Back to the Roots
Ah, it’s refreshing to see the Republican party getting back to its core purpose for being: Starving the poor into extinction. Hey, if we can’t kill them by taking away social security, let’s make sure criminally malicious credit card companies can cheat them out of every penny they have, then laugh their asses off while the bastards starve.
I suppose the social-darwinist plutocrats were worried that the self-righteous theocrats and the megalomaniacal neoimperialists were cornering the market on evil in the G.O.P., and wanted to make damn sure they got a piece of the action.
2 Comments:
Turn down the hyperbole, Bill. Your lunacy is showing.
I may be no Jonathan Swift, but I thought the exaggeration in the first paragraph was self-evident.
I'll even admit to hyperbole in the blanket characterization of the theocrats and neoimperialists as "evil." In both cases, there's certainly a more nuanced interpretation (though the adjectives attached to each are dead-on).
The theocrats are certainly not "evil" in holding to personal beliefs or codes of conduct; the imposition of such beliefs on others is evil -- whether in the Middle East or here -- though the amount of evil is certainly a matter of degree.
And the neoimperialist agenda certainly holds some degree of merit, at least in its goals -- I've always said my main beef was with the reprehensible tactics used to implement said goals, and less with the overall strategy. (That's not to say I'm sold on the agenda, but folks like Richard Perle at least try to make the case rather than disguising it with lies about "immediate and gathering" threats to the United States.)
But this bill has absolutely no ethical purpose whatsoever. It is intended solely as a payoff to the banking and credit card industry. The purported goal of catching those who "abuse the system" is an outright lie. Not a deception, not an alternate interpretation, a lie. They drag out the three percent of bankruptcy filers who could conceivably repay their debts, and eliminate the legitimate option for the other 97 percent, those who have been victimized by job losses, medical bills, and the overtly fraudulent marketing tactics of the credit card issuers themselves. Witness the explicit lack of effort to tailor the legislation to actually target the real violators (or allow any amendments that actually do so). Why? Because three percent isn't going to generate enough revenue for the credit card companies that have spent good money buying off their senators.
Sure, it appeals to the "blame the victim" sense of justice the G.O.P. is all too happy to endorse, whether it comes to drug addiction (well, unless the addict is one of the G.O.P. elite), mental illness, or crushing debt. "Lost your job? Well, you shouldn't have done that, now, should you?" "Buried by medical bills? Well, again, you shouldn't have lost that job, and your insurance along with it." "Cheated by a credit card company that pulled a bait-and-switch and didn't disclose the usurious interest rates you'd be saddled with? Well, you should have gotten that college degree instead of feeding your family." (And let's not forget, "Wife a vegetable for more than a decade, with statistically zero chance of recovery? Sorry, but we're keeping the feeding tube in, and by the way, you'll have to pay for it.") It's a nice myth -- that people just need to live within their means, not spend more than they can afford -- but it's a crock of shit.
In the end, the result of this bill is homelessness, destitution, and yes, starvation.
There's a word for this behavior: Evil. Cut and dried.
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