The Enemies of Democracy

For several months now, maybe even for over a year, the raging flood of posts on Parsley's Pics have been slowing down to a mere trickle. Sometimes I feel like turning off the faucet altogether but in the end I can't seem to reach the knob that would permanently put an end to even the weakest of drips. There are many reasons for this, the main one being an all consuming anger, "loathing" to be more precise, for the "the enemies of democracy" as described by Terry Bonner in the following text (which begins below the image).

The first part was written right before Ted Cruz's swan song to end all swan songs and the brief second part came immediately after. Bonner is a retired physician turned philosopher.

GOP Propaganda from Now the End Begins
Believe it or not, a Ted Cruz fan posted this on his
Facebook as "proof".

It is not my intention to alienate my friends by harping endlessly on politics. To be honest, at this stage of my life I would much prefer to be discussing geraniums and planning excursions to England. Still, I feel moved to counter some of the unadulterated bollocks I hear spouted off in these threads with atomic regularity, because somehow commonsense decency has taken a hiatus in America.

First, this whole "Defund Obamacare" campaign is absurd. The ACA was NOT cooked up from a blueprint provided by the Kremlin. It is essentially the Bob Dole/Orrin Hatch plan cooked up in 1993 as an alternative to "Hillarycare". The insurance lobbies have gone full bore to defeat Obamacare mainly because it was worth a shot to save the small profit margin which they will lose following its implementation. They will not, however, go broke, as would have been the case if a sane single-payer national health service had been enacted into law, like the ones enjoyed by citizens of Denmark, Sweden, Holland, England, France and Germany.

So don't fret. We will still remain throwbacks to the 19th century among the industrialized nations of the world.

Second, my dad and his union buddies were no screaming Reds. He was a Korean veteran and a machinist who loved his country and believed in the American Dream. However, he would have gone ballistic over the prospect of denying healthcare to thirty million of his fellow citizens. I daresay that most of your fathers would have felt the same. These were children of the Depression who understood what the New Deal was all about. It was not socialism, but fairness and cooperation, which created the great American middle class.

Somewhere along the line, we forgot the lessons of our fathers.

Finally, if you don't think demagogues like Ted Cruz and Sarah Palin are the enemies of democracy, then we all might as well give up right now and learn the words to Die Fahne hoch. These people are shills for some deep-pocketed oligarchs who hate democracy and see our republic as a government of the corporations, by the corporations, for the corporations. The Tea Party politicians are not even transparent about their reliance on Koch brothers monies. Yet collectively we choose to overlook this glaring reality.

We should be very afraid.

So that concludes my politicking for the day. I thank my FB family for their indulgence I have long since become estranged from my Tennessee relations, who now speak a different language and understand a whole different set of metaphors. And I really do not believe that the great rift in our society can ever be repaired short of bloodshed. However, I retain hope that we may yet come to our senses and regain our bearings toward a future rooted in fairness, justice and simple values of human decency.

A few days later Mr. Bonner adds:

Apparently I will have to save my last gasp of energy and strength to repeat this mantra purely for the sake of truth, because the brazenness of the lies in our current civil discourse has reached a new level of hypocrisy. Obamacare, which Sen. Cruz compares to appeasement of the Nazis and Speaker Boehner seems willing to sacrifice the Constitution to destroy, WAS A REPUBLICAN PLAN! This isn't rocket science. The plan was developed by Jim Demint's Heritage Foundation in 1993, and it was introduced to the Senate by Bob Dole and Orrin Hatch in that same year. The purpose of the plan was to prevent any national health insurance scheme from having a public option.

Romneycare in Massachusetts was an exact scale model of the Heritage plan.

So there is no logic, no reason and NO TRUTH behind these increasingly tedious objections to the implementation of Obamacare. The Republican opposition is tantamount to publicly disowning your own child.

I've got no use for parents who disown their children, and right now I've got less than no use for Republican obstructionism and the sabotaging of THEIR OWN BLOODY IDEA.

If we Progressives had prevailed, we would have extended Medicare to everyone. In the future, we won't let you forget it!

Note: Parsley's Pics will continue with renewed vigor. We have a war to win.