Hyperbole Man
29 Jun
by myerman
Yesterday, I witnessed a lot of emotions in the wake of the Supreme Court upholding the Affordable Care Act. (For you Canadian and European readers, I know you think we’re all a bunch of fucking lunatics for having our asses in an uproar over such a basic thing as healthcare, but bear with me.)
There was joy, relief, and elation (particularly among those in the populace who have been on the sharp end of the insurance industry stick) and there was disappointment, bafflement, and fear (mostly from those who quibble with the legality of the law, still, even though now all three branches of Constitutional government have passed/upheld the damn thing).
I’m not talking about any of those people. No, there’s another group of folks out there, and there’s no denying that it’s a large group, and man have they overdosed on the crazy pills. I’m talking about the people who are so crazy that they make the guys who want to start a shooting war over healthcare reform seem positively tame. (In case you missed it, there’s grumbling out there that the way to repeal the healthcare law is to get yer gun. In all fairness, that particular GOP fuckwit who said that has since apologized, but maybe attach a filter to your stupid yap next time?)
No, I’m talking about the real crazy people. Those who make grandiloquent over-the-top hyperbolic statements, the kind of breath-taking hyperbole that make normal everyday hyperbolic statements go, “Duuuuuuude.” Like those who claim that healthcare reform is compassion at the end of a gun. YES, we’re all a bunch of roving madmen knocking down your door in the middle of the night, sticking a shotgun in your mouth and shouting, “YOU WILL HAVE HEALTHCARE! AND YOU WILL LIKE IT!”
I’m also talking about an ex-acquaintance on Facebook who compared healthcare reform to the Holocaust. That’s right, providing affordable healthcare to uninsured Americans is just like the wholesale slaughter of the Jews by the Third Reich. That person has been unfriended and blocked, and anyone else with equally cockamamie ideas should come forward now because my unfriend/block muscles are all limbered up.
(If you need more crazy, go here. But be prepared to facepalm. I especially like the bit where Chief Justice John Roberts only voted to uphold ACA because someone kidnapped his family and threatened to kill them unless he voted the way he did. Yeah.)
In a way, I feel bad for these people. I can’t even begin to imagine what their home lives are like. I’m sure the dog shitting on the carpet is like the firebombing of Dresden. Having the DVR not record your favorite show is like ethnic cleansing in Bosnia. The dryer not properly drying the heavy comforter is like Abu Ghirab prison.
This kind of hyperbolic thinking is the end result of listening to right-wing media personalities, and I know, you’re just in thrall to the stupid and can’t change the channel or read a book (other than the Bible). But these rhetorical tropes are way past their expiration date, folks. Hell, it was tiresome back in 2009 when people were running around with Obama as the Joker signs.
(And yes, the image on the left is a picture I took in 2009, at a healthcare rally in Austin TX for crissakes, so don’t try to convince me that these people are running around in the back woods. They live among us.)
I’m sure if I gave enough of a shit, I’d find out that these same people also profess to believing in a flat earth, a return to the Gold Standard, that we faked the moon landings, and that faeries really do cavort in gardens. I don’t know, I don’t care, just stay the fuck away from me, and take a chill pill, okay?
PS. I took this second picture at the same rally. I asked the woman permission to take the photo, and she agreed on one condition: “Okay, but don’t go around telling people I was calling Obama a Nazi.”
So I said, “Well, you’re kinda making a direct comparison there, in writing, to the Third Reich.”
And she said, “No I’m not, I’m saying that government healthcare is about Nazism.”
And there you have it.
The compassion at the end of a gun analogy is in reference to the fact that there is no way to opt out of Obamacare if one so chooses. Anyone who, for whatever reason, who chooses or can’t afford the additional expense of health insurance will be faced with a non-compliance tax. Should they attempt to avoid paying this tax and ignore all correspondence from the IRS demanding that they do so, they risk having an armed officer show up at their door at some point.
Hence, compassion at the end of a gun.
Perhaps you didn’t read the entire article on the link I posted. Here it is again:
http://studentsforliberty.org/blog/when-compassion-comes-at-the-barrel-of-a-gun/
And for anyone wondering, I wasn’t the person who compared healthcare to the holocaust, nor would I have ever even considered doing so. I did post the above link as a response to someone who made a comment that was inferring that I was a heartless bastard because, in their minds, I didn’t want my friends to have unrestricted access to health insurance (not true).
I’m confident we’ll eventually reach a solution that will allow unrestricted access to health insurance for those who want and can afford it without burdening families already living paycheck to paycheck with the additional monthly expense at a time when so many families are struggling to even put food on the table. I want all my friends to have unrestricted access to health insurance, but I also want all my friends to have a choice not to, especially when we’re in the middle of a recession and so many budgets are already stretched thin due to people having to take shitty jobs to keep food on the table.
