Do they have group showers for high school girls in Kenya?
One of the most difficult leaps of faith is the belief that God has a plan for our lives. What kind of plan includes mosquitoes? Or black flies for that matter. And for heaven sakes what kind of plan includes so many right-wing nut jobs.
When I was in junior high school, I got on some right-wing mailing list. I started getting mail suggesting group showers for girls in public school was a communist plot. I admit it was fun to speculate on just what these girls would experience in the presence of their nude sisters which would turn them away from capitalism. Why couldn’t Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” survive the exposed female form?
However, these right wing nut jobs didn’t confine their raving to proper female hygiene. They also sent me many letters pointing out that President Eisenhower was a communist. I knew a bit about Ike because I read a lot about the Second World War. These mailings made me wonder how our country would produce people so politically unbalanced that they would believe Eisenhower was a friend of the Soviet Union. Here was a guy raised in Kansas, educated at West Point, who led the armies which liberated Europe. How could any person be so nutty and/or irresponsible as to suggest Ike was an enemy of our country?
When you’re young and first exposed to this sort of wackiness, you can take hope in the belief that the world will evolve. But alas, it is 2009 and the mosquitos and the right-wing nut jobs are still with us. Giving voice to ideas just as goofy as Ike being a commie.
First we have the birthers. These people believe that after President Obama’s black African father and white Kansas-born mother met in Hawaii, they flew to Africa for Barak to be born. Meanwhile, putting a false birth notice in the Honolulu paper. How did these poor college kids find the money for the trip? Why did the dad who had done everything to get out of Africa to get an education in the US, risk all that by returning to Africa before he got his degree? Why did Mrs. Obama travel from a place with great medical facilities to a place with none in order to have her first baby? If proving that baby Barak was born in America was important to the young couple then why didn’t they just stay in Hawaii to have the baby?
Then we have Sarah Palin and the death panels. Sarah says if the government plays a greater role as health insurer it will save money by denying care to those who need it. Obama wants to kill her baby! If this is so then why isn’t the government doing it now with veterans and old people? In the US, veterans get their care like all people in England, the government is the insurer and the provider. Many veterans are very smashed up by their combat experience both mentally and physically. Many cost a lot to keep alive with very little prospect that they will ever be big tax payers, but we spend billions on their care. Folks over 65 in the US have a single payer health care system just like all people in Canada. Health care for old people costs much more than for younger people and yet we’re not using medicare to put them to their death. What kind of nut job could imagine any politician making this sort of decision when they don’t even have the steel in their spine to push back the Social Security retirement age to make the system more solvent? People who truly believe that rationing health care services is the way to go understand only a free market without government interference would ever have the steel to unplug grandma.
When my 87 year-old grandfather had a heart attack, in the 1950's before Medicare, the doctor came to the house. He confirmed that Grandpa had a serious attack, prescribed medicine, and told my mom that in a week grandpa would be better or dead. The doctor knew my family didn’t have money to put grandpa in the hospital. He was an old man who had started to fail mentally. The lack of money and a cost benefit analysis denied my Grandfather the best medical care. It was Medicare which ended this rationing of health care services to the elderly just as universal coverage will do for younger people.
There is no denying that my childhood hope that we would evolve beyond the right-wing nut jobs was an unrealistic fantasy of youth. In fact, it has gotten worse. In the 50's and early 60's the business about Ike and group showers didn’t make it onto television. The broadcasters were too responsible to repeat claims which were refuted by every available fact. Today we get it every day, on cable news, network news and local news, when they “cover” the town hall meetings. They don’t go with their cameras to help us understand the health care debate, they go to cover the right-wing nut jobs and their fact denying claims because Sarah Palin and her ilk are the closest thing to a car wreck or three-alarm fire on the political beat.
The other day a much loved relative came to our home with a friend. When the friend was out of earshot, we were warned not to mention politics because the woman was a birther. Remaining quite was hard for me because I thought the lady might be able to provide some insight on what that group shower thing was all about, but I stayed my tongue and restricted my conversation to blueberries and the weather. After this well-spoken visitor left, I worried over this, trying to make some sense out of seemingly sane people buying such nonsense. Here is the best I could do.
If you sent 15 men out to mow a field, each with a mowing machine pulled by a horse, after an hour here’s what you might see. 12 or 13 mowers moving in an ordered fashion cutting the hay in their section of the field, and 2 or 3 rigs rushing around in circles, the latter horses and drivers driven crazy by mad bees whose nests were disturbed by the mowing.
The bees seem to come from all directions and the standard response is to run about wildly while flailing your arms at anything that moves. It’s sort of like these tea bag rallies except with the bees nobody is irresponsible enough to stand on the sideline and saying, “President’s Eisenhower and Obama are responsible for the stings you are experiencing.” I guess not even Rushbo can be everywhere.
