Madonna and the fantasy world of female self-obsession

Indiana has passed a so-called “religious freedom” law, which allows people who are “uncomfortable” being around certain “types” to use their “religious beliefs” as an excuse to deny employment or provide services to people they harbor prejudices against. About a dozen other states are considering such a law. Many people are claiming that this is an “anti-gay” law, but those who fall under its net goes well beyond that. This law opens up a Pandora's Box of legalized discrimination, without actually claiming it is so. If you are subtly being discriminated against, all you have to do is complain about it, and be accused of being a "troublemaker" to be denied service. That's a problem with this law and society in general: Silent discrimination happens all the time, but as long as you don't say anything about it, no one will "know."

Unfortunately for people like pop singer Madonna, being tucked away in her castle in the UK, occasionally speaking in a fake British accent and imagining that she is the reincarnation of a duchess of American extraction—thus far away from the scene—leads to inane comments like this:

Gay rights are way more advanced than women’s rights. People are a lot more open-minded to the gay community than they are to women, period. It’s moved along for the gay community, for the African-American community, but women are still just trading on their ass. To me, the last great frontier is women…Women are still the most marginalized group. They’re still the group that people won’t let change. [To be a successful woman,] you must fit into this box: You must behave this way, dress this way.

So sayeth the person who despite some marginal success, as she nears 60, in foreign countries by aping Euro-dance trends and saying words like mother-f%@#er at her concerts, but otherwise means nothing in the USA these days, save to feminist culture critics. Don’t bother asking Earth to Madonna concerning the above statement; she probably expends equal effort forgetting that she has a brother (a white male) living on the streets.  Let’s just say that Madonna lives in an alternate fantasy world that bears no relation with reality, and only feminists and gender activists recognize. Frankly, I don’t see her or Lady Gaga dressing to anyone else’s “expectations,” and these days a woman wearing a skirt is almost a subversive act.

“People are a lot more open-minded to the gay community than they are to women, period.” Is that so? And compared to the black community? Huh? How about the Latino community, the national scapegoat for everything (outside of Obama)? Is Madonna crazy? Is she off her medication? Is she high on meth?  No (or at least I don’t think so), but perhaps this is evidence of a sociopathic level of self-obsession that unfortunately many otherwise empirically highly successful white women (well, there is Opra Winfrey, who is just plain sexist) wallow in such self-pity. Madonna apparently believes she is not receiving the “respect” she “deserves,” and indignant that she is increasingly irrelevant in the U.S. (and a joke and a fraud in Britain).  

Of course, the reality that Madonna can’t face honestly is that despite all these supposed “barriers” for women, she is practically a billionaire, who made her money being one of the most successful poseurs in history, who married a Brit, took his castle after she divorced him, and pretends that she is better than you or I by speaking in that phony British accent, and believes she is the Duchess of Windsor reincarnated. In Madonna’s world, it doesn’t matter that this duchess and her husband the Duke were Nazi sympathizers and even friends with leading Nazis (one wonders what beliefs they shared); surface detail is all that matters in Madonna’s world. 

Or at least for Madonna; being deep isn’t her bag, although she frequently confuses her superficial (and often vulgar) proclamations as such—that is to say, when she isn’t shamelessly pandering to people young enough to be her grandchildren. Then again, this shameless crassness has always fit her like a glove. She isn’t doing white feminism any favors by claiming that white women are doing worse than minorities and gays, because you don’t need the eye test to know that belief comes from an excess of self-obsession, principally fed by mendacious media gender advocacy that is curiously mixed with the egotism and pomposity. 

But back to reality. Are white women like Madonna really more “oppressed” than other groups? This can only be true if they have an extremely high opinion of themselves, believe in white “privilege”—remember feminist Eleanor Smeal’s “racism against white women” quote (of course not)?—and basically harbor prejudices and stereotypes against other demographics they feel superior to (being white). Take Madonna, for example, having already mentioned that she cavorts as if she is a British peer. Anyone familiar with her history knows that she is an almost pathological exhibitionist who cares not one wit what other people thought of her or what she said or did;  she just doesn’t like that anyone has an opinion on it—and it “oppresses” her.