Austin has had minimal effect from the recession, so many of us tend to blow it off because we don’t see or know people who have been crippled by it, but it’s a big country out there, so those who are celebrating now having access to health insurance need to remember and be grateful for those who didn’t ask for this but will have to pay anyhow so that you can have access.
No, you didn’t make the holocaust reference, as you remain friended/unblocked. I still say that the “compassion at the end of the gun” reference is not helpful. It does not frame this as a reasonable debate. It makes the already disturbed even more suspicious of people trying to do good, and it makes the people who say things like that look like crazy bastards. Either way, not interested in having discourse with someone who uses these rhetorical tropes when having adult conversations.
I agree that when these types of issues are brought out in the media and through the courts it makes it easier to defriend/unfollow the crazy. There are adult discussions and there are hyperbolic crazy extensions of a belief system. Personally, I don’t think that people should be without health insurance of some sort. I also believe that there should be a public option to regulate the market on what insurance companies can charge for monthly premiums. If you think people should be able to not have insurance, I think that’s the same thing as people who smoke a pack a day and gorge on unhealthy food. You are putting your irresponsible choices on the backs of those of us who are paying into the system. If you choose to not be insured, where do you think you are going to go when you get sick (note use of when not if)? ER visits are way higher than office visits. It’s also a lot more cost effective to have adequate preventive care than treat things when they have gone too far. If you feel you can’t afford health insurance are you really going to fork over the $$$ for your yearly checkups? If health insurance was affordable and regulated to stay that way we can not only cut costs but also take care of other humans.
This leads me to the next tier of the discussion. We are talking about human beings here. No matter what choices someone has made in his or her life (even the choice to not have health insurance) I value that life. I want that person to have access to good healthcare at a fair cost. It is a human right, not a priviledge to have good healthcare. It shouldn’t matter if you are rich, poor, self employed, or government employee.
But getting back to the crazy — the ignorance, the hypocritical attitude vs behavior, etc. I’m just glad the SCOTUS has helped unveil all of it clearly for me on the social webs. A culling has been overdue. Bless their hearts. :)
Just to be clear, I don’t want anyone to be without health insurance and I do have health insurance.
I’m just concerned about the ramifications of those who are currently without and living paycheck to paycheck who will now be forced to somehow come up with extra income to pay for insurance or be forced to pay a penalty. There are a lot of people either out of work or underemployed right now. The timing just sucks…for some.
I just wish the solution for providing peace of mind for those who want it didn’t require destroying peace of mind for those already teetering on the edge financially by imposing an additional expense on them for something they didn’t ask for…and there are many in this country in that category regardless of where you or I stand on the issue.
The timing will *always* suck. There will always be people who get caught in the chasm, but there are provisions in the law to help those people get across.
Also, and not for nothing, if the free market was so good at solving problems like this, it would have a long time ago. Just wanted to get that zinger in. :)
I had a friend on facebook who equated having to buy health insurance to going back to slavery! “It’s only a matter of time after this…”
I was flabbergasted because this friend only recently came out of several years of debt due to having to undergo some major operations without health insurance. He held car washes and other fundraisers to make the initial payments and maxed out many credit cards to pay for the rest.
He says if he had to go through that again, he would still not want health insurance. Why? People should rely on the goodwill of the community when something catastrophic happens in life and it will all turn out ok like it did for him. I decided I didn’t have the energy to continue with him after he said that and bowed out of the conversation for the sake of my sanity.
There are provisions in place –safety nets if you will– for the unemployed and the poor. There are options. If there was an option for affordable health insurance for those who don’t meet that low bar, yes, I expect people to pay up. I totally get living pay check to pay check. We have been there. Still cut corners to keep inflated premium health insurance. Now just maybe those premiums won’t be so inflated. Just two months before michael was diagnosed with cancer, we were paying a ridiculous amount for cobra coverage from his time at apple. $2400/month. More than our mortgage. If we had not done that, when he was dx, the insurance company would have claimed (and they tried to anyway) pre-existing condition for his cancer. And they would have been able to get away with it! Now they no longer can do that to traumatized families. If they had done that to us, we would be getting billed >$40k/month for his chemo treatments — not even including the life saving surgeries. This type of crap being unregulated and allowed to run amock at the hand of greedy insurance companies is precisely why this type of legislation is absolutely necessary. And this is only one part if the puzzle. The Affordable Healthcare Act also helps in many other ways that both sides can agree on.
So, yeah, it’s personal to me and I have very strong opinions. I’m still willing to hear the other side without painting a nazi mustache or joker face on anyone.
*steps off soapbox and reaches for a glass of wine*