Wingnuttery
One of the most peculiar characteristics of wingnuts is to assume that everything they don’t like is somehow connected. Witness this classic by Daniel Johnson that blames socialized medicine for terrorism:
The fact that the Al Qaeda plot to detonate car bombs in London and Glasgow was carried out by doctors working for the National Health Service has shocked the British public far more than the fact that they were Muslims.
The notion that the NHS might have been infiltrated by jihadists from the Middle East is as disturbing as the emergence two years ago of young British Muslim suicide bombers.
In fact, it is more disturbing, not just because doctors are meant to save lives rather than commit mass murder, but because the violation of this inner sanctum of the British way of life threatens the whole idea of integration — which is meant to be the answer to Islamism. The line between integration and infiltration is a thin one.
The NHS is the nearest thing to a religion that the British now have. For half a century the British have convinced themselves that the NHS is the envy of the world. It is — for the third world. And it is the third world’s doctors and nurses who keep alive this socialist cult of security from cradle to grave.
All you have to do is add in some dark conspiracy theories involving gays, the French and Janet Jackson’s nipple, and you have a virtual potpourri of wingnut grievances. How did so these people become so stupid? I’m at a loss to understand.
I’m betting it’s the lead paint chips.
it is the third world’s doctors and nurses who keep alive this socialist cult of security from cradle to grave.
What does that even mean?
Last Sunday I saw “Sicko” and came home to greet my neighbor watering his front law. He’s a nice guy, Christian, right-wing, but (thankfully) not a bigot like so many of these assholes are. So I tolerate him.
I told him about the movie, how much it affected me. He’s a business owner and employs about 50 people. He lamented that he pays huge premiums for health insurance for his employees. I said, France seems to have a pretty good system. He looked at me as if I had asked him to eat cat crap.
“I hate France” he said. “They’re so French”.
He then went on to say that the French system was a failure because it was run by the government, like Medicare, and all government entities suck (except the military). He said his seventy-eight year-old mother had gotten excellent care for her cancer, including experimental treatment, all from Medicare. But she hates the government because they are just incompetent idiots. And he hates them too.
I call this the “crazy conversation”. And I have it, at least once, with every conservative I know. Every single one.
Oh, fer christ’s sake! I can make an argument linking National Health to terrorism: socialized medicine depresses doctor’s salaries and therefore the UK is forced to rely on foreign doctors to make their healthcare system work. This allows terrorists to infiltrate the country. Therefore, National Health caused the car bombs.
There! It is not a GOOD argument and it probably lacks any sort of, you know actual evidence to support it. But at least it is an argument unlike pinhead Johnson who just kind of blathers. I have to fight this urge to rewrite the wingnuts so they make sense!
Oh, if this argument shows up on NRO anytime soon, I’ll be expecting a check.
#
“Notorious P.A.T. said,
July 7, 2007 at 2:44
it is the third world’s doctors and nurses who keep alive this socialist cult of security from cradle to grave.
What does that even mean?”
Oh P.A.T. It doesn’t have to make sense, just so long as it sounds vaguely sinister and has one of the following words: Liberal, Socialism, Islam, or Secular.
We’re supposed to be copaying them over there so we don’t have to copay them over here. The system is broken!!
It all goes back to the mysterious bullet hole in Ron Brown’s body before the Clintons crashed his plane to kill all the witnesses.
What does that even mean?
Michael Moore is teh Fat.
it is the third world’s doctors and nurses who keep alive this socialist cult of security from cradle to grave.
What does that even mean?
I think it means that cradle to grave security for the people of your nation is bad. That it’s better to build aircraft carriers, submarines, stealth bombers and nuclear missiles than it is to take care of your people, educate them, give them health care, make your nation healthy and prosperous. Because for heavens sake, if we can’t dominate and threaten other nations they won’t think we’re “serious”.
Stupid mindless sheepfuckers have already squandered all the benefits of post WW-II American prosperity. Pissed away over nothing….
mikey
We mock what we do not understand.
It’s quite simple. Terrorists HATE OUR WAY OF LIFE. Our way of life includes privatized health care. Therefore terrorists hate privatized health care. If you hate privitized health care, you are like a terrorist.