So while other people might have an opinion that oppresses her mind, that has never stopped her from doing whatever the hell she wanted to do (or say). There couldn’t be anyone less oppressed by the alleged “patriarchy” or “society” than Madonna. In fact, without the support of the male “oppressors”—like, say, record company executives—she would be just another annoyingly egotistical exhibitionist not worth only laughing at her pretensions. To say that women are “marginalized” is also a travesty of truth, because we are continually bombarded with gender-specific images and messages that suggest that the exact opposite is true; in fact, if we take the media as an example, it would seem it would be a truer statement that men are “marginalized.” 

If we want to just get down to the heart of the matter, there is no better place to discover something akin to reality in employment and wage statistics. According to the February, 2015 Bureau of Labor economic news release, the unemployment rates for specific demographics (for some reason excluding Hispanics) are as such:

White males   5.2

White females 4.2

Black males   10.9

Black females 8.7

The Bureau of Labor’s weekly earnings tabulation as of January 2015 as broken down by demographic is as follows:

White males    907

White females 738

Black males    667

Black females 602

Asian males   1067

Asian women  826

Hispanic males 631

Hispanic females 544

There are few things to note here that would likely go unnoticed. One is that the weekly earnings of white females is significantly higher than black males and even more so than Hispanic males. No doubt that even these income figures for black males is blown out of proportion by multi-million dollar sports contracts; it may well be that in the private and public sector, black women earn more than black men. If white women (like Madonna) want to make a case against white males—or better yet, both Asian males and Asian females (who make 12 percent more than white females)—then the ground is a bit firmer, although it has been suggested than Asians make more money as a demographic because they concentrate in high cost urban areas with similar higher wages. But to make a general claim of gender oppression as Madonna does (and she is obviously not the only one) just ignores the specifics. 

For example, black men have nearly three times the unemployment rate of white women; there are “explanations” for this (education level is the most prominent), but given it is a fact negates Madonna’s claim that the  “rights” of minorities have “advanced” more than people like herself is an absolute travesty of logic. Studies have shown that white males with criminal records are more likely to be hired for jobs than similarly qualified black males with no criminal history, and a black male with a college degree has a harder time finding a job than a white male (and woman) who is a high school dropout.

It is also useful to note that income disparities are far more pronounced for those making high wages than those who in low-income jobs; in the former, there is a vast difference between $100,000 a year and $15 million, yet both would be regarded as an exceptionally high wage to the average laborer. This is where gender wage disparity really occurs. At the other end, at every job I ever worked at, males and females start at the same bare minimum wage and only marginally advance from there. 

It gets worse. I was listening to a radio commercial recently on one of the local sports station about how (white) women were advancing in all kinds of fields of endeavor—yet things were only getting “worse” for them. How so? Because more women (or so the ad claims) die of heart disease than men. Despite the fact that women live significantly longer than men, and that heart disease would be the most likely reason for mortality for anyone at an advanced age, women have to be singled out as being the alleged worst “victims.” So this is “red” month; but last month it was “pink” month because breast cancer was supposed to be the worst medical condition women suffered. What will April be? Purple month? 

But some people believe what they want to believe. In a recent post I mentioned the case of Philadelphia Eagles football player Nate Allen, who was falsely accused of “exposing” himself after a teenage female claimed she saw a man masturbating in his truck. Police arrested a “usual suspect”—i.e. a black male—in this case Allen. According to the Fort-Myers News-Press

The 15-minute interrogation of NFL player Nate Allen by Fort Myers police Feb. 16 assumed the Cape Coral High grad was guilty of masturbating in public and continually urged him to confess.

A transcript of the interrogation was released by the state attorney's office Tuesday afternoon. Earlier on Tuesday Allen and his family said last week's involvement between the NFL player and Fort Myers police left two victims, the young girl who reported a man masturbating and Allen. They urged changes be made in the city police policy to prevent similar victims in the future.

Early in the interrogation, several hours after Allen was detained by police, Allen told Detective Audenia Thomas that he had no idea why he was there. After she told him why, Allen was adamant in his innocence throughout the interrogation.

