Dont need that any more luckily
Rosencrantz
5 years ago
| 1 | This is something I've been thinking about articulating in our conversations, but I haven't really figured out how to give the whole explanation over the phone, so I'm gonna write it instead: | |
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| 3 | One thing that you've said on numerous occasions is that you're proud of the fact that you're not political, you're laid-back, as long as things are good, you don't care too much, it's not important to you. I understand this point of view! | |
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| 5 | I also don't think it's a really commendable or desirable position, and I want to explain why. | |
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| 7 | As I've moved leftward politically, it's not because the principles I used to hold have ceased to be relevant for me. I still, for example, believe in the ideals of endeavouring to keep the government small, personal responsibility in various areas, private gun ownership, et cetera et cetera. One of the reasons I've moved leftward, though, is that I started to meet and talk to people who were affected by Republican policy choices, and these people are overwhelmingly more hurt by Republican policies than people are by Democrat policies. | |
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| 9 | Let me give a practical example: I know Obamacare has problems, and I understand that the taxes and paperwork from the ACA are difficult on people like your friends. On the other hand: before the ACA passed, Misty—a woman I love very dearly—_could not buy insurance_. I don't mean it was too expensive or difficult: I mean that, without the ACA, _literally no insurance company was willing to insure Misty because she was overweight_, and being overweight counted as a "pre-existing condition" that allowed all of them to simply deny her care. The ACA, despite its many faults, resulted in a world where the woman I love would not die because of a freak illness like she could have before. | |
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| 11 | Now look at current events from my point of view: the Republicans are going to repeal the ACA entirely, and are actively proud that they have no plan to reform it or replace it with another program. Now, this repeal is (according to the Congressional Budget Office) going to add an estimated $353 billion to the federal debt, destroy an estimated 2.6 million jobs across the U.S., and would allow an estimated 43,000 people to die every year that would have been otherwise covered under the ACA. On a personal level, we are choosing to go back to a world where the woman I love cannot buy her own health insurance: a world where a sudden illness at the wrong time means she might not be able to afford medical care. When the Democrats had their way, people were annoyed by paperwork and taxes; now that the Republicans have their way, people will literally die (and it doesn't even actually save money in the long term: most Americans taxes will go up because of the repeal!) | |
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| 13 | I _don't_ think the ACA is a _great_ piece of legislation. I think it had a lot of problems, and I had hoped that the Republicans would have chosen incremental reform, or maybe replacement with something leaner that accomplished similar goals. But unfortunately, the last eight years have resulted in a reactionary hatred of Obama that goes beyond compassion for citizens or even good sense, so the only result that Republican leadership will accept is a complete repeal. (This is, of course, despite the fact that a majority of the country—even, according to a recent poll, a majority of Fox News viewership!—supports the ACA.) | |
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| 15 | Now, there are two sides to this situation: on one hand, government overreach and taxes and paperwork; on the other, people dying. In this situation, what does it mean to stay 'neutral', to assert that you're 'not partisan' in this issue? It means—in practical terms to me—that you're as okay with the world where Misty is safe as you are with the world where she's at risk of dying from an ill-timed sickness. At best, asserting you're 'somewhere in the middle' evinces a lazily symmetrical worldview, and probably means that you're okay with some taxes but also some people dying. | |
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| 17 | There are a lot of situations today where the Republicans are doing things I think are reprehensible: for example, Ted Cruz is sponsoring the "First Amendment Defense Act", which means that people don't have to do their jobs if they object to serving someone for "religious or ethical reasons", which is a weaselly way of saying, "people can choose not to do their job if they don't want to serve gay people." It takes all the teeth out of federal non-discrimination laws: if a business chooses not to serve gays, and they claim to have some (even non-religious!) reason to, then the law stipulates that the federal government MUST defend them. | |
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| 19 | What does it mean to refuse to take a stand here, to say, 'I don't really care'? It means that you're as okay with a world where a doctor refuses a queer man treatment because he doesn't like LGBT people, as you are with a world where that man is guaranteed treatment. Maybe you'd prefer a middle ground: a doctor can avoid treating queer people as long as the doctor _really_ doesn't like them? The doctor has a limited number of 'religious exceptions' to treating queer people? | |
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| 21 | Now, there are definitely places where a reasoned middle ground makes sense, but when a political struggle consists of people on one side saying, "I should be allowed to survive," and people on the other side saying, "I should be allowed to do whatever I want, even if it means those on the other side won't survive," then I don't think that staying neutral is an ethically tenable position: it's a tacit way of accepting that the first group's right to stay alive is 'just an opinion', something that you can reasonably disagree with. |