How did they become so stupid?
It’s the freaky christian homeschoolers.
The NHS is the nearest thing to a religion that the British now have.
You mean, aside from actual religion? Because I’m pretty sure that they still have actual religion over there.
Who the fuck “taught” these idiots how to write?
You just want to mash some of these idiots’ faces in dog food they are so FUCKING STCHEWPID.
“The NHS is the nearest thing to a religion that the British now have.”
…You mean, besides the Church of England?
“the closest thing the British people have to a religion”
are you fucking kidding me? The doctors who attempted the bombing have a religion kiddo. God at least the “It’s all Islam’s fault” had some coherent, albeit bigotted logic to it. This is just embarrassing in its stupidity. How does this man even own a computer!
Fucking a
Me–
Nice (ie, blood-curdling) story.
I am moved to ask: Is this, in the end, a conflict over emotion (wing-nut religiosity in all its deistic and secular forms) and rational intellect? What they say is beyond “stupid.” It’s of another order of wrong. “I hate France. They’re so French.” Did he really say this? What kind of person really says this?
My new theory: the right starts with an emotion–“patriotism,” they think, which is really dorky insecurity, faux-“warrior” grandiosity, religious egotistical “I’m-saved”, etc–and derives its theories (sic) from that. The left–we, at least–have some purchase on sanity and sensible understanding of the difference between our personalities, our egos and needs and fears, and the real world.
I know. I’m writing like Dr. Bronner. THAT’S how bugged I get.
Additional comment:
My wife and I just celebrated our second anniversary by donating $$ to our fave sites. We each wanted to give $100. Her to firedoglake, me to S,N!
Imagine my surprise when the Amazon donation mechanism assessed a limit of $50! THAT’s how sane and reasonable these lads are. So I bowed to the regulation.
But isn’t it the thought that counts?
two points:
1) yes, it’s the freaky homeschoolers. i had the argument about centralized health care with a friend just a couple days ago who tried to tell me that we can’t trust the government with our children. yes, he also thinks immunizations are a conspiracy.
2) my uncle, net worth in the low seven figures, hates taxes, gun control, Hillary, and all this blasted socialism we keep on about with health care. care to venture a guess whether or not he’s already found shelters for his money so he can accept Medicare in his old age?
Five will get you ten this is also, in part, a response to Sicko.
And this:
Can only be met with one response:
Sadly, no.
Now that Sicko is playing in a zillion US theatres – and getting rave reviews even from some Republicans and Fox movie critics – is it any surprise a wingnut would try this scare tactic?
Sadly?
Ah. I had to take a last minute business trip to Arizona.
I managed to get away to the Grand Canyon today, and hike a couple miles down Grand View trail.
Hooray, National Parks Service!
The NHS is the nearest thing to a religion that the British now have.
No, there is this institution called the Church of England. For starters. Just WHO is the audience for this piece of crap assertion??? Someone from another planet?
For half a century the British have convinced themselves that the NHS is the envy of the world.
Obviously this is just pulled right outta yer ass.
It is — for the third world. And it is the third world’s doctors and nurses who keep alive this socialist cult of security from cradle to grave.
Everyone posting above has hit the money quote on this: WTF???
oops. Some guy and Seitz beat me to it. Guess it pays to read everyone before posting. 🙂
Private health insurance obviously works sooooo much better than a universal or single payer system does. We should privatize everything.
Like our prisons.
Fuck it. Let’s privatize every single goddamn thing in the whole fucking country. Let’s add a “please enter your sixteen digit credit card number to proceed” recording to the beginning of the 911 line. Let’s turn our libraries into bookstores. Let’s charge arrestees for the costs incurred in detaining them and investigating their crimes – it worked for the Inquisition. Hell, let’s not even prosecute criminals unless the offended party is prepared to bear the cost of the prosecution. The purpose of the state is to enforce contracts and defend the borders, right? Anything more than that is socialism. Well, fuck it. Let’s give these lunatic candyasses what they want, and me and mikey will show them what life looks like in their perfect, corporatist-libertarian state looks like. Because after all, the police are just an imposition of oppressive state authority where it does not belong – so who’s gonna stop us?