"I was hoping you would be honest with me," she told him. Furthermore, she said that it could be that he's young and immature and made a bad decision. "But you're not even man enough to even acknowledge that," she said.

"Because I didn't do this," he answered.

Allen was emphatic in his denial of being the person the girl saw masturbating. "I promise you...like seriously...I'm on my knees," he said. "Seriously. It's disgusting, seriously."

As the interrogation wound down, the detective asked Allen if he needed a few moments to reflect.

"No, I need a moment to understand why someone would say something like that," he said.

"You don't need a few moments," she asked again. "No because this is the truth," he countered. "I'm telling you the truth. I promise you, I would never do anything like this ... ever."

Now who is trampling on the rights of whom here? Who is doing the “marginalizing” and who is being marginalized? Stereotyping and myth-making (by the media both news and  in crime shows) in order to advance a gender victim agenda is itself a form of oppression.The power of women cannot be any more clearly exposed than in the fear of males in the media (including the sports media) have in inciting the wrath of their female colleagues by any effort to suggest impartiality or objectivity in regard to facts.

Time to call Israel’s bluff?

I have been a strong supporter of Israel in the past on this blog, particularly when discussing the international double standards in regard to the behavior of Hamas, essentially a terrorist organization masquerading as a legitimate political entity. However, the recent behavior of re-elected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—who only seems like he has been in power forever because he’s been a controversial figure ever since he first became leader of the right-wing Likud Party in 1993, when he opposed the agreement with the PLO for Israel to pullout of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip—makes one wonder if he believes that the Palestinians have any rights he is bound to respect. 

When he became prime minister, pressure from the Clinton administration forced Netanyahu grudgingly talked peace with Yasser Arafat in 1997, angering many in his party and constitutency, leading to an election defeat; since then he has towed the hard line that has frustrated any efforts toward a resolution of the Palestinian question. While Republicans and right-wing celebrities like actor Jon Voight accuse Barack Obama of being “anti-Israel” for whatever insipid reason, the truth is that there seems to be a disconnect between U.S.’ interests and Israel’s that has long been on the boil.

Yes, let us not forget that the reason why there is a state of Israel is that despite “ethnic” mixing with native populations over the centuries in the European nations—that rendered Jews identifiable only by their religious affiliation—simply being a Jew meant being an “alien” or “foreign” presence. Their success in economic, professional or academic life was seen by many as not a contributor to national wellbeing, but as parasitical. Thus Jews were convenient scapegoats for anyone who saw themselves as less successful. This led to discrimination, segregation, pogroms and eventually the Holocaust. Jews thus needed their own “home” to protect themselves from “civilized” people.

Thus Israel has managed to hold on to its existence by using moral and ethical blackmail on the U.S. and the West. In as much as Americans generally support the existence of the “friendly” state of Israel in the belief that it is a “buffer” against Islamic extremism, the reality is that it has actually been a magnet for anti-West extremists. The interests of the U.S. have not been advanced by its support of Israel in an increasingly intertwined world; quite the contrary. The reality is that U.S. interests have been harmed by its support of Israel. 

Now, it may be that the current leadership in countries like Saudi Arabia that still do not recognize the state of Israel may in fact secretly support its existence as that magnet for extremism in the region, rather than  against their own regimes. It can also be argued that extremists only use Israel as a justification for their own sectarian violence. Yet it can be argued as well that these extremists would be hard pressed to justify terrorist actions against the U.S. without its support of Israel. 

But what of the Israelis? Perhaps they have become weary of trying to deal with the Palestinians, who have repeatedly rejected potential peace deals. But that doesn’t explain Netanyahu’s apparent antipathy toward Barack Obama, a black man who happens to be president of these United States. One should never equate hardliners of the Jewish faith with social “liberalism.” Netanyahu exploited the same paranoid racist code that Republicans (particularly in the South) use in their own election campaigns. On his Facebook page just before and during the past Israeli Knesset elections, he urged his supporters of the need to vote in order to stave off the threat of “Arab voters going to the polls in droves. Left-wing organizations are bringing them in buses.”

Perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that Israeli voters—much closer to the “action” than Americans—would be less inclined toward a compromise peace with the current Palestinian leadership, and with Hamas and its continued declarations that they will never recognize a Jewish state. After all, “compromise” had been repeatedly offered and rejected by the Palestinian leadership, showing if nothing else its lack of farsightedness and statesmanship.  

Yet from the American perspective (at least those with common sense), it cannot be understood what is the purpose of continuing to expand Jewish settlements into the West Bank, shrinking the already tiny size of a potential Palestinian “state,” and only causing further antagonism and resource issues down the road. Does Israel eventually want to absorb the whole of the West Bank? Not that this wouldn’t be a “bad” deal for the Palestinians living there, since they would benefit from a more workable political and social support system. But that is not what they want, and the Islamic fanatics and Hamas insurgents would never accept such a “deal,” since opposition to Israel are their sole reason for being.

For Americans (and perhaps the rest of the world), there seems to be no solution in sight, and it is an exhausting spectacle. Netanyahu (notwithstanding hot air proclamations from politicians on both sides of the U.S. aisle) probably senses this ennui, but it isn’t something that hasn’t been building for a long time. Netanyahu is no doubt upset that Obama has ignored him concerning the Iran nuclear deal, since he prefers a military strike against Iran rather than a negotiated solution. One senses that his own distrust of Obama is because of a natural antipathy toward certain groups he has that makes him believe that Obama is naturally anti-Israel, thus he mistakenly makes statements seemingly deliberately meant to antagonize Obama. 

Netanyahu’s mistake is that he thinks that people here, deep down, actually care anymore. All Netanyahu appears to be is a kindergarten bully who is using outdated rationalizations to use “moral” blackmail against the Obama administration and the American public. What would happen if the U.S. called his bluff? He would be a frightened man leading his country to an even more uncertain future. 

A bit closer look at NFL crime stats

ESPN reported over the weekend that Erik Walden, who played linebacker for the Indianapolis Colts last season, was involved in a domestic violence incident, although police officials coyly referred to it as “aggravated assault, family violence aggravated assault, theft by taking and first-degree burglary.” As soon as the story broke I checked CNN, expecting to see it as one of its “top stories.” These are what I found instead:

TV contestant (a woman) slain; suspect had remains in stove (so were her slain husband’s)

Mom's 911 call leads to tragedy (mentally-ill man being shot dead by police)

Mob beats woman, burns her (by Afghan men—the attack instigated by a mob of equally malignant women who accused her of burning the Koran, obviously in the expectation of this sort of punishment)

Machete attack (by a black male, not a “Mexican”) on TSA agents

Woman shot in head in road rage incident (it seems that she picked the wrong person at the wrong place and the wrong time to antagonize) 

This type of “news” is the kind that sensationalist, lurid yellow journalists engage it, the kind of thing that the “respectable” supposedly rise above and leave to the disreputable. No doubt that it is the job of someone at CNN to scour the Internet in search of such stories to further a gender agenda. Surely the Walden story would fit in quite nicely in “context” at first blush? I suspect that the compiler of this data became excited at the prospect of enlisting another NFL player to the cause—except that when she examined the story a little more closely, she decided that it would not do at all.

For reality bites. In Braselton, GA Walden’s ex-girlfriend paid a “visit” to his home where he was living with a new “companion.” Erica Palmer—armed with a gun, knife and baseball bat—apparently threatened to shoot both of them. Walden “wrestled” the gun away from her, although before she got away she struck his companion with the bat, breaking her arm. Palmer soon returned, however, to try to finish the job intended. While Walden was in the process of taking his companion to the hospital, Palmer slashed Walden with the knife and ran away again. Police eventually arrested her in a hotel hideaway by tracking her cellphone. 

Such incidents do not make it into the NFL crime rate reports. Neither did the murders of Steve McNair and Fred Lane by their female “companions”—both cases over an apparent “need” for their money. Nor do any assaults or thefts in which players are victims. According to a USA Today compilation, there have been 787 arrests of NFL players from January 1, 2000. There are 1696 players on a regular season roster; although that doesn’t mean that half the players on the current rosters have a rap sheet, you’d think that is exactly what the non-sports news media wants you to believe. 

