For those of you who do not understand the President’s refusal to negotiate with the GOP over the shutdown let me see if I can illuminate your confused brain with a little basic civics.
This country runs on what we like to call the democratic process. This is based on the principal that the majority’s wishes are what decide the answers to most questions. That’s why we have elections. See, one day every election cycle all the people go to the polls and they vote for who or what they want; in this country that happened in 2008 and again in 2012. It normally happens every two years but those are the presidential election years.
On both those occasions the people voted for Barak Obama over the candidate from the GOP. Part of the platform that got Obama elected, both times, was a promise of universal health care. But just getting elected wasn’t enough to pass health acre because our constitution has all kinds of safeguards. So then President Obama had to plead his case before both houses of congress. Because he had already obtained, at the election booth, majorities in both the Senate and the House of Representatives, he was able to pass the ACA without too many problems. Again, this was the will of the people because they had elected both houses of congress.
But there is another safeguard against any abuse of this process and it’s called the Supreme Court. The validity of the ACA was debated in the Supreme Court and it too agreed that the law was legitimate. By this time the ACA had faced and passed every test provided by the constitution; the law of the land and all logical, fair-minded persons thought it was time to forge ahead and get it implemented.
See, that’s the catch, logical, and fair-minded; but that doesn’t exist on the far right, that doesn’t exist in the Tea Party. These are people who are like spoiled children, who won’t admit a loss and who don’t care that the other side has fairly won a point. They still want to have their way, no matter how illogical, how selfish, how childish their position. They don’t care how detrimental their actions are to the democratic process; they just don’t care. So what if they are undermining the basic structure on which this country is built. They still stamp their feet and hold their breath (we can only hope, long enough for them to suffocate) and take their ball and go home.
The democratic system is the most functioning form of government, outside of benevolent dictatorship, ever conceived by man. The problem with benevolent dictatorship is that there is, in reality, no such thing. So we’re left with democracy, not a bad thing to fall back on. This, however, is not good enough for the right because it does not allow them to do as they wish. It does not allow them to circumvent the will of the majority of the people for their own selfish aims. So instead of doing what they were elected to do, run the government, they stop the government from running. They, and I mean the 50 or 60 odd nut cases that make up the fanatic far right in the House, don’t want the ACA to get a fair trial because they know that if it does, the American people will show that they want it, want to expand it, want to keep it as the law of the land forever and they also know that this will become the legacy of a man they hate.
And that hate is interesting too. Where does it come from? It seems to have blossomed, full flower, upon the election of Bill Clinton. Before that politicians like most other Americans accepted defeat in any competition like gentlemen, congratulated the winner and went on about the business of trying to win the next competition or election. It was the American way, sportsmanship, fair play, strong competition but a sense of respect for your opponent. For some reason, the Republicans reacted to Clinton’s win over George HW Bush with a burst of hatred and vitriol that was unprecedented.
Most of us thought that it had something to do with Clinton but now when they have the same burning hatred for Obama after his twin elections it is obvious that the hatred is coming from the hearts of the losers, not the image of the victor. It seems that no matter who beats the GOP, its membership will react with a burst of hatred more like a tribe of crazed cannibals, than like a civilized organization seeking leadership of a great country.
Of course Obama brought an extra piece of bait to the table. He is, after all, black and to certain segments of this country that is anathema. I’m not just talking about southerners’, that mass of pathetic losers that still fight the civil war at every opportunity. I have personally seen the “No Niggers” signs at Tea Party rallies in Connecticut, scrawled over pictures of the President. But those are just the bigots, where does the rest of this wave of hatred come from?
Democrats, for the most part, didn’t hate Bush after his first election. They thought he was a mistake but he as their president and they wished him well and hoped they were wrong in heir opinion. They didn’t really hate him after the second election, by which time they had plenty of reason to hate him. He was killing their kids and bankrupting the country. He had sat on the sidelines and picked his nose while a great city was destroyed and there was widespread conjecture that if he hadn’t been responsible for 911 he had at least, through incompetence, let it happen. But there still wasn’t this blind hatred that the right seemed to have for Clinton and now definitely has for Obama. Sure they wanted him and Cheney out and they would fight to accomplish this, which they did, but it was different. The left always hoped that somehow Bush would work, certainly not for his sake, but at least for the sake of the country.
That’s the big difference. The Right wants Obama to fail and they don’t care if he drags the country down with him. They, in fact, are willing to be the ones to scuttle the country, just so they achieve their goal of Obama’s failure. And that’s un-American, that’s anti-patriotic, that’s traitorous. If you don’t see that, you aren’t paying attention.
Right now the far right is on the verge of breaking the economy for the second time in ten years and they just don’t care. They don’t care that the President cannot negotiate with them over Obamacare because to do so would destroy the substance of the Constitution. All they care about is that they want to destroy Obama and the hell with what it does to the country. They don’t see the fact that they are the same kind of fanatic terrorists as al Qaeda and that if they fail with legislation, they will move on to bombs because that’s just the kind of haters that they are and they have to be stopped.