Sorry to drag your name in on this, mikey – you know I love you. I just get so darn tired of people making it sound like the slightest attempt to provide for the common welfare is an evil plot from the pit of hell.
Okay, after watching this, I think I feel a little better.
There’s no real video with it, but the audio makes it all worthwhile.
just one more time-
The NHS is the nearest thing to a religion that the British now have.
How long has the Church of England been around? In the States we call it Episcople. There are no others? It’s fortunate that there are some brain functions that are automatic because someone this stupid would not otherwise be able to breath.
Jillian is so freakin’ hot when she gets smart and angry. Okay, she’s always smart, but I’m digging the angry stuff.
Big Brother is the nearest thing we Brits have to religion these days. There is also some weird madcap religion where they go round worshipping female deities known as WAGs.
Resisting the tempation to write an essay on the Anglican Communion; but bronco214 asks rhetorically how long the Church of England has been around. Most people would say, since Henry VIII; but really, according to its own story, it has been around since the Venerable Bede, way over 1,000 years. Used to pay allegiance to Rome, but had to separate from it in the 16th century. But that’s beside the point, like the way the church that has spurned foreign bishops for 500 years has now got a lot of US churches that have put themselves under the authority of a Nigerian bishop.
Anyway, what has the wingnuts perennially riled is that church attendance has gone way down in England, and so has any seriousness about religion except among immigrants. Compared to the chest-beating public religiosity here, it’s pathetic. This, in a country that used to be profoundly and pervasively Christian. Really; Bloody Mary and Cromwell (either of them, come to think of it) were not about indifference to religion. On top of that, the C of E not nearly fanatical enough. It’s full of liberals and revisionists. And it’s blown about by the winds of change and fashion.
(This, I guess, is why its 39 Articles of faith have not changed in 400 years — a hell of a lot more than you can say of Rome. But I’m reciting the wingnut case here, so shut up.)
So, any dig they can make at religion in England is irresistible, and if it makes no sense, does that matter? I ask you.
Finally, let us think of a time and place that took religion seriously and had a properly established church with enough power. Say, 17th-century Italy. Now contemplate people there talking about the Church in the way the English do about the Naitonal Health, which we’re told is their real religion.
Right.
Wasn’t it the UK where they almost got Jedi listed as a religion?
“…this socialist cult of security from cradle to grave.”
But isn’t “Security for All Americans” why Dubya ordered the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq?
“…You mean, besides the Church of England?”
Well, the Church of England is more of a social club and provider of halls for hire than a religion…
Bradrocket: How did so these people become so stupid? I’m at a loss to understand.
Kidding aside, I think I might’ve stumbled on a partial answer:
(Quotes from a 1960’s examination of “thought reform” in totalitarian China.)
“They hate us for our freedom”, for example, is easy to say, impervious to argument, and comfortingly ignores the complexities of the role the US has played in the world. It makes a great short-term talking point if your goal is to get people to STFU. But for those who adopt and repeat it, it becomes a barrier to realistic analysis and creative thought.
Every successful Limbaughesque soundbite is a mental short circuit. Multiply that reductive, imagination-reducing effect by the myriad of Winger talking points and its not hard to see how you quickly wind up with a movement made of oatmeal-brained idjits who can only ever clinch their fists and scream louder.
Every C of E reference needs a little cake or death
Old Marky Steyn has already been cracking this line, at this stage you don’t know whether to laugh or cry:
The fact of the matter is that I don’t want to want health care, but socialized health care systems leave you with an exaggerated dependence on foreign doctors. In Britain, in 2003, the year before this guy came, 58% of the new doctors registered on Britain’s national health service came from foreign countries. And these people exploited that weakness. You didn’t need a work permit to become a doctor in Britain. And they were inserted into Britain for that very purpose.
http://hughhewitt.townhall.com/Transcript_Page.aspx?ContentGuid=d1287988-3561-44c8-93da-905d72073fa0
“The fact of the matter is that I don’t want to want health care, but socialized health care systems leave you with an exaggerated dependence on foreign doctors. In Britain, in 2003, the year before this guy came, 58% of the new doctors registered on Britain’s national health service came from foreign countries. And these people exploited that weakness. You didn’t need a work permit to become a doctor in Britain. And they were inserted into Britain for that very purpose.”
