Racism by Any Other Name Smells Like a Rancid Tea Bag

Every civilized country in
the world, every civil country in the world, every post-medieval country in the world provides universal health care for its citizens, and we are on the verge of almost doing that, ourselves, at long last. A reactionary half of Congress is doing its best to stop it. They could not stop the enactment of the bill itself, so they are demanding that no funds be provided for health care, or for anything else if health care is not starved to oblivion! They threaten to shut down the government, and to refuse to pay the bills they already have authorized (the Debt Ceiling), thereby destroying the credit rating of the nation. If we knew nothing else about the Tea Party Crusaders, we would know enough to scorn them.

It is only partly about almost-universal health care. The opponents of the bill refuse to call it by its legal name, but have labeled it, "Obamacare". The opposition is mostly about that Black man in the White House.
It is about immigrants. It is about women. It is about the poor. It is about young people.

It is a willingness to bring the whole government to its knees if they do not get their way. It is the awful face of leftover racism, and it is ugly. It is a willingness to mutilate oneself--one's own best interests--in order to hurt the people they scorn, beginning with that guy from Hawaii whom they insist was born in Kenya. No one with an ounce of brains could believe that claptrap if he or she were not blinded by awful racial scorn.

"Birthers" is just a devious name for racial animosity.

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