Monday, May 01, 2017 2:35 PM
If you had never heard of, and then got health-care eight years ago—and it then paid for some health problem in your family—you are not a Republican. If your parents are on Social Security—you are not a Republican. If you are on Medicare and Disability (like me) —you are not a Trump supporter. If you employ non-English-speaking help—you are not a Republican. If you think people are more than employees—you are not a Republican.
If someone just explained to you that the Affordable Care Act and Obamacare are the same thing—that one is its correct name and the other is its nickname—then you are not a Republican, or a Trump supporter. You may say, “O, yes I am—don’t tell me I’m not.” Let me explain—you may root for that team—that may be your favorite brand—but you don’t support their policies.
No one supports them—no one supports playing nuclear ‘chicken’ with Kim Jong Un—no one supports trashing the environment—no one supports naked bigotry and elitism. They run a great ‘show’—they tap-dance like a mothafukka and they all have a B.S. in BS—but there’s nothing there, behind the scenes, except maybe cynical gloating and paranoia.
There is a struggle going on—in simplest terms I’d call it good vs. evil—but that is too simple—and oversimplification is one of the tools of the forces of evil. By calling one side ‘evil’, we reveal a lack of nuance—better to present a situation, an illustration—and allow others to come up with their own judgements.
For every example I can think of, I usually can describe its good side—and then go on to describe its evil. Even then, while I’m thinking it is good to be open the interwoven nature of good and evil—to see the nuanced, detailed panorama of a certain choice or issue—I’m also thinking that firehose of perspectives can be just as useful in confabulated obfuscation.
It is sad that the grand elegance of the human mind’s mathematical discoveries (or is it ‘inventions’?) is the same mental skill used in contrivance and fraud. Some industries combine the two—marketing, for instance, is the deep-drilling, sociological science of separating people from their money. Likewise, banking and finance—industries that have decided to specialize in business banking—and leave the personal business to the worst of their ilk.
If I sound bitter or critical, it’s not my fault—to be honest about business and politics and such, without sounding so, isn’t possible. It’s pretty common, too—I hear others talk this way all the time—regular-type folks—and the only ones I ever hear push back are hired guns—PR hacks, campaigners, spokespersons (O—and the occasional homunculus sitting outside her trailer).