…So, universal health care will never work, because there is/was a loophole in the system this one other country uses.
See, us stupid people would suggest that, hey, maybe we could try to learn from what other countries have done, and do it better.
Not Mark. He just deep six’s the entire project.
Hey, I don’t care what Daniel says. I *do* envy Britain their NHS. Lower costs, better results . . . what’s not to envy?
Stupid mindless sheepfuckers
Hey, now, on behalf of all New Zealanders, I take umbrage at your categorisation of sheepfuckers as stupid and mindless. Some of them have university degrees, you know. Admittedly mostly in Agricultural Science or Geology, but degrees nonetheless. And they can be quite deep thinkers.
What?
For half a century the British have convinced themselves that the NHS is the envy of the world.
Clearly this knobhead has never seen any British comedy from the last 30 or 40 years. Particularly during the Thatcher regime, when much of Britain was flushed down the bog to the sound of strident complaint from the losers (many) and glib self-congratulations from the winners (damned few).
“How did they become so stupid?”
God did it.
And why is everything they hate described as a “religion”? Darwin, Socialized medicine, the enviromental movement even atheism is mocked as “religion”. Isn’t getting some religion good for the soul?
dan b said,
July 7, 2007 at 5:20
two points:
[snip]
2) my uncle, net worth in the low seven figures, hates taxes, gun control, Hillary, and all this blasted socialism we keep on about with health care. care to venture a guess whether or not he’s already found shelters for his money so he can accept Medicare in his old age?
—
My father, adamant Republican and apologist for the system that screwed him in middle-age when he finally started making good money (not that he’d been poor, just way underpaid for the contribution he made to the company he worked for most of his adult life), used to rail against most forms of government services–at least the ones he didn’t use. He loved the Parks Service, though, because he fished and backpacked. I went to state universities all the way through my doctorate, always on scholarship or fellowship, and that was just dandy with him.
Moreover, for the last 10-15 years of his life, he got all his health care through the VA. He was discharged from the military in the early 50s, and as far as I know, none of his health problems were in any way service-related: they were the normal consequences of growing old, and the lung cancer that killed him was essentially self-inflicted. While in his era probably most soldiers smoked, you couldn’t really say it was a consequence of his military service.
He was smart, educated, and kept himself well-informed, but he could never allow himself to see the contradiction between his stated position on government programs and his own exploitation of them when it suited his purposes.
To ramble on a little further on a semi-related topic, one of the points some blogger or other made about the health care issue is that not having universal health care stifles creativity and entrepeneurship. People who might have a great idea for a small business, or want to open a restaurant, or who want to be artists or freelancers in some capacity simply can’t take the risk of quitting their jobs and losing health insurance, especially if they have families who need it. Have you seen the premiums for even minimal health coversage for a family if you’re buying it independantly? And what if your spouse or kid has a “pre-existing condition.”? I have a friend who is a very well-known (at least in the very small world of classical music) composer. Her husband is a concert pianist. They live in Germany. They have a child who is about 5 now. It’s a struggle sometimes, but they manage. As is often in the case in the arts, there’s a lot of feast or famine: commissions or concerts will be abundant for a while, then dry up for a while. One of the things they told me that made it possible for them to do what they do, especially with a child, was simply not having to worry about medical issues. They are covered and their child is covered, merely by virtue of where they live. They are free to pursue unconventional careers in part because they know they are not risking the health of their child by not having a job just for the sake of the health insurance.
Not that we need more composers, particularly, but how many talented and creative people can’t do what they do best in this country, not because they are unwilling to eat beans and rice for a while, or otherwise live modestly, but because they can’t afford not to have health insurance for their child?
“Have you seen the premiums for even minimal health coversage for a family if you’re buying it independantly?”
