Let Them Die: When Did We Become Such a Hateful People?

[lunadelcorvo]

This article at DailyKos presents a sobering view of what America has, in art at least, become. The reality of life in the face of spiraling medical costs, insurance costs, unemployment, disenfranchisement of voters, renewed oppression of women and other minorities is a brutal one. That so much validity is given to the notion that assistance to those who need it is somehow evil, and that the notion that the government should exist to take care of all its people is considered corrupt and craven makes of us, all of us, a cold and brutal nation. The most obvious recent example is Ron Paul's dodge of the question of whether an individual without insurance who falls ill should be allowed to die.

To his credit, Paul did not say a sick person should be left to die, if they showed up at the hospital unable to pay. That was left to the audience. I am sure the audience, too, had seen the same jars on the same countertops time and time again, but on them it made no impact. I am sure a good portion of them attended church on Sunday, and perhaps heard a plea for a sick member of the congregation that had stopped attending church suddenly, and there may have been talk about transplants or rehabilitation or family, and perhaps they gave $10 and felt a sense of satisfaction in it, and a clean conscience.

We are not socialists, here in America. We are not like all the first world countries in Europe or Asia that believe caring for citizens in need is the duty of a government and its people, and not just a whim to be met sporadically according to our moods. We are religious, and our religion dictates that we will help only who we want, when we want, and the others can either die or be reduced to lifelong poverty. That will still grand us a clean conscience, it seems: We can show up for church on Sunday, then go to a political debate during the week and shout for the poor and the sick die already, rather than pay a penny to save them.

That is what I find so cold in Ron Paul, and in the other freedom-lovers that share the stage with him, and especially in those members of America that they so feverishly wish to cater to. They can see that their solution does not work: The evidence is in every town, every day, but it still does not matter to them. They will poke their fingers out at you, and lecture on how churches or friends or neighbors will take care of it all; if you note that churches and friends and neighbors have never, ever been able to take care of it all, they will scoff, and mutter something about freedom; if you press them on what freedom means in such a context you will, eventually, come back around to the darkest response, which is let them die.

It is cold, and dark, and miserable, and mean, and tribal, and cruel.

It never ceases to amaze me, the emotions that we will wrap up in a flag and call patriotic if it suits us. A large swath of America is made up of very cruel people, people who value their own self-indulgence over the welfare of their neighbors, and they seem uniformly to be the most pompous in their exhortations of both patriotism and godliness. They are here to defend the nation from monsters who would parcel out a modicum of support to all citizens, and not just ones they personally know of or approve of: If they help their fellow man, they want to see the person grovel for it a bit, and helping an anonymous soul is deemed not just a pointless exercise but an insult to their very freedom.

Let them die does not make a very good slogan for a bumper sticker, and so even true believers tend to shade it a bit. But even in the boldest, cruelest state, it will be applauded.

More disturbing than Paul's dodge, however, was the affirmative roar of the crowd. It was disturbing enough when the mob cheered Perry's nonchalance when asked about the number of executions in his state, and his cavalier denial of any concern over the innocence of any of those executed. Similar tirades seem to draw the same bloodthirsty furor out of audiences no matter the topic. Muslims, gays, liberals, atheists, socialists, people of color, even those 'horrid, lazy, dissolute unemployed' seem to be equally subject to the condemnation of the mob.

"Christian leaders" blaze the trails of hate and oppression. Pat Robertson advises a man to divorce his wife with Alzheimer's, because she is "all intents and purposes, already dead." Oklahoma legislator, Sally Kern, a known religious right affiliate, calls gays worse than terrorists. Massachusetts State Rep. Ryan Fattman believes that rape and abuse survivors ought to be afraid to report their assault, assuming they are undocumented. Teens are bullied to the point of depression and suicide, and the Christian right opposes measures to combat such harassment. When women are raped it's their own faults because they go out at night dressed like sluts. Black people breed too much. Kick out the Muslims, kill the gays, let the poor ask for handouts from their church or die. Gabrielle Giffords. Dr. Tillman.

The uniting characteristic of America today is blame, vilification and retribution. America loves to hate, we seem to feed on it these days. Hate drives more passion, more action, more political force than does anything else, save perhaps fear, and really, how far apart are they? How long before the rallies calling for the wrath of God to smote the unrighteous, the protests harassing those who seek reproductive freedom, the vilification of gays - how long before we recognize these as the "Two Minutes Hate" of our time?