Republican politicians often strugglenot to come across as heartless plutocrats when defending their right-wingagenda to the world. Yeteven when they convincinglyprojectcompassion for those less fortunate, theystill frequently end up looking like pompous, out-of-touch elites.
This has been especially true over the past couple ofweeks, as congressional Republicans haveattemptedto defend the American Health Care Act (AHCA) which passed the House on a narrow party-line vote last week against its many critics. Considering howappallingand cruel the legislation is, it has not been surprising to seeRepublicans squirming a bit more than usual.
Last Friday, for example, Rep. Ral Labrador, R-Idaho, prompted a backlash when herespondedto an angryconstituent at a town hall meeting who suggestedthat he is mandating people on Medicaid to accept dying by supporting Trumpcare. Labradorsneeringlydismissed this claim, telling the voter that line is so indefensible, and thatnobody dies because they dont have access to health care a line that provokedan incredulousgaspfrom the audience.
The following day, Labrador attempted to qualify his statement in a Facebook post, writing that hospitals are required by law to treat patients in need of emergency care. However, as PolitiFact notes in its analysis(which rated the congressmans comment pants on fire), even if you accept hisclaim that emergency rooms protect the uninsured, that leaves out a whole range of chronic and potentially deadly diseases from heart disease to diabetes that can be prevented only through long-term access to physicians. So Labrador gave the impression of beingnot only callous and uncaring, but completely unaware of the fact that Americans die every day because of a lack of medical care.
On lastSundays broadcast of ABCs This Week, House Speaker Paul Ryan the real architect of Trumpcarealmost topped Labradors idiocy with his own let them eat cake moment, whichcame when Ryanrespondedto the Congressional Budget Office forecastthataround 24 million people will lose their health insurance under the AHCA.What the CBO is basically saying, and I agree with this, remarked Ryan, was that if the governments not going to force somebody to buy something they dont want to buy, then theyre not going to buy it. So theyre basically saying people, through their own free choice,if theyre not mandated to buy something thats unaffordable, theyre not going to do it. (Emphasis mine.)
One has to wonderwhether things would have turned out differentlyhad Marie Antoinette simply proclaimedthat the French peasants were starving to death by their own free choice.
Needless to say,Paul Ryan and his Republican colleagues in Washington probablydontstay up at night worrying about losing their health insurance, and therefore have difficultycomprehending the fact that millions of hard-working Americans who need medical care simply cannot afford it. Republican lawmakerstend to assume that a person who lacks health insurance either doesnt want it (and is merely exercising his or her free choice), is poor and thus lazy and undeserving, or is frivolous and spends her money on nonessential goods (e.g., the latest iPhone) instead of health insurance. In other words, its entirely a matter of personal responsibility, and no one cant get health insurance (just as no one dies because they dont have health insurance). In the conservativemind, it is inconceivable that an honest, hard-working and responsible American who has done everything he or she is supposed to may be unable to afford health insurance.
Last weeks trifecta of stupidity from congressional Republicans was rounded off by Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama, whotried to rationalizethe return of pre-existing conditions during an interview with CNNs Jake Tapper. Eliminating Obamacare protections for people with pre-existing conditions, Brooks argued, would help reduce costs for people who lead good lives and have done the things to keep their bodies healthy. One hardly needs to point out the folly ofthis argument when considering that cancer, multiple sclerosis, cerebral palsy, mental illness and Alzheimers disease are all defined aspre-existing conditions.
These stomach-churningattemptsto defendthe AHCA and its cruel implications showcase just how disconnected Washington politicians especially but not exclusively Republicans are from the people, and what a farce American democracyhas become. According to various polls,about six in 10 Americansnowsupport a single-payer style program in which the government ensures health care for all citizens, while only 22 percent of Americans, per a Gallup survey,support repealing Obamacarewithout a government replacement (in other words, support Trumpcare).
This serves as a useful reminder that the U.S. government is scarcely democratic, and that Washington will never represent the will of the people as long as it is dominated by specialinterests andinhabited by economic elites. Just consider one revealing statistic:In 2013, the median net worth of a member of Congress was $1.03 million, compared to a net worth of $56,355 for the average American household. A Congress full of millionaires is theresult of a political system that is controlled by organized money and business interests and according to a 2014 study from Princeton,economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.
When most elected officialsare richmen and women (though mostly men)who spend much of their time in officecourtingbig campaign donors,andhave never known what its like to go without medicine because it isunaffordable or toworry about making ends meet unlike thesix in 10 Americans who do not have enough savings for an emergency and live paycheck to paycheck then a disconnect is inevitable. Privilegedpoliticians who see themselves as natural elites are bound to espouse concepts like freedom and personal responsibility to justify their social Darwinist agenda.
People with advantages are loath to believe that they just happen to be people with advantages, observed the American sociologist C. Wright Mills. They come readily to define themselves as inherently worthy of what they possess; they come to believe themselves naturally elite, and, in fact, to imagine their possessions and their privileges as natural extensions of their own elite selves.
People with advantages also control Washingtontoday, and tend to believe thatthe undemocratic system that favors natural eliteslike themselvesis a system worth preserving. Of course, it is the people who do not have such advantages like the millions who will lose their health insurance under Trumpcare who will suffer the consequences.
The rest is here:
An appalling chorus of Trumpcare apologetics exposes the farce of American democracy - Salon