And it isn’t hard to get that “impression.” If you try to google the total number of players in the NFL since 2000, or better yet, the crime victim rate of NFL players, all you see is pages and pages of crime rates among NFL players and their victims no matter how many ways you try to make the search terms specific. What does that tell you? It tells you how the news media (as opposed to the sports media) has totally skewed its reporting to be biased against NFL players by flooding the media market with this bias so that alternative viewpoints cannot be heard.

By my own “guestimation,” there were probably something on the order of 7,000 players to appear on regular season rosters, discounting those who were drafted or undrafted and subsequently cut before their first game. According to the NFLPA, the average career lifespan for an NFL player is only 3.3 years, so using that figure I came up with an “approximate” number of players in the past 15 years—and it is probably on the low side. 

Now, according to a website called Fivethirtyeight.com, someone examined the USA Today numbers and their breakdown by crime and compared them to that of the general population, and found that the crime rates for football players were far lower generally; the rate of domestic violence rate was fifty percent that of the general population. I made a closer examination of the USA Today’s numbers and found the following nuggets:

Out of 125 arrests since Jan.1 2013, only five were white (Daniel Kilgore, Bruce Miller, Thomas Keiser, Brandon Barden, Al Netter). 15 cases involved domestic violence. Miller was recently arrested on a domestic violence accusation, but the media has been oddly silent on the case. It was exhausting checking the race of every name I didn’t recognize or was unsure of, but I am fairly certain that this 25 to 1 arrest racial ratio holds firm for the previous years. Money, fame and black athletes apparently don’t mix well, at least according to police, “fans,” their gangsta “posses,” wives and girlfriends for whom money doesn’t improve their temperaments.

Also:

Charges were dropped in 168 cases.

Resolution “undetermined” in 204 cases

Player acquitted in 31 cases

Players cut by team in 44 cases

Players released by team in 47 cases

Thus in nearly half the arrests, the charges either ended in not guilty verdicts, were dropped or were otherwise unresolved—meaning more than half the arrests ended in something other than a guilty verdict or plea deal. This would imply that the crime rate among players may be even lower than suggested. Some of those cases were probably not too dissimilar to that of Nate Allen, who was detained, interrogated, charged for a crime that police assumed he was guilty of, simply on the accusation of a teenage girl who claimed she saw a black man masturbating in a parked truck. The actual perpetrator (if there was one) was not caught, but police were forced to admit the (female) police interrogator was not interested in obtaining facts, and that Allen could not even have been anywhere near the vicinity where the girl claimed the act occurred.

It is interesting to note that in cases where players are the victims, such as in the Walden case, one can read in the comments that many still operate on the assumption that the player must have been guilty of something to instigate his own victimhood; his attacker was a “wronged” woman or something along that order. Women just don’t do things “like that” without “justification.” One suspects that if Walden had defended himself and his companion physically against Palmer, he likely have been charged with domestic violence—or at least “confirming” to many people his own “guilt.”

Here are additional tidbits contained in the USA Today list:

Cincinnati DT Matthias Askew.  Arrested for resisting arrest. “Accused of refusing police orders, parking violations, resisting arrest and obstruction of police business in Cincinnati. He was subdued by Taser. Acquitted, he also won $500,000 award in civil lawsuit over incident. Cut by team three weeks after incident.”

Cleveland RB Reuben Droughns. Arrested for domestic violence.   “Accused of shoving his wife to the ground and locking her outside at his home near Denver. Charge dropped.”

Seattle DE Bryce Fisher. Arrested for domestic violence. “Accused of twisting his wife's arm behind her back in a dispute.  Charge dropped.”

Arizona RB Joshua Rue. Arrested for domestic violence. “Accused of pushing his wife and throwing a coat hanger at her in Tempe, Ariz. Cut by team within a week.” 

Chicago DT Terry Johnson.    Arrested for DUI.  “Pulled over in Arizona for going 40 mph in a 25-mph zone, accused of being impaired ‘to the slightest degree.’  Charge dropped after blood-alcohol content measured 0.72. Team released him three days after arrest.”

Cin LB A.J. Nicholson.  Arrested for domestic violence. “Accused of hitting girlfriend in the eye, but she later recanted her statement, saying she hit herself with a phone. Charge dropped after 40 hours community service, other programs. Released by team three days later.”

