Health care

[chilperic]

According to Johann Hari in today's Independent:

The right-wing magazine US Investors' Daily claimed that if Stephen Hawking had been British, he would have been allowed to die at birth by its "socialist" healthcare system. Hawking responded with a polite cough that he is British, and "I wouldn't be here without the NHS".That's only one of the

Comments

[a_d_medievalist]

Old news! Seriously, though -- if you lived here, you'd be pretty much past despair and in total disbelief. It's not the natural order of things, but at this point, what other feeling is there (ok, there's anger, but again, I at least have got to the numb stage.)...

[the_gardener]

As a_d_medievalist implies, you're slightly behind the curve here. (You have been at a Worldcon; you have been in a civilised country; you have not been exposed to the shrieking of idiots who get their information from Fox "News".)

For me, the most interesting quote from Hari's article is further down from the passage you quote. It's this:

How do they train themselves to be so impervious to reality? It begins, I suspect, with religion. They are taught from a young age that it is good to have "faith" - which is, by definition, a belief without any evidence to back it up. You don't have "faith" that Australia exists, or that fire burns: you have evidence. You only need "faith" to believe the untrue or unprovable. Indeed, they are taught that faith is the highest aspiration and most noble cause. Is it any surprise this then percolates into their political views? Faith-based thinking spreads and contaminates the rational.

His conclusion, however, is out of line with rest of his article:

However strange it seems, the Republican Party really is