is every day being more savaged by gluttonous developers who would cut down every tree and cover the Earth in poorly constructed buildings, roads and parking lots, seeking nothing but growth and their own fattening profit.  We are eating processed foods from a super sized grocery store rather than organic food from a garden; our water is polluted; our air is polluted; and our soils are depleted.  Soon we will be fighting wars over potable water.  Meanwhile, we are sending our sons and daughters to Iraq to fight and die for Middle Eastern oil, so we can pollute the Earth with more petrochemical exhaust and sludge; and to Afghanistan to fight and die in a war that is waged not for freedom or even strategic advantage, but opium, and the hundreds of billions of dollars generated from a drug trade managed by the CIA.  Our empire is crumbling while our foreign competitors indulge and pollute even more rapaciously than we ever did, leaving us in their world wide toxic dust.

The Federal Reserve is printing money for nothing 24/7 and we are buying it at interest.  We are no longer the world leaders we once were in nearly every category; we email and blog and text and twitter instead of communicating face to face; we are underpaid for our talents and overtaxed by a government that no longer represents us; and the price of everything has gone through the roof.  The numbers are staggering now, and we feel more and more like machines instead of human beings; then Congress passes legislation that allows us to tow in our old cars and go further into debt by buying a new one.

Sheer relentless, unadulterated idiocy.   Please be sure to call your Congressperson and thank them.  

It’s like the former Soviet Union all over again but right here at home, only better now, because it’s all American; new and improved, stagnant and comatose with a skim coat of fresh concrete and an ideology that espouses everything we once were, but aren’t anymore; and we still get all teary eyed when the politicians speech about American values and the independent man, who is now an enemy of the state.  

© W. Bruce Wright, Vancouver  B.C.  Canada