The video at the end this post is what many on the right apparently consider to be humor. I've really never found right wingers funny. Their attempts at humor are usually cruel and hurtful to the weak, which is never really funny.
Apparently, to them, Hitler and the Nazis are a great source of humor. Must be the 20 million people they killed, and the tens of millions of others they drove from their homelands or something. I'm sorry, but as someone who has interviewed several of these people, and who has held the hand of a Nazi-tattooed lady who survived that tragedy as she sat in her mosest kitchen in the Fairfax Districy of Los Angeles, and told me what happened to her and her family when she was a young girl, I simply cannot find shit like this even a little bit humorous. What makes this more painful is that the person who posted this elsewhere actually implied that he laughed himself silly. I really like this guy, and I normally respect him in most areas of his life. I even excuse his right wing political tendencies most of the time. But I cannot let this one go.
This video is not funny. And contrary to what some on the right apparently believe, comparing people with whom you disagree politically to Nazis is not intelligent discourse; it betrays a moral bankruptcy that is frightening in its scope.
The issue at the heart of the video centers on the Obama Administration's request that people who see right wingers spouting lies, report those lies to the Administration, so that they can compile them and respond to them with actual facts. It's not about "turning people in" so that the Administration can round them up and place them before one of Caribou Barbie's fictional "death panels." It's to expose the bullshit. It's to expose the lies these people are telling, because they want to keep the status quo. That's all.
To suggest that right wingers are lying about health care reform is not a controversial idea. Look at what I've been doing at this blog. It's okay to be against the health care bill. The right is spouting nothing but lies, and all I am doing, and all the Obama Administration plans to do, is to call them on it, and to expose them. For God's sake, folks; look at this blog, and then check out Media Matters; it's not like no one's lying about what Obama and the Democrats are trying to do. There is nothing wrong with correcting the record.
Whether you agree with me or not, the health insurance issue is all about making sure that everyone gets health insurance. That's it. if you oppose what Obama's doing, then for Chrissakes, come up with a goddamn alternate plan. But there is a serious problem in this country, and we are being taken down by it, economically. You can believe all the jingoistic bullshit you'd like, but this country is now the second-largest economy in the world, and we're dropping fast. And one of the main reasons is that we pay far more than everyone else for health care, and we have nothing to show for it.
Under the status quo, people are DYING because they can't afford to go to a doctor. Under the status quo, people are working their lives for what they have, and they're losing it when they get sick. Under the status quo, you can pay $150,000 into an insurance pool over 20 years, and when you lose your job, you lose ALL OF IT in one month, if you can't afford the $1300 COBRA payments. To say that nothing has to change in our system is patently absurd. Yet, the opposition has ZERO ideas for changing a system that is killing this country economically. They don't have an alternative, they just seem to derive glee from being against everything. I don't know how they can think like that. I can never be against everything someone does. I was even all for the ACLU helping drug addled gasbag Rush Limbaugh's medical records, when he went to them begging for help. Nothing is ALWAYS wrong. And yet, these people can find nothing good in anything a Democrat does. NOTHING! They bitched when Obama gave our military permission to take out Somalian pirates with snipers. And have you listened to them bitch about the Clintons going into North Korea and bringing home two Americans, in exchange for a couple of photos? How in the hell can people be that negative all of the time?
Back to the video.
In order for something to be funny, there has to be truth in it.
And whether you disagree with them or not, the intent of the Obama Administration and the Democrats in Congress is to find a way to provide a basic health insurance to everyone who wants it. It means they will be able to go to a doctor BEFORE they need the ER. It means a pregnant woman will be able to get pre-natal care, and have the delivery paid for, and not have to simply cross her fingers and show up at the ER when her water breaks. How does trying to change this system into something that more humane and less immoral in its approach resemble the atrocities Hitler carried many years ago? In what way is calling out liars and exposing their lies any way reminiscent of the Holocaust, or the attempt to force all of Europe to live under a fascist regime?
What follow is disgusting, not funny. And to those who think it's funny, get your asses to church and ask for forgiveness. You're gonna need it.