Have you seen premiums for insurance you get through work? My wife & I dropped our insurance when it went up to $1000 a month for two people. Office visits were only $10 cheaper w/ ins. than w/o. BTW, we are both artists so we decided not to have kids.
…
Holy Jesus CHRIST, what the FUCK is wrong with you people?
Private health insurance makes the baby jesus cry.
Kingubu, thanks for the excerpts from the Chinese “thought reform” piece. Even what little you posted describes pretty accurately my biggest frustration in teaching writing to college freshmen. To address their “totalist” approach to both language and thought, I ask them to read Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language.” Most of them won’t do it. And when I call them on it (“What’s up, guys? You were assigned to read this. Why didn’t you?”) they’d rather let me believe they’re lazy than that they found it too difficult or too uncomfortable to read.
Doc Washboard, I get angry a lot lately.
It’s just that usually, I swallow it up – it goes down better with a good scotch, I’ve found.
But there are times that not even the best alcohol will wash it down. Right now, when I’ve got a stack of medical bills piling up from a goddamn infected hangnail that I had treated and submitted to my health insurance for payment……it’s just not going down at all.
And why is everything they hate described as a “religion”? Darwin, Socialized medicine, the enviromental movement even atheism is mocked as “religion”. Isn’t getting some religion good for the soul?
This has been something that has interested me about the Authoritarian’s thought process for a while. Yes, they do seem to describe Environmentalism, for example, as a ‘religion’, when in fact it is more like a social movement, or even just a mindset.
I think it may have something to do with the Authoritarians being unable to imagine folks who don’t think the way they do. To many of these people, religion is everything. Their entire lives are dominated and regulated by religious rules and ideals, be they Christian, or Muslim, or whatever. And so, they imagine that people who are into the environment must be the same way.
The possibility that someone could be, say, a Methodist who is also an Environmentalist, just makes them suspicious that the person in question is pretending to be a Methodist, but really gives their allegience to the ‘religion’ of Environmentalism. Because you can’t serve two Gods, in their way of thinking.
I think that that may be part of the reason that people like this Daniel Johnson character say, “The NHS is the nearest thing to a religion that the British now have.” Their first mental reflex is to imagine that all other people think the way they do, but serve a different God. It may not be the whole reason, but I do think that it’s part of the reason.
Pretty much everyone who should be doing creative work finds a way to do it no matter what. What stops them from working is winding up dead or disabled because they couldn’t afford health insurance for themselves.
I think you need to clarify the intro here. You suggest that the wingnuts don’t like terrorism.
It’s the Islamic-terrorism they find offensive.
Terrorism carried out by right-wing, South-American paramilitaries on the other-hand…
I’ve never understood why wing-nuts decry socialized medicine on the basis that you “don’tt get to choose your doctor” and that the services would be “rationed” and that you’d interact with foreigners.
Have they never darkened the doorway of the American medical industry in the last twenty years? Do they have super gold-plated medical insurance where all their doctors are white men and they get everything they need without waiting?
I actually DO have super gold plated medical insurance, of a sort; I work for a City government and my health insurance doesn’t cost me a dime. I recently had a bit of minor but annoying surgery that also didn’t cost me a dime, except for the office visit co-payments.
I honestly don’t know what it would be like to pay for health insurance, having been a parasitic employee of public agencies for over 20 years.
However – the bureacratic process of getting my appointments drove me insane,and the amount of paper-pushing and runaround was excessive. And certainly the medical professionals I encountered were of a broad variety of human ethnicities, and I’m damned sure that many of them were not American citizens (btw, the patients reflected the same diversity).
I’m just saying – this is my experience with GOOD health insurance in the US. What must it be like for those with meager insurance, or worse?
So – how can any wingnut assert that we have it so good here that we can’t risk ruining it so that other less fortunate people are covered and so that costs are lowered?
S’okay, Jillian. I’ve got your flank security forever!
mikey
athiest said-I think it may have something to do with the Authoritarians being unable to imagine folks who don’t think the way they do.
