(no subject)
This is an eye opener.
It's an article by Johann Hari, a British journalist with a somewhat perverse interest in getting up close and personal with the American right. He's written other articles as well, all of them insightful and all of them from the ... well, I guess you'd call them the left. He certainly has no love for the American right, and even after stripping out Hari's rhetoric (he takes a rather unjustified swipe at religion, for example), I can see why.
Everyone's entitled to their opinion, alright? I have never ever refuted that; what goes on in your mind is yours alone, and I have no control over that. Nor should I - the idea of an actual thought police terrifies me (1) - but when your beliefs spill over into real-world actions, I have every right to address what I see as a wrong.
This, right here, is wrong:
"You have to admire the audacity of the right. Here's what's actually happening. The US is the only major industrialized country that does not provide regular healthcare to all its citizens. Instead, they are required to provide for themselves -- and just under 50 million people can't afford the insurance. As a result, 18,000 US citizens die every year needlessly, because they can't access the care they require. That's equivalent to six 9/11s, every year, year on year. Yet the Republicans have accused the Democrats who are trying to stop all this death by extending healthcare of being "killers" - and they have successfully managed to put them on the defensive."
Murder. Plain and simple, that's what they're doing.
This is appalling: supposedly the most forward-thinking nation in the world, directly responsible for modern democracy, indirectly responsible for the civil rights movement (2) (well, it certainly wasn't a government initiative), not to mention modern pop culture and many of the sub cultures that sprung out of it (where would modern music be without the US?), is now home to a political faction that wilfully and cynically manipulates its own population in such a manner that people are dying as a result.
Where the hell did you go wrong, America? And what's it going to take to get you back on track?
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(1) Independent thought equals art, art equals creativity, creativity equals progress. If you let the thought police in to people's heads, independent thought goes away and we simply stop moving.
(2) The Unite States led the way in creating equal rights for women, for blacks, for gays, for non-whites, for bloody well everyone. You can argue semantics if you want - women's suffrage granted in New Zealand first and all that - but the fact is they started it.
It's an article by Johann Hari, a British journalist with a somewhat perverse interest in getting up close and personal with the American right. He's written other articles as well, all of them insightful and all of them from the ... well, I guess you'd call them the left. He certainly has no love for the American right, and even after stripping out Hari's rhetoric (he takes a rather unjustified swipe at religion, for example), I can see why.
Everyone's entitled to their opinion, alright? I have never ever refuted that; what goes on in your mind is yours alone, and I have no control over that. Nor should I - the idea of an actual thought police terrifies me (1) - but when your beliefs spill over into real-world actions, I have every right to address what I see as a wrong.
This, right here, is wrong:
"You have to admire the audacity of the right. Here's what's actually happening. The US is the only major industrialized country that does not provide regular healthcare to all its citizens. Instead, they are required to provide for themselves -- and just under 50 million people can't afford the insurance. As a result, 18,000 US citizens die every year needlessly, because they can't access the care they require. That's equivalent to six 9/11s, every year, year on year. Yet the Republicans have accused the Democrats who are trying to stop all this death by extending healthcare of being "killers" - and they have successfully managed to put them on the defensive."
Murder. Plain and simple, that's what they're doing.
This is appalling: supposedly the most forward-thinking nation in the world, directly responsible for modern democracy, indirectly responsible for the civil rights movement (2) (well, it certainly wasn't a government initiative), not to mention modern pop culture and many of the sub cultures that sprung out of it (where would modern music be without the US?), is now home to a political faction that wilfully and cynically manipulates its own population in such a manner that people are dying as a result.
Where the hell did you go wrong, America? And what's it going to take to get you back on track?
______________________________________________________
(1) Independent thought equals art, art equals creativity, creativity equals progress. If you let the thought police in to people's heads, independent thought goes away and we simply stop moving.
(2) The Unite States led the way in creating equal rights for women, for blacks, for gays, for non-whites, for bloody well everyone. You can argue semantics if you want - women's suffrage granted in New Zealand first and all that - but the fact is they started it.