Blackmoor Vituperative

Taking into account both the costs of coverage expansion and the savings that would be achieved through the Medicare for All Act, we calculate that a single-payer, universal health-care system is likely to lead to a 13% savings in national health-care expenditure, equivalent to more than US$450 billion annually (based on the value of the US$ in 2017). The entire system could be funded with less financial outlay than is incurred by employers and households paying for health-care premiums combined with existing government allocations. This shift to single-payer health care would provide the greatest relief to lower-income households. Furthermore, we estimate that ensuring health-care access for all Americans would save more than 68,000 lives and 1.73 million life-years every year compared with the status quo.

“The Lancet”, Volume 395, ISSUE 10223, P524-533, February 15, 2020

People who are fine with white nationalism will be voting.

People who are OK with kids in cages will be voting.

People who are good with Kurds being murdered will be voting.

People who are terrified of LGBTQ people will be voting.

People who believe FoxNews is objective truth will be voting.

People who think Trump was sent by God will be voting.

Politicians are NOT all “just as bad”. If you don’t vote, you are standing aside while the worst of them take your silence as consent to screw over you and your children and every living thing on the planet.

If you refuse to vote, you are making a statement. That statement is, “Do what you want with me, and my friends, and my family, and every helpless person at your mercy. I will not lift a finger to stop you.”

Conservative Christians believe their rights are in peril partly because that’s what they’re hearing, quite explicitly, from conservative media, religious elites, partisan commentators and some politicians, including the president. The survey evidence suggests another reason, too. Their fear comes from an inverted golden rule: Expect from others what you would do unto them. White evangelical Protestants express low levels of tolerance for atheists, which leads them to expect intolerance from atheists in return. That perception surely bolsters their support for Trump. They believe their freedom depends on keeping Trump and his party in power.

— White evangelicals fear atheists and Democrats would strip away their rights. Why?, By Paul A. Djupe

To summarize, among atheists who said they loathed Christian fundamentalists more than any other religious group, 65% still said they would be perfectly fine with those Christians having the same rights as everyone else. But among white evangelicals who hated atheists the most — even more than “white supremacists” — only 32% would say the same.

This is a core difference between the two groups and it illustrates why the “both sides are the same” argument is ridiculous. We’re not equally dogmatic but on opposite sides of the spectrum. In fact, these results just emphasize a point I’ve made repeatedly on this site: Atheists fight for religious neutrality, while white evangelicals fight for Christian supremacy.

— Study Shows White Evangelicals Want Christian Supremacy, Not “Religious Freedom”, By Hemant Mehta

“You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you:
‘These people honor me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me.
They worship me in vain;
their teachings are merely human rules.’ “

— Matthew 15:7-9

Everything in the way the US government is organized is a compromise. From the two chambers of the US legislature, to the Bill Of Rights, to the Electoral College, literally every sentence in our founding documents is a compromise between competing interests (that is a thing that Americans used to be able to do).

The Electoral College was a compromise which was appropriate for its time. In the 1700s, the federal government was weak, the President was little more than a figurehead, and the states were de facto each an individual country.

The question we should ask today is, does the Electoral College do more good than harm for the 21st century USA? It clearly disenfranchises people. The votes of millions of California Republicans, for example, mean absolutely nothing in a Presidential election. They may as well not even be counted. Is that the way things should be?

I was a capital-L Libertarian for a decade or so. The thing is, they are absolutely opposed to the initiation of physical force, because it’s the single greatest infringement of another person’s liberty. I think this is a good thing. For one thing, it would make the USA far less of an analogue of the Empire in Star Wars.

There are, unfortunately, two rather significant problems with libertarians. First, although they are opposed to the initiation of force, far too many of them fetishize the idea of retaliation. Once you do that, it becomes very easy to rationalize any violence or atrocity, because after all, “they started it”. You’ve seen the Gadsden flag, I assume, the one with the snake? “Don’t tread on me”? That’s not a celebration of living in peace and harmony: it’s a fetish symbol for someone who wants the opportunity to use violence and is looking for an excuse.

The second major problem with libertarians is that they are purposefully blind to the fact that physical violence is not the only form of coercion. A libertarian is perfectly fine with a single company buying all of the patents on a life-saving drug and then demanding your life savings for a dose of it, because that’s not physical violence — but it is obviously a direct “your money or your life” form of coercion, to everyone not blinded by their religious fervor. And it is a religious fervor, make no mistake. When you adhere to a creed or philosophy in defiance of the clear and measurable harm that philosophy causes, you have become a religious zealot — a fanatic.

Pick big fights with your enemies, not small fights with your friends. “Micro aggression” is nonsense, when there is macro aggression to worry about, and there is no such thing as “cultural appropriation”. Culture spreads and changes, or it stagnates and dies — there is no third choice.

There is too much at stake for us to get distracted by pettiness. Don’t be the wanker criticizing the wallpaper on the Titanic.

Psychologist Valerie Tarico has written a very interesting article, “Political Narrative II: Why Some Progressives Are Tearing Each Other Apart“. I have said, many times (and sadly, I think I will have many opportunities to say it again), clinging to past grievances — no matter how valid they are — is not the way to make a better future. At some point, you must put the past behind you, if you want to move beyond it. We need to focus on making tomorrow better than today. Not perfect: perfection is not an option, and we will never make any progress if we insist on that. Just make tomorrow better than today.

As an aside, this also provides me with an insight into some of my more conservative friends. I see them making comments (often defensive comments, as though they’ve been attacked) about “liberals”, but those comments seem to come out of nowhere. It’s because those defensive comments aren’t aimed at me, or people like me — they are aimed at what this article calls the Structural Oppression group.

I look forward to the day when one’s skin colour, facial features, and sex are as easily changed as hair length and hair colour are now — and are finally treated as the superficial traits they are.

At the risk of pouring gasoline on a bonfire, I think we have erred by making the Constitution part of our national religion. People shout out the numbers of Amendments like they are magic spells to ward off evil.

The Constitution is not holy text carved into tablets by a god. The rules our government operates under were written by people who thought they were a good idea at the time, just like all of our other laws. And just like all of our other laws, what people actually intended is subject to debate, how they will be implemented is subject to the discretion of later generations, and they can and should be changed when later generations decide that’s a good idea at the time.

It wasn’t that long ago that oral sex was illegal in Virginia. Just because someone wrote it down and people voted on it, doesn’t necessarily make it wise or right or even reasonable.

They’re just rules. Rules can be changed.