Good point, but I wouldn’t limit that trait to Authoritarians. It’s hard work to put yourself into someone elses shoes. I have to stop myself from thinking people are stupid for not thinking like me, more now than ever it seems.
Good point, but I wouldn’t limit that trait to Authoritarians. It’s hard work to put yourself into someone elses shoes. I have to stop myself from thinking people are stupid for not thinking like me, more now than ever it seems. Yes,but,they are authoritatively stupid.Just my 2 cents.
Good point, but I wouldn’t limit that trait to Authoritarians. It’s hard work to put yourself into someone elses shoes. I have to stop myself from thinking people are stupid for not thinking like me, more now than ever it seems.
True. It definitely is hard to understand a different mindset than your own.
If I don’t watch myself, my own mental reflex is to imagine that Authoritarians aka Wingnuts must all have some kind of hidden scheme to get rich from their Wingnuttery. I reflexively imagine that their beliefs are really just put-ons. Because if I was saying something as crazy as, “Iraqis are actually very happy that we invaded their country”, or “Gays are part of a grand conspiracy to sap our precious reproductive juices”, I would be either putting people on, or saying some bullshit to keep my job, or merely trying to hurt someone. Something like that.
But no- it really seems that most of the ‘Wingnuts’ aka Authoritarians actually believe the crazy crap that they say! And that fact is very hard for me to wrap my mind around.
Now, it does sometimes seem like some of them are, in fact, more opportunists than true believers. But it is hard to know which ones are which.
“Yes,but,they are authoritatively stupid.Just my 2 cents.”
Right. Some people who talk like idiots really are fucking idiots. The hard work is figuring out who is who, and not ripping your own eyes out in the proccess.
“The NHS is the nearest thing to a religion that the British now have.”
You mean, aside from actual religion? Because I’m pretty sure that they still have actual religion over there.
That argument comes from the wrong direction. In Wingnut-World, the sludgey mixture of jingoism, ignorance, and sloganeering they know as “Patriotism” lights up the same neurons as the toxic brew of xenophobia and superstition that passes for “Religion” in their tiny reptile brains. When Britons talk about the good parts, the accomplishments, of the British Government, the National Health Service is one of the positives (even when lamenting Thatcherism’s attempts to destroy the NHS or riffing on the various inadequacies of the system). Since the Wingnut Welfare Wankers don’t see the British behaving “patriotically” by WWW standards — no ‘Support Our Troops’ bumper stickers, no ‘We’ll put a boot in yer arse, it’s the Commonwealth Way’ radio hits, neither the Queen nor the Prime Minister strutting about in faux-military gear — their lizard brains believe that the Brits just aren’t, well, they don’t love their country so they don’t love their Maker, right? Ask Christopher Hitchens, he had to convert, er, change his nationality after NineElevenChangedEverything because there is no patriotism in Britain! And now that he’s become A Real Amurkin, he’s stopped talking smack about Mother Teresa! Ergo, Patriotism is Religion is Patriotism, and stop rolling your eyes, silly moonbats!
A qestion for Qetesh:
Hey, now, on behalf of all New Zealanders, I take umbrage at your categorisation of sheepfuckers as stupid and mindless. Some of them have university degrees, you know. Admittedly mostly in Agricultural Science or Geology, but degrees nonetheless.
“Geology”? Are they spelunking? Just what sort of sheep are y’all husbanding (as it were) out there?
OT: I think atheist is on to something, with the “can’t serve two masters” idea, and that may well explain the casual dismissal of evolution, global warming, and all of modern science by many people. But that way of thinking about things wasn’t some mass, spontaneous realization. There’s been a concerted effort to reduce scientific consensus to a matter of faith. Who has led that effort? Who has supported it? Those are the bastards who should be held to account.
Who has led that effort? Who has supported it? Those are the bastards who should be held to account.
Good point vetiver. Just off the top of my head I would say the American Fundamentalist movement, with their ‘intelligent design’, and similar ideas. But I don’t really have the definitive straight dope on that. Could be something to research more. Maybe pharyngula, or Talk2Action would be good places to start.
[…] Comment on Wingnuttery by <b>Aging</b> Hipster […]