NE DE Chris Sullivan. Arrested for DUI. “Police found Sullivan in a parking lot, where they determined he had been driving drunk after team Super Bowl ring party. Resolution undetermined. Team cut him the next month.” The police officers involved must have been rooting for the other team.

Some others:

Denver LB Kevin Alexander cut a day after his arrest for allegedly shoving his girlfriend. Charges were later dropped for lack of evidence. One of your domestic "violence" tallies; no one asked what she did.

Jarrett Bush accused of public intoxication; case dropped.

Alex Okafor, “evading arrest” for an apparently unknown crime. 

D’Qwell Jackson, accused of hitting a pizza delivery man in the head after a dispute over a parking space.

Andrew Jackson, arrested for DUI just a tick over the legal limit. Probably pulled over because he was driving a nice car. He also needed a better lawyer.

Naturally the focus has been on domestic violence, or those incidents where it can be shoehorned into; these account for 11 percent of the USA Today list. Department of Justice statistics, most recently compiled by two obviously biased females with a political agenda, is at huge odds with the 2011 CDC report on intimate partner violence. It suggests that the biggest “silent” crime in this country is in fact domestic violence perpetrated by women. Note that Ray Rice’s now wife was also charged with domestic violence (she in fact was the prime instigator) in the same incident that garnered so much outrage by the media and hypocrites by vocation, yet nowhere was this mentioned or discussed. 

The way these incidents are reported, you would believe that the women involved never did anything wrong themselves. It’s always a savage beast attacking, a poor, defenseless mouse. But what do arrests really say about domestic violence? You don’t need to be convicted, you only need to be accused—especially if you are a black; forget the fact that black women are no virginal spring chickens in regard to the physical application of the notion of promoting their way. 

You can’t even trust the police reports on these incidents; I was listening to Danny O’Neil—formerly a sports reporter for the Seattle Times and now a local sports radio host—conduct a phone interview with a man who claimed to be a police officer discussing another domestic violence case where the charges were dropped, yet the fact of a charge even being made should be enough to put the fear of a god in any team unwise enough to seek his services, no matter how good a player he is. The alleged police officer had a decided lack of credibility, hypocritically talking about “integrity” and “accountability,” as if the police know what that is. This isn’t made any more palatable by the fact that police are alleged to be involved in 2 to 4 times the rate of domestic violence incidents compared to the general public—making it 4 to 8 times higher than NFL players.

The harsh reality is that this focus on NFL players is plain old political opportunism by the media and gender advocates. It also suggests that black players are far more likely to be targeted than white players. The majority of the crimes listed appear to stem from the “driving while black” police syndrome and involvement with “fans” with something less than intelligent to say or do. The fact that half the domestic violence charges were dropped is due to the inclusion of context, quite apart from the one-sided stories told by the media. Such one-sidedness destroyed careers; half the nearly 100 cases where players accused of crimes were either cut or released by their teams were never convicted of the crime they were charged with.

Finally, it is the duty of the court system--obviously not that of the media and gender activists--who must weigh all of the evidence and make dispassionate decisions, although unfortunately there are many judges who throw out objectivity to advance their own political and social agendas.

"Magic bullet" to "kill" ACA is a dud

Four words: “established by the states.” According to those wishing to kill the Affordable Care Act—which is in all likelihood the last best chance this country has to put into place what the act claims to do—it is these words will be the “magic bullet” to inflict a mortal wound to Barack Obama’s signature achievement that took almost two years of dedicated work by Democrats in Congress (with nothing but obstruction from Republicans). According to far-right interpreters of the ACA and their media flunkies, this means that premium subsidies can only be provided through state exchanges, rather than the federal exchange. 

One suspects that this was an insertion whose original purpose was to garner Republican support, which of course never materialized, and the insertion forgotten—until now. It has always been presumed that the states that did not establish their own exchanges would defer to the federal exchange by default, and in fact many of those Red states have the highest percentage of ACA recipients, given the low-pay, low-benefits nature of their economies; even Republicans and their media stooges assumed the federal exchange role.

