About Me

My photo
Family and Friends is my everyday journal. Captain's Log is where I pontificate on religion and politics.

Friday, October 12, 2007

Is anyone out there?

I don't seem to get too many comments when I get on my soap box for some reason. BUT I'M GETTING ON IT ANYWAY!

Paul Krugman in today's Opinon page of the New York Times gives both barrels to the Great Sound Machine sliming a 12 year old boy suffering from head trauma for daring to speak truth to power.

All in all, the Graeme Frost case is a perfect illustration of the modern right-wing political machine at work, and in particular its routine reliance on character assassination in place of honest debate. If service members oppose a Republican war, they’re “phony soldiers”; if Michael J. Fox opposes Bush policy on stem cells, he’s faking his Parkinson’s symptoms; if an injured 12-year-old child makes the case for a government health insurance program, he’s a fraud.
Meanwhile, leading conservative politicians, far from trying to distance themselves from these smears, rush to embrace them. And some people in the news media are still willing to be used as patsies.
Politics aside, the Graeme Frost case demonstrates the true depth of the health care crisis: every other advanced country has universal health insurance, but in America, insurance is now out of reach for many hard-working families, even if they have incomes some might call middle-class.
And there’s one more point that should not be forgotten: ultimately, this isn’t about the Frost parents. It’s about Graeme Frost and his sister.
I don’t know about you, but I think American children who need medical care should get it, period. Even if you think adults have made bad choices — a baseless smear in the case of the Frosts, but put that on one side — only a truly vicious political movement would respond by punishing their injured children.

2 comments:

Raven1 said...

There are many difficulties and "wrongs" in this society. These can only be changed by a fundamental, internal change of the entire cultural aspect. When we learn that there IS enough of everything for everyone, when no one has to go without to show our power, then we will become a powerful society.
Until there is a change in the thinking of our entire population, political change is impossible. We must learn that we are all part of one Universal Whole and that when we harm one we harm all--including ourselves. The political system was invented to reward bullies, it was perpetuated by them to prove their "rightness" and now we have a huge mess.
To affect this change we must begin one-on-one to recognize the Divine in everyone and then employ the great rule: Do Unto Other As You Would Be Done Unto. This is the only way these things will change. When we do this--and I do mean with an immediate neighbor, not a distant neighbor, then we will begin to see change come about. When we stop supporting the bullies who bully us, we will affect change.
When we stop practicing exclusivism and start seeing the whole instead of the parts, then we can affect change, too. When our churches, schools, and media promote kindness and concern instead of competition and crassness, we will begin to get better as a whole.
How does this happen? One single person being kind, loving, thoughtful and gentle to another. It's highly contagious, there's no known cure, and it's priceless. It's a radical grass-roots movement that is the only known remedy to the horrors we now call "THE GREATEST NATION ON EARTH". Must we be nations? Can we not just be people caring for people? The Berlin Wall couldn't hold hearts, so it tumbled. The cruelties and injustices we see everyday can't hold true hearts either. Those hearts must make those "walls" crumble too.
To paraphrase an old TV show--"we have the technology"--it's simple--just care. It does amazing things.

P M Prescott said...

I appreciate you coming by and sharing your views. I agree that there should be more interconnectedness. Most governments are set up to protect the bullies, but our Constitution was designed to restrict with checks and ballances the abuse of power. It's the destruction of those checks and ballances that worry me and many others who deplore what our Country has become in only seven years.