I was asking myself, “How could anyone vote against the
Violence Against Women Act,” and that led to, how could anyone vote against
unemployment insurance, food stamps, living wages, health care, Social
Security, Aid for disasters, and etc., etc . I suddenly realized that was the
wrong question, for how someone votes against such things is basically simple,
you just vote a simple three letter word, either aye or nay, or you fill out a
secret ballot that accomplishes the same thing. It’s very easy. You don’t even
have to know anything about what you are voting for, nor do you have to
associate it with the living people it may be going to either help or harm. Voting
for your “principles” in the abstract, disassociated from actual persons, does
not even require questions of conscience.
The more important
question is obviously why do people vote against such seemingly worthwhile
measures? I confess I cannot answer this question, certainly not in most cases,
as the explanations I hear rarely if ever make sense to me. In the case of the
Violence against Women Act, for example, it would seem the only reason to vote
against it apparently had to do with the fact that it focused on Immigrant and
American Indian women. That only makes sense if you suppose that American
Indian and Immigrant women are somehow less important than other women and that
raping them is relatively unimportant. I can’t imagine those who voted against
this Act would admit publicly to those reasons but what other reasons could
they have? Perhaps because they thought it would cost money, an even more
questionable and disgusting reason.
Why would anyone vote against aid for disaster victims, an
unprecedented vote, given that such aid has always been given in the past? Some
have suggested that prejudice against the Northeast may have something to do
with it. Maybe that is true. But again, the arguments have to do with the cost.
Of course the cost of aid for Katrina or most other such disasters has never
really been raised, except after the fact. The same standard could have been
applied in the New York, New Jersey, Connecticut cases, but it wasn’t. It seems
that disaster aid to the Southern States has always been quickly forthcoming
but this case involving the Northeast is somehow different, why I do not truly know,
but my suspicious mind is at work on it.
The arguments
involving “costs” has raised the issue of human hypocrisy to what is probably
unprecedented levels. You will have noticed that Republicans cling to the claim
the national debt is the single greatest problem facing us and demand an end to
further spending at every opportunity. They are so obsessed with this idea they
may be willing to even damage the credit rating of the U.S. and even the
world-wide economy, a rather strange idea that would, of course, make things
far worse than they are. They constantly rail against President Obama and the
Democrats for being “big spenders” and conveniently forget that most of our
massive debt can be traced to their own party under the leadership of Bush/Cheney. Their two unfunded
“wars,” a massive give-away to the Pharmaceutical Industry, and massive tax
breaks for the already wealthiest individuals and corporations brought about
the debt in the first place. Now their new found faith in an austerity program,
if allowed to succeed, will make it impossible to recover from their
destructive behavior. This will please the Tea Party folk who seem to relish
the destruction of government at all levels. You might recall Cheney’s claim
that “Reagan proved the national debt didn’t matter” (or words to that effect).
Have they ever apologized for being so wrong? Of course not, they want to
enshrine Saint Ronnie (who began our disastrous fall) on Mt. Rushmore.
I confess I do not know why it is Republicans are against
virtually everything that might make life easier and better for ordinary
working people, unemployment insurance, health care, minimum wages,
contraception, abortion, food stamps, violence against women, unions, whatever.
This is a new breed of Republicans, they were not always like that. Indeed,
they used to try to do the right thing by everyone (even though their ideas of
the right thing might have been different at times). They used to be a genuine
political party rather than a conglomeration of greedy bribe takers doing the
bidding for those on the forefront of exploitation, short-term gains, middle
class and environmental destruction. As they can no longer be trusted with the
public interest we need to find ways to govern without them in so far as that
might be possible. Perhaps after the next election in 2014 we might mercifully
be rid of them.
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