By Capt. Fogg
A mind is a terrible thing to make up, uncertainty being a fundamental building block of nature, but I've come close to making up my mind that a mind is, unlike all other things, not really subject to change and so those who spend their time trying to change minds damn themselves to a great deal of suffering.
So then, I'm not going to try to convince you that Rand Paul is having another one of his captious fallacy fests by trying to convince us all that if one believes that Americans have a right to have a certain degree of health care, one believes, ipso facto, in slavery.
Why try to go through his tortuous logical progressions and attempt to refudiate them as factually or logically false? Why indeed, since humanity runs on a blend of unconscious bias and packaged rationalizations. Who would read the list of ingredients on a pack of cigarettes anyway and who bothers to question politicians who mock people you don't agree with? We just inhale and we like it and we come back for another pack.
So, to reiterate the claim that freedom from untimely death is slavery will be enough for me this sunny morning when I should be enjoying life instead of following the lives of celebrity idiots. I'll just leave it to you. You may think of Orwell and smile, you may dream of being the only man in the world and growl in approval, you may jump off a cliff, you may do as you please. I've got mine and screw all y'all, as it says on the Tea Bag and if my wake upsets your boat, or you're thrashing about in the water, screw you twice, loser -- I'm nobody's slave.
The very fact that tea baggers choose to believe what a shakily educated and credentialed DMD is the shame of the thing.
ReplyDeleteI have always had health insurance because I always worked somewhere that paid it as part of my compensation or because I currently pay a quarter of my gross income for it. Others choose not to and depend on the rest of us to pay for ER visits so they have healthcare. I would rather pay what I pay to insurance in taxes if it would go to cover more people. As it is now, I enrich insurance companies. It's rediculous.
I predict, as I have before that one day ObamaCare will be referred to as the ConservativeHealthPlan. When we begin choosing our elected by how they support universal health care, it will become a GOP idea.
"Obamacare" is pretty much a clone of "Romneycare" anyway.
ReplyDeleteRand Paul is an idiot. As he actually has followers, he is a dangerous idiot.
ReplyDeleteThe Senate never stops amazing me. It's remarkable how ignorant and/or morally depraved a person can be and still get elected handily to such a high office. I think it's even worse than the House in percentage of fools to rational people. Besides, the only thing most libertarians I've met are capable of processing is abstractions; anything that requires thinking in real-world terms befuddles and frustrates them. So sure, access to health care is slavery. Every stop sign is also an intolerable violation of my sovereign right to absolute freedom of movement.
ReplyDelete(Laughing!) I hate stop signs. Except in big cities. Rand Paul is an idiot. But he knows how to get financing (the only criterion for our new democracy).
ReplyDeleteDino, I will never again view a stop sign in quite the same way. LMAO!
ReplyDeleteEdge and Sheria,
ReplyDeleteYou know, I think my impatience with stop signs stems from the fact that unlike most Californians, I actually stop at them instead of just rolling through. (Californians stop at stop lights, don't get me wrong – but they are notorious for failing to stop at stop signs.) It's a good thing I'm not a libertarian, or I would probably be an outlaw by now.
So what would happen if we invented the SLOW N GO sign?
ReplyDeleteGeneral comment: I suspect that it's a rare person whose ideas often amount to more than a cover for emotions, whether primal feelings or more sophisticated, compound ones. Sensibilities change, but they seem to change slowly, over many years -- not in immediate response to this or that argument but perhaps in response to an overall change in entire communities. Of course, there's no guarantee that such changes will last more than a generation or two. I think it was the Apaches who used to say something like, "Nothing lasts forever but the earth, the sky, and the trees." I like the saying, but I think it may be a bit over-optimistic.
ReplyDeleteDino:
ReplyDelete"the only thing most libertarians I've met are capable of processing is abstractions; anything that requires thinking in real-world terms befuddles and frustrates them."
I agree, but I suspect it's a problem with zealots of all kinds. It's easier to deal with abstractions: more like arranging a stage set or store window or writing books like The Fountainhead. That way you only have to deal with critics made of paper.
But nothing lasts forever, planets, stars -- nothing.
Libertarians in a nutshell:
ReplyDeleteYou have two cows. You let them do anything they want. They wander off the reservation.
Dino, re: your general comment; that's very much a Jungian observation in that the unconscious and collective unconscious is archaic and archetypical—and most impervious to change. And Octo, could be these archetypes might even outlive the stars... ;)
ReplyDelete"Octo, could be these archetypes might even outlive the stars ..."
ReplyDeleteDepends on how you define 'stars.'
Or how you define "live." Things which do not exist have a hell of a shelf life. Jung gives me a major pain in my Archetype, but like everything else that too will pass with enough prunes.
ReplyDelete