Monday, June 26, 2017

Liars

Taking their queue from the top and decades of media letting Republicans lie about everything, they've realized they can just go on TV and lie about their plan to kill you in order to lower taxes for a tiny number of very rich people.

Reporters will respond "oh, but, we ran a fact check, we pointed out that people disagree..." And, yes, they're right, but the press can collectively turn "lying about important national policy affecting the entire country" into a kind of 24/7 thing they way "Al Gore 'lying' about inventing the internet" was, or they can just shrug it off as just another day in politics. Sure, they lied, but, hey, Hugh Hewitt says they didn't lie...

And, no, individual reporters aren't responsible for the collective, but I think individual reporters too often pretend the collective doesn't exist. Some stories go the Full OJ and some stories don't. No one person has the power to make that happen, but they all can choose whether or not this is, in fact, more important than Barack Obama not wearing a flag pin.

If you can't pay for health care you need in this country, you will probably die. Emergency rooms have to stabilize, but they don't have to treat you. That doesn't do much for, say, cancer.

Some Republicans are so rich that they're mostly right to think that none of this matters for them, personally, but most of them aren't (sure their health insurance is good, but not necessarily that of everyone in their extended families). I don't know how they can be the monsters that they are, apparently thinking no one they care about will ever get sick and face these problems. But monsters they are.

Anyway, call your senators. Call their DC offices. Call their local offices. Call the good ones and the bad ones. Call the Republicans and the Democrats. Be polite, but be direct.