Quote:
Originally Posted by kg_veteran
If the point was to: a) lower costs of health care and b) help people who have trouble affording health care, it could have been done much more modestly. Let's not pretend this is about that. This is about expanding the power of the federal government. Period.
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I just finished reading
The Trouble with Tom: The Strange Afterlife and Times of Thomas Paine. He was a truly remarkable man and, because of his views on government and religion, this Founding Father was completely wiped from our historical narrative.
He had a keen sense of what we were/are up against in the State and those who control it. This quote really blew me away:
Quote:
"Society in every state is a blessing, but government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer."
Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776
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Perhaps the reason the institution of government is so blatantly screwing its constituents lies in the lack of integrity and accountability of said constituents. An upright and moral human is not served by government save his own self-governance. While "conservatives" sat idly by for eight years of genocide in the Middle East, "liberals" cried out for war crimes tribunals. The two sides engaged in banter, waiting for their chance to be represented by their team... and those liberals got their wish. We are still killing people in the Middle East, the exact same plans laid out by NGOs and think tanks for a tightly-controlled fascist utopia decades ago are still unfolding... hell, it's almost like politics is a huge crock of horsesh!t designed to distract people from the fact that government was never designed to benefit them in any way, whatsoever.
It seems that one of the most important functions of politics is the destruction of language. "Liberals" have been decrying the re-branding of torture as "rendition" and illegal war as "spreading democracy" for years. But the PR machine that gave us those gems is still in evidence today. And members of one side of the coin feel all warm and snuggly in their willful ignorance, while members of the other side scream for more adequate representation. They want their side lying to them. A symbol of a jackass or an elephant seems to determine whether they will throw roses or rotten tomatoes at the actors in the play. I have always been more interested in the director and the writer. It would appear that the mutation of the State is proceeding independently from the bread and circuses of the political spectacle. Yet some still cling to big daddy for protection. They will vote. They will gloat. They will lie to themselves. And they will suffer dearly for it. Welcome to the present. Baby, meet bath water.