Walking down the street you see a homeless person sitting on
the sidewalk, leaning against a wall. You have basically three choices:
* You can give him some money for food.
* You can ignore him and walk on by.
* You can stop, mock him for being a loser and then kick him
in the head.
All of us have to decide for ourselves what’s the right thing to
do. Apparently in Congress we have a large number of elected representatives
who are polishing up their steel-toed boots today, because a lot of people are
in line for a good swift kick.
The House of Representatives is reportedly voting today on a
health care bill to repeal and replace Obamacare. How many times have they
tried this before? 50? 60? One loses count, but like Bullwinkle always says to
Rocky, “This time for sure.”
Remember that the House put together a bill a few weeks ago
that was so bad they couldn’t even bring it to the floor, so they went back to
the Freedom Caucus, a.k.a. The Tea Party, to draft one that's even worse. The
original bill would have kicked 24 million people off the health insurance
rolls. This new one is so bad they have to rush it through before the
Congressional Budget Office can tell us how many will lose their
insurance this go-round.
They’re doing this even after late night talk show host
Jimmy Kimmel delivered an emotional speech about his infant son who would have
died without Obamacare, and whose defective heart is now a pre-existing
condition for life. Listen to the reaction he got from our elected
representatives:
“Sorry Jimmy Kimmel:
your sad story doesn't obligate me or anybody else to pay for somebody else's
health care.” – Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Ill.).
And this:
People who “lead good
lives” should not have to pay as much for insurance as those who don't. – Rep.
Mo Brooks (R-Ala.).
Apparently Jimmy’s newborn didn’t lead a good enough life
while in the womb.
Now I could see someone like Steve Bannon, the white supremacist
who drives the White House bus, kicking a black homeless man in the head or devising
ways to take health insurance away from black or brown Americans, but I don’t
understand why it’s so hard for the rest of these people to know how to do what’s
right. I also don’t know how they sleep at night.
You don’t need polls or town hall meetings or caucuses or the
news media to tell you that taking health insurance away from the poor, the
elderly and the sick who need it the most so that 400 of your closest friends at
the top of the income scale can each get hundreds of millions in tax breaks is
the wrong thing to do. You only need a conscience or at least a moral compass
that doesn’t point directly toward hell. To me, it’s not even a Democrat versus
Republican issue; it’s a humanitarian one.
I’m not religious and I don’t go to church, but I was raised
a Christian and I attended church regularly through high school. Among the
Baptists, my family and my friends, I was imbedded with a sense of right and
wrong and a set of morals that I try to apply in my life. It isn't all that hard to do. Remarkably, the congressmen
who want to deny health insurance to the most needy Americans are many of the same
people who keep hitting us over the head with their fundamentalist Christian
beliefs.
The hypocrisy of that paradigm is astonishing.
A few days ago, I wrote in this space that it’s not wrong to
want people to be the best they can be … to be honest and decent and live up to
our ideals. I said it’s not wrong to want
these things; it’s only wrong to be naïve enough to expect them.
I don’t think it’s naïve to expect our political leaders to know
right from wrong. The ones who do need to be encouraged to keep up the good
work, while the ones who don’t need to be shown the door. It is, however, naïve
to think that millions of voters will know how to do what’s right, any more
than the people they keep putting into office.
And that’s the real
kick in the head.
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