ESSAY: BAH HUMBUG!
ESSAY: BAH HUMBUG!
From this Jew looking for holiday spirit, I just don’t feel it this year. First, there is my landsman, Joe Lieberman, bringing sleaze and dissention in what might have been meaningful reform to health care. Apparently, he got his goodie bag from the Hartford insurance giants, probably containing lots of Channukah ’gelt’ to brighten his season. This attention-seeking politician changes with the wind, holding America hostage as a sometimes Democrat, recently Independent and probably future Republican. Despite his religious orthodoxy, he seems amoral and increasingly obnoxious. He is an embarrassment to his fellow Jews, I think.
Then there’s Obama. I had such high hopes for change, but realize he was ‘produced’ like any other celebrity. He was a tabula rasa and we projected our own hopes and dreams onto the manufactured illusion. When we needed a giant push for jobs, a la FDR, we got first a bank bailout, then a car bailout, then his REAL priority for himself, the guy who is pushing through health care ‘reform,’ totally compromised into uselessness for most of us. Can someone answer this? If every American is going to be legally responsible to carry health insurance, what happens to those in the middle class with pre-existing conditions who are obligated to carry this without limits on premiums? Will they be forced by law to pay four times the going premiums? Will they go to the government guidelines and find they are too financially viable for subsidies? But Obama needs a ‘success’ for his legacy. He will go down in history for passage of health care reform, albeit flawed beyond words.
Then there’s Afghanistan. MORE troops? What insanity! At least in the days of empire we would have gotten some resources and real estate. If we could tap into the poppy crop, we’d have SOMETHING for our occupation. Ditto Iraq, substituting oil for drugs.
Obama is a sellout, dedicated, like his predecessors, to corporate profits and war profiteering.
So, despite our Democratic majorities in the House and Senate and the Presidency, this is as good as it is going to get.
The vast majority of the population is suffering mightily with job losses, home losses and scrounging around for food in this land of plenty.
The progressives are getting nowhere, being thwarted at every turn by the lobbyists who control our politicians.
We’ve been fed a steady diet of garbage and I’m so saddened as I realize there is no way out, despite our high hopes. Is the notion of AMERICA just an illusion, after all?
