*kah-PWOOF*

[lunadelcorvo]

That was the sound of my head exploding. "Hitler gave good speeches, too?!?" Obama with a Hitler 'stache!?!? WTF? Are you fucking serious?!?

This health care nonsense has gotten to insane extremes. As the clip below notes, associating our president and the congress with Hitler and the Nazi regime goes beyond the pale. It is dangerous, as it is a blatant and clarion clear invitation to violence, just as the rhetoric connecting abortion providers to nazis provided, to those extreme enough to heed it, a sanction to violence, even murder. But it is also a travesty to the memory of those who truly were the victims of the Nazis, both civilian and military.

Rachel Maddow: Maddow: 'Nazism is not a metaphor'

(Click HERE if the embed fails.)

Rachel Maddow: 'Time to bring facts to the health care debate'

(Click HERE if the embed fails.)

I spent nearly an hour on the phone with a relative who called to 'warn' me of the 'true' content of the health care reform plan. She believes the euthanasia scare. She believes that senior citizens will be forced to die. WTF? How insane has this country gone when this kind of outrageous crap is bought, wholesale, swallowed hook, line and sinker? When lunatic fringe elements and panicked big business put out ideas that don't even *sound* reasonable, and people believe them? When they rise up in the thousands to fight against the phantoms of the paranoid?

HAS THIS ENTIRE FUCKING NATION LOST THE ABILITY TO THINK??????????

Comments

[belleweather.livejournal.com]

Am I a bad person for thinking that I don't really care whether exceedingly old people can have their lives prolonged for months at high cost to society if it means that parents don't have to worry about the cost of antibiotics and doctor's visits for their small children and that kids don't die of strep throat? Probably. But it's true none the less.

[raven-moon.livejournal.com]

To a degree, I am with you - I am a firm believer in DNRs, living wills, and the right to die. However, I don't think I'd want to see that as a standard being enforced, and I think it's ludicrous that people actually believe that is what health care reform is saying!

[belleweather.livejournal.com]

Well... yes. But. A part of reform is (and SHOULD BE) that the public fisc isn't going to pay for treatments of minimal value -- that would be those where the evidence shows that they don't work, and perhaps those that are proven to give minimal value for a very high cost. And frankly, I think that is as it should be. But there's a difference in saying "We aren't going to pay for that $600,000 treatment that may extend your life 6 weeks" and "We aren't going to allow you to have that treatment at all, no matter what."

I don't know. I am SO VERY angry and frustrated with health care reform that I don't even think I can talk about it rationally anymore. Some of it is that health care is my job so I can't get away from it. But most of it is that I've been waiting for this chance politically my entire life and everyone involved seems hell bent on fucking it up as much as possible and I may well loose my cotton pickin' mind watching them do it.

[raven-moon.livejournal.com]

I know - this is some of the most insane, extreme, and disturbingly neurotic behavior I have seen in the political arena, and that's saying something in the wake of Palin and the 08 election!

[sorshawolf.livejournal.com]

Well, after good ol' boy Dubya told everyone we were going to war cause of the nonexistent WMDs, nothing surprises me what the masses will believe.

There are still some, however, that know how to think for themselves, but this country has been under a wave of paranoia for more than twenty years. I don't see this stopping anytime in the near future, why? Because it works on the masses.

A population that is scared of it's own shadow is an easily controlled population.

[raven-moon.livejournal.com]

Oh, I agree totally! Ever see a film called Shock Doctrine? It's basically the idea that there is always a manufactured fear, and when one fades, a new one is created. The war on drugs, the AIDs scare (not to downplay the real impact, but the panic aspect that raged in the 80s), the Terror threat, hell, even Swine Flu was plugged in to fill the gap between larger issues....

I have always thought that was a large part of the success of Christianity; that it could do the same thing - inspire a deep fear, AND provide the remedy for it. Perhaps that's why so much of the fear-mongering seems to go hand in hand with the religious right....

...then again, we have always been at war with Eurasia.... ;)

[lucretiasheart.livejournal.com]

"HAS THIS ENTIRE FUCKING NATION LOST THE ABILITY TO THINK??????????"

Of course. Just as the dominionists wished. The people they rally to their cause are indoctrinated into working against their own best interests-- and how that must amuse their masters...

[raven-moon.livejournal.com]

Well, when people ask me why I dislike religion in general, the tendency to discourage critical thinking in favor of blind acceptance pretty much always tops the list. It's funny how even the greatest Christian thinkers, like Aquinas, Abelard, or Luther wouldn't be tolerated in today's Theo-Con atmosphere.....

[lucretiasheart.livejournal.com]

No kidding!

[primitivepeople.livejournal.com]

HAS THIS ENTIRE FUCKING NATION LOST THE ABILITY TO THINK??????????

It happened to much of the world a long time ago.

[raven-moon.livejournal.com]

Wasn't there this whole 'enlightenment' thing, that was supposed to have helped with that? Then again, that will probably get written out of the history books, too, right along with George Washington and Hugo Chavez, as not being appropriate for children....

(http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/07/23-2)

*headdesk*

[primitivepeople.livejournal.com]

Oh...dear.

[samuraiartguy.livejournal.com]

Here's how the LIES work in rhetoric powered anti-propaganda—

SAY ANYTHING. It can be distortions, half-truths, slander, personal attacks, unsubstantiated rumors, complete fabrications. Don't even bother to document any of it. Just GET IT OUT INTO THE MEDIASPHERE. Once loose, and the scarier the better, enough gullible, skitttish or extiable people will buy into it and REPEAT IT, doing no fact checking or homework, and the stupid becomes part of the debate, and the opposition must expend time energy and resources combating the cloud of BULLSHIT.

[raven-moon.livejournal.com]

Wait, wait.... outrageous stories, fabrications, claims without proof or documentation, believed without question.... hang on that rings a bell.....

Oh, right! Christianity! I knew I'd heard that M.O. somewhere before....

As I commented above, the habit of discouraging thought and inquiry in favor of blind, unquestioning acceptance is my number 1 beef with religion in general, the big 3 in particular, and Christianity most of those....