Thus I am appalled by the continuing efforts to destroy the Affordable Care Act for apparently purely partisan political reasons, which shows just how out of touch the Right is with simple human decency. They may expectorate about taxes and deficits, but given the deficit-happy Reagan and Bush administrations, this is just a lot of hot air. Such “concerns” have devolved into mere code words for support of the “undeserving,” who in the minds of the Right are allegedly mostly minorities, thus playing on the racial paranoia of their base constituency. 

Never does the hypocritical media ask the opponents of the ACA to answer for their lack of simple human decency, and they never tell the truth about what is the “alternative” is, since the ACA is in all likelihood the last best chance to provide affordable health care in this country—just like every other civilized nation. Without it, health care reform in the future will either be impossible, or impossibly expensive to re-enact. As I observed in 2010, the Republican alternative “plan” was “Page Not Found.” More than four years year, it still doesn’t exist.

The strange thing about all of this is that the man and woman on the street who opposes the ACA also seem to believe that health care is a “money” issue alone. Of course it is about money, but it is not about liberal “tax and spend” policies. It really is about affordable health care that may in the short-term cause a budget hit because of the subsidies and more people seeking care that they had put off because of lack of money; but in the long-term it ultimately saves money, because people who would have put off preventative care, seek it  instead waiting until far more expensive emergencies develop down the road. 

Who pays for no affordable care? In the past, it was those who saw their insurance premiums jump by double-digit percent every six months; I once had an individual plan that went from $170 to $440 a month in two years, despite the fact I had never been to the doctor or needed medical care. The cost of the ACA’s subsidies are far less per person than those outrageous premium increases of the past. But for those on the right, including my dad with whom I’ve had many bitter ideological exchanges of views, it is supposedly about “individual responsibility,” not about inability to afford decent health insurance, or employer failure to provide. What does “individual responsibility” mean to them, exactly? It is just another mostly racial code word.

There is an “easy” way of getting around that: Just say that the states that chose not to establish their own health care exchanges “chose” to allow the federal government to do it for them. I mean, that was the assumption, wasn’t it? How could anyone go about creating the federal exchange with the idea that it was “illegal” in the first place? Nobody thought it was illegal. And what about the media examination of the facts? All it wants to see is disaster, and to hell with people who can’t afford health care and are not provided it by their employers. Instead of allowing evil-minded fanatics from the far-right set the propaganda agenda, why not start attacking their inhumanity? And they are inhuman, more interested in scoring a “victory” against “liberals” than thinking about the welfare of the people as a whole. Why not start attacking them for either not offering an “alternative” still after all these years, or demand them to answer the question of why they believe everyone should not have access to affordable care, especially the poorly-paid in this country.

Who is the “hero” in all of this? A so-called “benefits” lawyer in South Carolina (where else?) who claims that after poring through the thousands of pages of the ACA, he found those four words that would be the “death knell” of the affordable health care. Ooh-wee, pee-pee in his pants over this “discovery” that after five years no one else thought was “significant.” Thomas Christina runs over to the far-right American Enterprise Institute, which euphemistically calls itself a “libertarian” organization, which is a euphemism itself for people who “have theirs” don’t want to burden their “conscience” with taking into consideration the question of inequity in this country. 

The problem now is defining what those four little words mean in context. Context is everything. The ACA mandate included the federal program if the states refuse to establish their own. The states may choose to defer to the federal government to establish a health care option for their states. It is thus their choice to have done so, that is what they have established. It is as simple as that. That is how the law has been interpreted by nearly everyone. Yet now here comes this “magic bullet”?

This whole thing is a farce; the problem now, of course, is that the right-wing of the U.S. Supreme Court is so blinded by their hate for common people that the future is as blind to them as the justice they allegedly are bound to serve. The reality is that today less than 60 percent of Americans are covered by employer health insurance, and that number would continue to decrease without the ACA. The number of uninsured would double immediately, and continue to rise afterwards.

And then what? The ACA is the best possible solution we have, save expanding Medicare for everyone. The problem with that, of course, is that prescription will be far more expensive. But who on the Right can ever be accused of being “far-sighted”? People’s lives are nothing but partisan politics to the Right—and to their rich and powerful puppetmasters.