Discussion for article #233977
It’s always astounded me. Any time you see a Facebook post that expresses a person’s envy for someone LESS fortunate that themselves, you can be assured that the people MORE fortunate have found an easy mark.
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The Obamacare Fight Has Always Been About Race And Gender Anxiety
Well, anyone with an ounce of intelligence figured that out years ago.
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Yes, but this illustrates it so baldly.
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We really haven’t improved all that much as a society over the past fifty or sixty years. We’ve just forced the creepy crawlers into the shadows. It’s like ever since Obama was elected POTUS, all the cockroaches are slithering out of the woodwork in broad daylight. But they’ve been there all along. Gerrymandering has given them a power they hadn’t had as they elevate their ilk to office in the state houses and in the congress. Wait and see what happens if our next POTUS is a woman. We aint seen nothin’ yet.
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I think it depends on what you mean by “about”. For the billionaires and millionaires, I still think it’s about class – the idea that the Little People (you know, the kind who have to pay taxes) should have more security and less abject fear in their lives is contrary to everything the right wing has been trying to preserve since before Roosevelt. But that doesn’t get cranky older white people with stagnated incomes on your side. So for the base, absolutely.
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GOP = Groinally Obsessed Party
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That reminds me of those Lucky Ducky comics, like the one where the rich banker guy gets mad because Lucky Ducky is poor enough to get a free pauper’s grave when he dies.
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Damn Straight. Kitty when the first woman is elected to lead the free world… the PMS and emotion jokes and slams will be unbearable. It will make today’s idiots seem like tame fuzzy bunnies.
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If those “minorities” and that woman are Americans…what difference does it make? Is this guy asking SCOTUS to tailor its ruling along racial lines? I understand his objection the law is based in his resentment of the folks its going to benefit receiving that benefit. And that’s a racial thing but what is the Court to do with the race and gender thing?
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There is also the GOP opposition to providing maternity care as if only women are involved in “making babies”. Of course the absurdity the the “pro-life” party is against providing access to health care for people who don’t “deserve” it is another tell.
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Another way racial resentment has fed into the whole ACA thing is the other side stoking up fear that you won’t be able to “choose your own doctor.” (read: your own white doctor)
Just for the record - I’m a white male and I think the ACA is the best thing that has happened to my country during my adult lifetime.
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Well, yeah. Preaching to the choir her, Amanda.
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“Well, anyone with an ounce of intelligence figured that out years ago.”
I’m embarrassed to say I was well into adulthood before I figured this out.
My wife and I would like to buy Amanda a drink if she’s ever in town.
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Re: The Obamacare Fight Has Always Been About Race And Gender Anxiety[quote=“Ralph_VonHolst, post:3, topic:17595, full:true”]
Well, anyone with an ounce of intelligence figured that out years ago.
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I think I have to disagree here. I believe that race and gender are the standard tools employed by moneyed conservatives to mobilize opposition to government programs.
I believe that the real fight is about preventing yet another government program taking root that enhances the lives of US citizens by addressing an area where private markets have proved unable to provide a basic need to tens of millions of Americans.
Such programs are especially problematic for people who are selling the message that private enterprise is always a better solution than government (with the ever-present asterisk for national defense). With many government services, the argument that private enterprise could do it better for less money at least has plausibility on its side. When the government program has filled in for a clear market failure, however, the argument is easily dismissed.
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There are more women in the United States
Sexism is more insidious than racism
I am afraid that what looks like an advantage (the former) is more than counteracted by the latter.
One of the innumerable side effects of this is that this will leave a lot of people with nowhere to hide. A lot of massively insecure people going, in their minds, from hero to zero. It is easy to speak of minorities in the abstract, especially if daily contact with them is either unequal and/or rare.
In the case of the genders, that would be impossible. There is inequality. There is contact, and it’s not rare.
All the little tricks and dodges will be exposed, for a lot of people. But, hey…The British, the Irish, the Germans, the Indians, the israelis etc. seemed to have pulled it off.
The “American Exceptionals” are next.
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I’ve never understood why anyone would see that premise as plausible at all.
Are there any examples of that actually being true? I mean with facts and stuff, not typical conservative arm waving and wishful thinking that never (that’s NEVER) comes true.
Privatization certainly hasn’t been good for the military. And it’s cost us more.
Does anyone have any real evidence to the contrary?
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For me, the operative words are “level of”, “how it’s done”, “resources behind it”
I grew up in Germany after WWII. It was clear the the old Bundesrepublik Deutschland, created out of the British, U.S. and French zones of occupation, was a smash hit, when compared with the DDR.
But most of the Scandinavian countries have highly mixed economies, with much more governmental direction and a higher rate of required involvement than what we have here. One can check them out w/r/t their situation.
I was never a fan of Tom Clancy. When one of his protagonist fictional characters (a Wall-Streeter) stated that class was not an issue in the U.S., Clancy became an fictional author, not necessarily a Guide to life. But something he said in one of his books did broach the danger of a corporation (subject to stockholders) versus a government (subject to people).
In 2014, the United States has the worst of both worlds. Big government, bought and paid for by the 0.001% (Citizens United was only the icing on the cake: this type of MoneyBall, with 30% voting rates --except for Confederates, of course–essentially is Govt.-for-sale). Big Corporations, with slick admen telling people that down is up, that we have another earth alongside of us, ready for us to hop on.
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What a nerve that women and minorities support health care. Glad that a dumber than dirt, racist white guy made that clear. He may not have noticed because they don’t count but a lot of white guys–mostly Dems from blue states–also supported it. But they aren’t real “guys”. Real guys want their minorities groveling for crumbs and women barefoot and pregnant. What a piece of human garbage.
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RE: “a statute that was written three years ago, not by dead white men but by living white women and minorities.”
It’s rotten that Michael Carvin is trying to belittle legislators by referring to their race-and-gender.
Carvin’s math is also rotten. The ACA passed 5 years ago, not 3 years ago.
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