Elected politicians who associate themselves with conservatism and the Tea Party/Republican Party continue to show that they are determined to condemn sick people to a life of absolute silence, of cruel suffering, and of swift death. And because they are not speaking out, their followers and voters are also condemning sick people to a life of absolute silence, of cruel suffering, and of swift death.
It really is that simple.
This is not politics as usual. On second thought. Unfortunately, it is politics as usual.
This is an emergency.
MILLIONS of people are doing to die if conservatives get their way on this, as revealed by the details of their healthcare bill today. Millions will die very soon. People will write about another “American Holocaust.” No one, even people with outstanding insurance, can afford medical care, especially if they have any kind of condition, disorder, or disease that requires on-going treatments, as everybody knows. No one, even people with employer-provided insurance, can be certain they will still have insurance.
How is this conserving life? How is this “pro life”? How do conservative politicians live with themselves? Why aren’t they “impeached” for violating their oath of office?
And why aren’t there any loud, really loud conservatives–among politicians or voters–calling out the bigotry and hypocrisy? Why hasn’t there been a schism in the Republican party? (The Democratic Party needs a schism, too.)
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. Obamacare has saved my life several times.
Prayers won’t help. Waiting won’t help. Best wishes won’t help. Compromise won’t help. The only thing that will help is actually voting differently, voting against the Imperialist White Supremacist Capitalist Patriarchy, and demanding that people have the opportunity to live and receive the medical care they need.
As it currently stands, sick people (and immigrants and women and People of Color and queer people and people with a combination of such “otherness”) are not protected by the written or unwritten Consitution. They are essentially excluded by what I call the rhetoric of implied exclusion: It is so assumed in our everyday rituals and in our everyday public spaces that only the very privileged have the right to live that it doesn’t need to say who it specifically does or does not apply to.
I wish conservative politicians knew what it felt like to have a heart.
The following phrase from Allen Ginsberg’s poem “America” keeps coming to mind:
America, I’ve given you all and now I’m nothing
Dr. Andrew Joseph Pegoda
(and, as always, John Scalzi has excellent thoughts, too.)
Dr. Andrew Joseph Pegoda 