Tuesday, October 15, 2013

IN GOD WE TRUST

I have a lot friends who don't like the Affordable Care Act, or Obama care, if  you will.  There are certainly parts of it I don't like, and wish we could get changed.   I have some friends who don't like the government spending more money than it takes in.  I don't like that either.  I've been upset about that since the days of Reagan, when we kept spending money for defense without taxing for it, and I was upset during the time of President Bush for having two wars that we haven't paid for yet.
   The Republicans think it is okay to go into debt to pay for war.   Democrats think it is okay to go into debt to pay for social welfare programs.  It seems nobody thinks it necessary to pay our bills, at least not right away, maybe never.
    I think truth is more important than passion unleashed with imaginative diatribe.  Many of my conservative friends seem to get steamed, in my opinion, about the wrong things.  There are much worse things happening then they seem to post about on FaceBook (such as the closing of monuments,etc), but they seem to be caught up by demagogues and parrot often inaccurate, ad hominem nonsense. Unfortunately this leaves them without a lot of credibility.  I do think many folks interested in politics really want positive change, they want our nation on a solid financial footing, they want honesty in our accounting.  I respect that.  I don't think  that everyone who wants the government to make financial sense is a racist, which is what I hear conservatives say has been an accusation against them.
    Neither do I think that people who wish sick people from any economic category to be treated, without having to declare bankruptcy or to be left out of real and adequate health care, are Marxists.  To acknowledge that there is something terribly wrong with the way we distribute and provide access to health care in this country is not a declaration of wanting to steal freedom from other Americans.    Accusations that government supervised health distribution would lead to rationing have evidently missed the rationing that already exists, due to many working people being unable to afford it.  Declarations that "America has the best health care in the world" seem ignorant of both published health statistics and the reality that health care that is best but unobtainable by the working class of this country might as well not exist.
    I am glad I am a Christian, so that I can still trust in God when I despair for my country.   The anger of conservatives about the financial mismanagement of the government seems to have given them the idea that they are justified in being tyrants, which is the way they come across since they are a minority in the government, not having won the Senate or the Presidency, and seem to assume that blackmail to achieve their purposes is not an idea that can work both ways and come back to hurt all of us.
   I am sympathetic to the idea that we should dismiss all the politicians and start over.  I am sorry that those legitimate and important ideas that conservatives should bring to the table are now in danger of being crushed by their own intransigence.  This administration has failed the country in not listening to concerns of the conservative portion of the electorate.  We are rightly angry at the dismissal of our religious objections to an imposed tax upon us to further a liberal view of women's reproductive rights, let alone the rush to homosexual marriage and the danger of crushing our freedoms of speech or choice to stand up against it.  Some of these things we can take into a negotiation of the budget and health care, but it is disgusting to see such concerns advanced by the completely irresponsible use of government shut down and a refusal to take the debt ceiling seriously.  Any conservative Republican who causally fluffs off a government shut down as inconsequential doesn't deserve to be governing in my opinion.  They are prisoners to their anti-Obama prejudice and have been so impressed by the hatred they have built up in their own constituencies that I don't know if they can even see an exit or hallway to compromise and constructive change.
  I was appalled at the triumphalism I have seen among my conservative friends in thinking they have brought the government to a halt.  It is such a negative triumphalism as it comes across as breaking the order by which our system of government works.  I have read of marriages where there was so much animosity that one or the other would go so far as to burn their house down and murder the children, and feel justified the whole time.  We live in hope that our leaders will come to their senses in time to avert disaster but, knowing human beings, I am glad our forefathers made the national motto, In God We Trust, of course, who else?