In the beginning there was California's Disneyland, then came Florida's Disneyworld. Now Republicans have given us Fantasyland. Dick Cheney's self-serving arguments about national security and torture are most likely an attempt to protect himself and his pals at the top of a profoundly corrupt pyramid. How often over what period of time did torture deliver meaningful, timely information? Reports suggest most useful intelligence had already been extracted from high-level detainees before "enhanced interrogation methods" were employed. The claim that torture was successful is quite possibly that it produced results that had already been generated by other methods.
And of the more stunning descents into the world of intellectual befuddlement and deceit the House floor speech Representative Phil Gingrey, R. of Georgia delivered last Thursday was a classic. One of the country's great fantasists, Gingrey questioned the premise that forty-seven million Americans are without health insurance, claiming such statistics are derived from unreliable phone polls and fail to make the case for change in the way health care is delivered in this country. With a series of hypothetical situations he found ways to delete millions of uninsured from the final tally.
He suggested, for instance, that some of the uninsured are temporarily unemployed and would return to jobs that provide health insurance - - remove a million or so, despite the fact that employers are offering fewer and more limited benefits when and if they rehire. And if some calls were received by illegals they would of course hang up rather than answer questions, subtract, say ten million. Then there are young people earning around $50 thousand who are "athletic" and healthy and don't see a need to buy insurance - - subtract more millions. That special group might choose to invest what they would have spent on health insurance and build a sizeable nest egg. No problem there.
On the other hand, people who have been careless about their health and end up having heart attacks, a touch of the gout or other maladies, will find that of course they must pay more for coverage in later life even as they are about to enter the Medicare rolls. In the final analysis, between his hypotheticals and the other colorful inventions he uses, his final estimate of the actual uninsured population is around ten or fifteen million. We shouldn't, therefore, get too exorcised about the plight of the uninsured. Problem addressed, mission accomplished. Gingrey, an Obgyn, should know, right? But without adequate insurance, for example, recent prescriptions for a dermatological tube of cream cost over $200 and five pills for a minor infection cost $70. Ho-hum.
Unfortunately the la-la-land approach in Congress and the right-wing media works for some segments of the population who absorb the mean-spirited drivel from factually impaired sources. For devotees of Hannity, O'Reilly, Beck and Limbaugh the diffused reality they create with their overblown rhetoric is often the only source many of their listeners transmit to their data banks from which they form opinions and make judgments.
It doesn't seem to filter through the maze of pundit-created minutiae that the issues upon which they focus are unrelated to the larger world. Hannity actually took time to comment that President Obama used Dijon mustard on his cheeseburger - - proof for the mindless that he is after all an elitist. But when it comes to the big stuff, forget the details, just throw out terms like big spender, socialist, fascist, take your pick, as long as it builds a distorted picture of the man and what he's trying to accomplish. Mustard and health care, arugula and education - - mix them all together and you get a hopeless tangle of talking points that blur the already dim perception of too many ordinary Americans.
Stalwart Party mouthpiece Rush Limbaugh's outrageous statements about conservative politics wouldn't be so detestable if they weren't accompanied by vicious ad hominem attacks against people of far greater worth and accomplishment than whatever deluded image of himself he has concocted. His assertion that General Colin Powell's reason for supporting Barack Obama was based entirely on race was insulting to both men and indicative of the narrow mindset that seems to inform the body of Limbaugh's listeners. If his rationale for Powell's support of Obama holds up, does it follow that Limbaugh supporters are white, OxyContin-pill-popping, fat old men?
Consistency is said to be "the hobgoblin of small minds." The right-wing flank is lamentably consistent in all its dependably wrong, small-minded, fantastical ways.
