I don't where to begin. Everything is so fucked up, I guess it doesn't matter. Like fishing during a willowfly hatch, I'll cast a line in any direction and catch something.
No matter what, any discussion of politics or government never has any substance or deals with policy. Discussions are always contextualized by meaningless abstractions: big or small government, left-wing, right-wing. Why are people angry about health care reform? It's big government! How does a person not getting medical attention make someone else's life better? What is accomplished by denying people access to health care? Americans' attitudes toward health care reform are selfish and puerile and quintessentially conservative: They do not want for others what they want for themselves.
In today's NY Times and the local C-J, the focus is on the mounting tea party movement and its congregation of angry people. Isn't that great? The dominant emotion is anger, and that is the force driving the country and undoubtedly the upcoming November elections. The anger dervies from the miserable, never-improving economy, which collapsed during the end of the eight-year sadist-fest of Bush-Christ and Cheney. The collapse happened because of mean-spirited economic policies that rig families to fail by deliberately making sure the wealth is always distributed upward. Don't like big government? What the fuck do you think war is? Who fights wars? Shoe companies? Banks? No, the government does--it's a branch of the government called the military. Bet you've heard of it. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are incredibly expensive, so if you don't mind paying for those wars, you have no grounds to bitch about anything "big" government might want to pay for, like someone getting a life-saving operation, or an education. The economic collapse of 2008 also was the consequence of over a quarter-century of economic policy of raising deficits, privatizing social services, skyrocketing prison populations and the war on drugs, a war in the middle east that's really been going on since 1991 on several fronts, and an obsession with destroying any kind of service that actually helps make people's lives better--which is not "big" government but merely decent, civilized human behavior.
Bank bailouts and stimulus spending that obviously aren't helping people who've been out of work for twenty months piss me off too. But if I'm going to get upset about something this important, I'm also going to invest the time and energy to make as accurate as possible a determination of why things have gone wrong. First of all, health care reform, which passed just weeks ago, has come AFTER all of these problems, so obviously it isn't the CAUSE, and it's TOO EARLY to declare more people having health care equals the end of the world. In fact, if times are tough economically, one would think affordable, if not free, health care would be a welcome relief from barely bearable financial duress.
It's pathetic beyond words for a mass of people in this country to be angry at the way things are going and yet still endorse and not protest the most expensive, wasteful, and costly things the government insists on perpetuating: THE WARS. If you're upset at what's going on, you can't ignore the "biggest" policy of your "big" government: keep fighting wars, spending tons of money, and killing those civilians (remember no civilians are being killed at this exact instant, so that means the wars are getting better). Most Americans are STILL convinced that progress is being made in Iraq and Afghanistan even though these wars have been going on for nearly twenty years and show no signs of reaching a successful conclusion. In fact, they've gone on so long, at this point I have no idea how they could be a success.
The tea party epitomizes the mindless anger of alienation that in the end promises to do nothing but perpetuate the very policies that have created the conditions that are making everyone angry. Vote in another squadron of Republicans in November and you'll get more of the same policies and objectives that have led to the current state of misery. Protest against everything but the wars and you'll get more war--which is what mindlessly angry people want. As long as people are getting killed, this apparently makes the Christian right feel better about themselves.
What's all this got to do with taxes? The fact that many honest, regular, hard-working Americans are frantically trying to get their taxes filed right now while rich people don't pay taxes at all is yet another consequence of policies that have been around since the late 70s. Most people are not, cannot be, and will not become rich. How miserable do people have to become when they don't want their brothers and sisters to have health care but will stand up in righteous indignation because rich people who live in another universe might have to pay more taxes? How can you be angry at Obama for high taxes when he recently lowered the tax rate for "most Americans?" Yet only 2% of tea baggers are aware of this basic fact. How's that for hard-working? But who cares--just get angry at everything and everyone but the rich and their government whores who will gladly ride your anger to Washington and proceed to shove the same miserable shit down your throats for the foreseeable future. Make sure that the conditions that make you angry never change, and take solice that someone else has it even worse than you do. Tax day may only come once a year--at least for those of us who pay taxes--but Ogrefest is a year-round event. And remember, if things get bad enough, you can always enlist and go to the oil fields and kill people, some of them civilians and journalists. What better way to show your anger than to kill people . . . and even get paid a little bit for doing it?
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