Healthcare and Hitler

So I've decided... and this decision has been very pressing and has eaten at my inner soul, that the Republicans and some of their followers are sore losers. When I say this, I don't mean ALL Republicans, because I know people who are registered Republicans and they are decent people, they just have a different political view than myself, which is fine - and I don't want to vilify anyone for their personal beliefs. I do, however, want to express my grievance with select individuals who call themselves Republicans and then go out and do horrendous and atrocious things - and no I'm not talking about Michael Vick.

You see, the United States, or as they say in French, L'etats Unis - we need a better healthcare system, it's very straightforward - the one we have doesn't work, it hasn't worked in quite some time, and it needs to be overhauled. President Clinton asked his wife to fix it back in 1994, and the response to her idea was similar to her response to the poor student in the Congo whose question got misenterpreted. She got dissed, she was not well-liked, except there was nothing lost in translation in 1994 - the plan just didn't happen.

So we fast-forward to 2009, and yay we have a new President, and yay he's African-American, and yay his policies are socialist and similar to those of one A.Hitler of German fame...wait, what? Yeah, it doesn't make sense to me either. I guess, what happened, in a weird sort of way is, some people are just so upset that A) we have a Democrat in the White House B) he's black and C) he's smart so they can't relate to him, that they have to throw a summer long hissy fit about anything he does. His health care plan, and I am not going to explain it here, but if you want a really good, sensical explanation of it, check out Whitehouse.gov (I hope that's not a porn site), has been knocked down by conservatives, which is fair. What isn't fair, and I guess we owe this to Sarah Palin, because she's so stupid and pretty that no one knows what to do with her (I'm guessing they keep her around, hoping she might cheat on her husband with one of them), but I digress. What isn't fair, as I said - is this Hitler comparison. I understand that people may not like his health care policies - but as it turns out, most people don't like it because it has the word 'Obama' in it. Most of those people, when given an explanation of the policies, don't think it's so bad - and then its embarrassing because they have to turn around and go home and try to catch a cab with a swastika poster while wearing an SS uniform, it ain't easy, folks.

So as I was saying, the very fact that Sarah Palin had the gaul to invoked the phrase 'Death Panels' into our verbal lexicon to give her supporters something to chew on is appaling and shameful. The fact that there are individuals who show up to town meetings, which were intended to be a forum for public discourse and debate, with nazi images and make comparisons to the Third Reich, is beyond the realms of human stupidity and indolence. It's upsetting, but it's more amusing to me that people who are older than 5 years old think this type of behavior is accceptable in a democratic society. The reasoning seems to be ' I don't agree with you, so I'm throwing out the Nazi bomb and then running to my rat hole,' it just doesn't make sense.

In closing, I recall during the Bush years, administration officials were very selective about whom they let into town hall meetings and public rallies, i.e. no anti-Bush supporters. People decried this as undemocratic and unfair. In retrospect, it may not have been such a bad idea.

:-)