OpEdNews - Page 2 of Article: Summer of Stupefaction: The Baffling Fight By Ordinary Americans To Defeat Healthcare Reform

And, besides, as it's been pointed out by many others before, universal medical coverage is no more Communist than government-run, tax-funded schools, libraries and fire departments. And the police, Coast Guard, and Search and Rescue for that matter.

But of course this isn't a reasonable, logic-based debate, is it? No, this is a war against "a Stalinist takeover of America".

Irrational, Confused and Nonsensical

This opposition to universal healthcare by ordinary Americans is almost as sensible as, say, Jews campaigning for the Nazis, African Americans donating money to the KKK, Cambodians clamoring for the return of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, or Americans electing Dick Cheney as president.

Or perhaps a more apt analogy is with the thousands of women in Mali protesting in recent weeks against a new law guaranteeing them equality in marriage. "We don't need equality", they shout, "it's just a Western plot to destroy Islam".

Give me your stupid, your ignorant, your muddled masses

Which brings me to my main point, which is: Why do so many ordinary Americans consistently vote for and support politicians and policies that are so unambiguously opposed to their own interests?

This illogical support of politicians and leaders who oppose just about everything that's actually in one's own best self interest is not unique to America of course, but it's certainly nowhere near as prevalent in any other Western democracy.

Selflessness is great and all if you're working to help the homeless or orphans or anyone else in need. However, supporting Republicans who launch pointless wars that your kids will have to fight and die in, who lower taxes for the rich meaning your taxes will stay higher and your government services will remain underfunded, who fight against universal healthcare putting you at future risk of being uninsured, who... well, I think you get the point, it's just plain crazy.

Bangin' "Family Values"

One explanation is that these right-wing Republicans give lip service to the radical fundamentalist Christianity that so many of these "regular folks" follow (and which really explains where their minds are at in all of this).

But you'd think that after the umpteenth "Family Values" Republican of the Religious Right was caught banging his mistress down in Argentina or Alabama or some such place (or, say, caught hitting on adolescent Congressional pages, or caught in another financial scandal, or...) that it'd become pretty obvious that these people's real priorities have nothing to do with Christianity or "Family Values" and a lot more to do with power, wealth... and, well, banging their mistresses.

The Good Ol' Days

The fact is if you try to imagine a country that doesn't provide education and police, firefighting, postal or Search and Rescue services to all of its citizens then you're either imagining a Third World country or you're thinking back to the "good ol' days" of the 18th or 19th centuries.

And that's exactly how the rest of the modern, industrialized world views America, a country with unlimited wealth and resources when it comes to launching wars in any given corner of the globe, yet somehow unable to provide the most basic of government services - healthcare - to its own people, leaving nearly-50 million citizens with absolutely no medical coverage whatsoever.

What if...?

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