Self-immolation — American style

27 March 2017

We Americans are self-immolating — but without a purpose

Self-immolation usually means burning oneself to death in a form of courageous protest.

Pertinent to this idea, Chris Hedges recently wrote — with regard to America's kleptocrats stealing the United States from the rest of us:

The Trump kleptocrats are political arsonists. They are carting cans of gasoline into government agencies and Congress to burn down any structure or program that promotes the common good and impedes corporate profit.

We are glued to cable news, which usually sees a huge falling off of viewership after a presidential election.

Ratings for the Trump-as-president reality show, however, are up 50 percent.

This growth is provoked not by a sudden desire to be informed, but by Americans’ wanting to be continually updated on the soap opera that epitomizes the U.S. government.

It is all entertainment all the time. It is the result of a media that long ago gave up journalism to keep us amused.

It keeps us distracted as the kleptocrats transform the country into a banana republic.

In short, manufactured theater has taken Reality's place in American governance.

For example . . .

Cogitate on the underlying meaning of the Trump-Ryan health care fiasco

The Republican Party's attempt to repeal ObamaCare and replace it with something even less likely to reduce medical costs and help people thankfully failed. But for reasons that are cynically laughable.

The Party's wretchedly bad American Health Care Act had to be pulled (from the House of Representatives vote on it) not because it was bad law. But because many Republicans thought the bill was not poverty-punishing enough to dismember the still twitching rabble that comprise the nation's bottom 99 percent.

"Conservatives" reportedly believed that, even though the proposed Act reduced health care insurance coverage, it did not reduce it enough to keep people genuinely "free".

You read that correctly.

Republicans' idea of civic-minded American health care insurance is to pretty much get rid of it.

Unless (of course) the insured are financially able to fork over boatloads of cash to the plutocrats that American politicians so eagerly represent:

The Freedom Caucus, a group of right-wing conservatives in the House, wanted a bill that stripped away more regulations, which they claimed would enable insurers to offer cheaper and more flexible plans.

On the eve of the vote, Ryan agreed to change a clause defining the “essential health benefits” that insurers are required to provide if they sell policies on the Obamacare exchanges—benefits including maternity and mental-health services. But this change would have created two insurmountable problems.

Once insurers were able to craft individual policies without adhering to any list of required benefits, buyers would self-select. Young, healthy people would choose cheap, crappy policies, and older, sicker people would choose more comprehensive policies. Insurers, knowing this, would raise the prices of the good policies.

“Worthless policies would get really cheap, but comprehensive policies would get astronomically expensive,” Mother Jones’s Kevin Drum pointed out. “Virtually no one would be able to afford them.”

In sum

Republicans generally supported trashing (admittedly flawed) ObamaCare with something unworkable and very much worse.

The Party's even more "conservative" branch of human parasites prevented that bit silliness from passing because it was not draconian enough.

Talk about having to thank the people who want to kill you.

What does that say about American culture?

The moral? — With elected pyromaniacs like this in charge of American Government . . .

We are voluntarily committing societal suicide.

Cremating ourselves to no purpose. While being placidly entertained by the same folks who are happily lighting our fat heads on fire.

It does not get any dumber than this.

PeteFree.com

Self-immolation — American style