Look beyond the what to the why. What was attached to the bill that became the fatal flaw? You are dangerously close to demonizing those “wascally Wepubwicans”
As to why - I don’t try to analyze the unstated motives of the administration. I can subject their comments to scrutiny against objective fact and I can question their committment to stated principles by noting past actions, but I cannot look into their hearts and minds to find true intentions.
We have a president with zero record of committment to fiscal responsibility. We also have Plan D, the massively expensive, and so far ineffective, expansion of public health benefits.
Why a relatively inexpensive plan, which has shown itself to be popular and effective, has bipartisan support in both houses of congress, and gets good marks from the GAO on effectivness is not acceptable is for the President to know and folks like me to only guess about.
Is it the Grover Norquist reasoning of only supporting costly and ineffective programs so that government can be crippled and eventually small enough “to drown in a bathtub”? Or maybe programs are only judged on the opportunity for massive no bid contracts and wealth redistribution…
I’ll leave such guessing games to the pundit class. I merely feel compelled to resist evil in as many forms as possible.
Forced abortions for profit, evil.
Torture of prisoners, evil.
Twisting mechanisms of justice to political purposes, evil.
Supressing basic civil rights, evil.
A state and policy of perpetual war, evil.
I actually give a lot more thought to not demonizing than you might think. Even the decision to say, not respond to a snarky comment about “typing slower” with something like “Great idea! Anything that lets you put more of your mental capacity towards coherent thought…” often involves prayer and reflection.
Something I see very clearly in, say, the Sermon on the Mount, is that Jesus instructs us to directly resist evil, but without adopting evil ourselves. It is an incredibly difficult path and easy to rationionalize leaving it. For example, Ender is directly communicating and saying ‘show me’. How does one coax ‘look’ or ‘heal yourself’ without going to far?
On the other hand, estesbob is in active denial, objective facts are ‘rants’. Further, interaction is limited to indirect insults using exaggerated claims. How does one encourage less pointless and self destructive behavior without creating still more of the fear and negative emotions that normally drive such behavior?
Just because I often don’t get it right does not mean that I don’t consider it or give serious thought to other’s equal status as beloved creations of God.
Of course I have my own demons, but I am also quite fortunate. Having spent two years in close proximity to the deadliest combat in USMC history, raised a severely disabled son, survived cancer, etc., I’m just not going to be easily threatened in my sense of self worth or intinsic value as a human being by nasty comments from some faceless individuals on the internet. That makes it much easier to resist the tempation of “redemptive violence”, which Christ instructed us is a path away from God.
Demonizing individuals is still such violence. You are attacking the person with motives of self interest and hate. Substituting, say, lies for fists does not make it any more palattable, or any less self destructive.
