A pretty compendium of wrongthink as practiced in beautiful downtown Hooverville, USA!
The neocomrade, whom I take (a bit doubtfully) for a dupe of the militant extremist Republicans rather than a co-conspirator and dupemonger, gets right to work: "America does not face a health care crisis. America faces" ... well, since D. Murdock (no relation to His Pressbaronial Lordship) is language-challenged, let's pass over what he says for the moment and say what he means: our holy Homeland™ faces "an insurance distribution bottleneck."
I.e., the very first thing aspirin’ wingnutettes and wingnuts [1] ought to do about ‘Obamacare’ is never to admit that it has anythin’ whatever to do with medicine. Medicine is a business--well, it’s sort of like a proper Hoovervillainous business, at any rate--in which one can get one's hands dirty. (Why, rumor has it one's hands can even get bloody in the practice of "health care" [2]--though let's not exaggerate,or believe every wild tale we hear, please, ....)
Keepin’ their own paws unsullied by "health care reform" is, I believe, a point of perfect unanimity amongst Hoovervillains and AEIdeologues and Catoholics and Heritagitarians et hoc genus omne. Beyond that, however, the tank thinkin’ neogentry start squabblin’. Neocomrade D. Murdock is a very moderate sort of militant extremist, for he is willin’ to admit that a ‘crisis’ of some sort does exist, and that somethin’ or another may need to be ‘reformed.’ True-blue High and Drys take the late Mr. John Arthur Roebuck’s attitude:
| Such a race of people as we stand, so superior to all the world! The old Anglo-Saxon race, the best breed in the whole world! I pray that our unrivalled happiness may last! I ask you whether, the world over or in past history, there has been anything like it?" [3] |
If charity be mistaken in Neocomrade D. Murdock's case, if this specimen should be a duper and not just a dupe, it is at least a very low-rankin’ one. Look at how it talks: what I have neutrally [4] and descriptively relabeled "an insurance distribution bottleneck" is for it "a manageable challenge." Though obviously it won’t be D. Murdock personally who does the challenge managin’, yet that is the way even a junior Hoovervillain spontaneously thinks. It is the specifically Hoovervillainous way of thinkin’, the point at which that brain disease differs most from the other brain diseases endemic at Wingnut City. I betcha the specimen adores Neocomrade Governor M. Romney, though perhaps with the medical history of Massachusetts swept under the rug whenever visitors come callin’.
Now up to a point this is commendable, and not merely by contrast with the Roebuckian bozos. America’s Otherparty would be a completely unworkable racket if the rank-and-file base ’n’ vile did not at all respect and admire Big Management from afar. It is not just a sentimental loyalty to its Party but adherence to Party substance that the specimen exhibits. If the Big Managers radically cannot meet challenges, what is one to conclude except that the Party of Grant (&c.) had better go extinct as quickly as possible? Or, to present the same basic point in a back-handed way that will appeal to the Wingnut City groundlin’s as well: isn't it painfully obvious that Mr. Obama "has never met a payroll"? The way in which that antique Big Management Party bromide has zoomed back into popularity over the last six months strikes me as an excellent indicator of The Way We Live Now.
Neocomrade D. Murdock does not know much about insurance administration, plainly, but that is not, I think, the real subject-matter of this factious piece. Projecting the above remarks a bit farther, I should say that the specimen is chiefly remindin’ its neocomrades and its ideobuddies and their marks and dupes that they, and they alone, are the Party of Big Management. Which is to say, the only quarter from which salvation and ‘reform’ can seriously be expected durin’ this or any other ‘crisis’. On that basis one can see why a D. Murdock should prefer that some ‘crisis’ actually exist: out on Planet Pope, where whatever IS, is RIGHT already, there is of course no scope for Big Management to do its salvific thing.
There is nothing here to appeal much to political adults materially, yet adherents to America’s party ought to be able to appreciate the formal merits of a D. Murdock. Anybody who can swallow the militant extremist tripe and baloney without gaggin’ in the first place ought to find Neocomrade D. Murdock extremely edifyin’. Read my way, the specimen gives a really spiffy exposition of why Republicans should want to be Republicans. All their agitproppers are forever encouragin’ both GOP geniuses and Party base ’n’ vile to wallow in self-appreciation. Unlike 99.44% of ’em, though, Neocomrade D. Murdock gives one a clue what it is, exactly, that these comedians are self-appreciatin’ so relentlessly. Namely, Big Management.
As to the actual practice of big-managin’ health insurance, naturally Neocomrade D. Murdock, himself a specialist in the Agitprop Arm, is a little weak and hazy. Either he is genuinely hazy and weak, or else he is pretendin’ to be so for agitprop purposes. I do not quite know how to take a specimen that thinks it can get a vast number of uninsured persons out of ‘crisis’ mode and into ‘reform’ simply by pointin’ out their eligibility for Medicare / Medicaid. As if it would not cost really competent Big Managers a penny more to cover fourteen million (14,000,000) additional warm bodies!