When I was in junior high school, I got on some right-wing mailing list. I started getting mail suggesting group showers for girls in public school was a communist plot. I admit it was fun to speculate on just what these girls would experience in the presence of their nude sisters which would turn them away from capitalism. Why couldn’t Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” survive the exposed female form?
However, these right wing nut jobs didn’t confine their raving to proper female hygiene. They also sent me many letters pointing out that President Eisenhower was a communist. I knew a bit about Ike because I read a lot about the Second World War. These mailings made me wonder how our country would produce people so politically unbalanced that they would believe Eisenhower was a friend of the Soviet Union. Here was a guy raised in Kansas, educated at West Point, who led the armies which liberated Europe. How could any person be so nutty and/or irresponsible as to suggest Ike was an enemy of our country?
When you’re young and first exposed to this sort of wackiness, you can take hope in the belief that the world will evolve. But alas, it is 2009 and the mosquitos and the right-wing nut jobs are still with us. Giving voice to ideas just as goofy as Ike being a commie.
First we have the birthers. These people believe that after President Obama’s black African father and white Kansas-born mother met in Hawaii, they flew to Africa for Barak to be born. Meanwhile, putting a false birth notice in the Honolulu paper. How did these poor college kids find the money for the trip? Why did the dad who had done everything to get out of Africa to get an education in the US, risk all that by returning to Africa before he got his degree? Why did Mrs. Obama travel from a place with great medical facilities to a place with none in order to have her first baby? If proving that baby Barak was born in America was important to the young couple then why didn’t they just stay in Hawaii to have the baby?
Then we have Sarah Palin and the death panels. Sarah says if the government plays a greater role as health insurer it will save money by denying care to those who need it. Obama wants to kill her baby! If this is so then why isn’t the government doing it now with veterans and old people? In the US, veterans get their care like all people in England, the government is the insurer and the provider. Many veterans are very smashed up by their combat experience both mentally and physically. Many cost a lot to keep alive with very little prospect that they will ever be big tax payers, but we spend billions on their care. Folks over 65 in the US have a single payer health care system just like all people in Canada. Health care for old people costs much more than for younger people and yet we’re not using medicare to put them to their death. What kind of nut job could imagine any politician making this sort of decision when they don’t even have the steel in their spine to push back the Social Security retirement age to make the system more solvent? People who truly believe that rationing health care services is the way to go understand only a free market without government interference would ever have the steel to unplug grandma.
When my 87 year-old grandfather had a heart attack, in the 1950's before Medicare, the doctor came to the house. He confirmed that Grandpa had a serious attack, prescribed medicine, and told my mom that in a week grandpa would be better or dead. The doctor knew my family didn’t have money to put grandpa in the hospital. He was an old man who had started to fail mentally. The lack of money and a cost benefit analysis denied my Grandfather the best medical care. It was Medicare which ended this rationing of health care services to the elderly just as universal coverage will do for younger people.
There is no denying that my childhood hope that we would evolve beyond the right-wing nut jobs was an unrealistic fantasy of youth. In fact, it has gotten worse. In the 50's and early 60's the business about Ike and group showers didn’t make it onto television. The broadcasters were too responsible to repeat claims which were refuted by every available fact. Today we get it every day, on cable news, network news and local news, when they “cover” the town hall meetings. They don’t go with their cameras to help us understand the health care debate, they go to cover the right-wing nut jobs and their fact denying claims because Sarah Palin and her ilk are the closest thing to a car wreck or three-alarm fire on the political beat.
The other day a much loved relative came to our home with a friend. When the friend was out of earshot, we were warned not to mention politics because the woman was a birther. Remaining quite was hard for me because I thought the lady might be able to provide some insight on what that group shower thing was all about, but I stayed my tongue and restricted my conversation to blueberries and the weather. After this well-spoken visitor left, I worried over this, trying to make some sense out of seemingly sane people buying such nonsense. Here is the best I could do.
If you sent 15 men out to mow a field, each with a mowing machine pulled by a horse, after an hour here’s what you might see. 12 or 13 mowers moving in an ordered fashion cutting the hay in their section of the field, and 2 or 3 rigs rushing around in circles, the latter horses and drivers driven crazy by mad bees whose nests were disturbed by the mowing.
The bees seem to come from all directions and the standard response is to run about wildly while flailing your arms at anything that moves. It’s sort of like these tea bag rallies except with the bees nobody is irresponsible enough to stand on the sideline and saying, “President’s Eisenhower and Obama are responsible for the stings you are experiencing.” I guess not even Rushbo can be everywhere.