"If you believe that, sir, you would believe anything!" [5]
Happy days.
_____
[1] "To what do such exotic critters aspire?" You may well ask, Mr. Bones!
’Tis not a hard question, though this is not the proper forum to justify the correct answer at any length: the Party of Grant and Hoover and Goldwater and Atwater (&c. &c.) is always on the look-out for JayCee fodder, minor-league neo-Babbits. And what the latter are on the look-out for is two-fold: (A) eventually to win big at the Casino of Human Events themselves personally, and meanwhile they aspire to (B) respectability, which is not one one-hundredth as self-gratifyin’ as the long-term lottery win, but does have the advantage of bein’ attainable for sure. More or less.
As regards the subject at hand, it goes without sayin’ that respectable folks have white collars and clean hands. Everybody knows that! Or used to before wombschoolin’ and FoxNews came in.
[2] Only another euphemism or apotropaïc formula is "health care."
The serious student will haved notice how nicely such verbal upholstery frees the customer from worry about not just icky bl**d, but about d**th and a’ that.
However "health care" is thoroughly bipartisan verbal bologna in the holy Homeland™. Ideally Rio Limbaugh would have a perfect monopoly on never misusin’ the word ‘existential’ otherwise than in conjunction with the Tel Avîv régime. But in the real world, pretty well all holy-Homelanders™ empathise with the Peter De Vries character who was resolved "To live forever or die in the attempt." When ninety-nine percent of decent political grown-ups would never dream of not saying "health care reform," it would be ridiculous to tell a Neocomrade D. Murdock that he ought not to..
[3] http://tinyurl.com/nsm8sc
[4] Without twistification of the neocomradely scribble in its own terms, that is. There can be no question of neutrality about what D. Murdock and his ideobuddies are substantially up to at the moment.
[5] In terms of the Big Management Party’s general campaign of obstruction, as opposed to purely theoretical study of the Mind of Murdock, those cost-free fourteen million eligibles are less important than "as many as 10 million uninsured [who] may be illegal immigrants." The neocomrade sails by all that pullulatin’ mass of crimmigrants and criminaliens with no more remark than that.
White-collared and clean-pawed respectability of the D. Murdock brand could scarcely do anythin’ else. Yet of course if the wingnutettes and wingnuts are SERIOUS about stoppin’ Obamacare dead in its tracks . . . .
The politics of neoreaction are not without contradictions. Allow me to list three:
(1) Reflect how the Wall Street Jingo element of the Big Party is at once the subfaction of militant extremists that has most to gain by derailin’ health insurance reform and the subfaction least interested in xenophobia and a’ that.
(2) Reflect how outrageous it would seem to a Big Party and AEIdeology booster like Neocomrade D. Murdock to be asked whether the general track record of the vigilante cowpokers under George XLIII (and the Crawford Crash™ in particular) do not raise a few questions about the all-wunnerfulness of Big Management.
(3) Reflect how the dupes and marks would be well advised never to get old and sick so as to be compelled to find out exactly what their ‘ownership’ amounts to in the matter of "individually owned and controlled health insurance plans."
On (3): a harsh critic might accuse D. Murdock not simply of playin’ cutsey word games but of playin’ obsolete cutesy word games. Temporarily obsolete, if not permanently. I suspect the holy-Homelanders™ will take some years to become really vulnerable to the "Ownership Society" scam once again. No doubt we'll get there eventually, but it will take a while.
Meanwhile, Neocomrade D. Murdock is enough to give the word ‘overzealous’ a bad name, with his nifty scheme of persuadin’ the customer base that verbiage on paper rather than (say) automobiles and houses has become the very model of an Ownable Thing nowadays. The advantages to the Jingo subfaction of the Party of Grant (&c.) in a sucessful marketin’ of that product would be immense, but unfortunately one must multiply the scrumptious payoff by the very low probability of its occurrence.
My general impression of a wet-behind-the-ears Party cub is strengthened accordin’ly. This neocomrade cannot, hopefully, be a fully credentialed exponent of Big Management as officially expounded to Harvard Victory School M.B.A. candidates. On the other hand, who can forget that Master Dubya of the Serene House of Kennebunkport-Crawford actually possessed the appropriate HVS scrap of verbiage-filled paper? Since the former Allston (MA) Academy of Barbers and Chirurgeons did not go out of business from indelible shame before 20 January 2009, I daresay they'll be findin’ Neocomrade D. Murdock no threat to their self-esteemin’ at all.
But Father Zeus knows best.
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