The Politics of Spite

I was terribly disheartened by the response of many of our conservative Republican citizens to the loss of the Olympics for the City of Chicago and America.  Can it really be that we have citizens who are gleeful and thrilled that our country lost,  simply because they wished and hoped for embarrassment and failure for Barak Obama and the administration? 

Now we suddenly see these people for what they really are:  immature 12 year-old children who are motivated by spite!  We knew it subconsciously, but now it is blatantly obvious.

Do any of these selfish, malicious malcontents acknowledge the people that have lost a desperately needed opportunity to work or benefit from hosting the games?  Limbaugh and Beck were positively giddy that Obama had been thwarted and failed.  What kind of human beings are these?


This cabal of people are pissed simply because they cannot govern any more.  If they can’t be in control of things, then no one should!  Their view: better that the country have hardship; better that they can thwart any positive action at all that might make living in today’s world better for all Americans than for those damn liberal ‘socialists’ to succeed at running the country!  Their mission is to de-legitimize our President and his administration.  Republicans lost an election, but that is not enough.  They want to make sure that whoever is running things (since it is not them) fails!  It defies reason.

Suddenly the whole Health Care debate takes on a new perspective.  The Republicans, who have traditionally been the enemies of Medicare, are now howling that Obama’s push for a Public Option in the Health Care Reform Bill will somehow destroy Medicare.  Weren’t these the same people that fought tooth and nail to neuter Medicare during the Reagan and Clinton Administrations?   Morality be damned!---let’s make sure those Democrats just don’t succeed at anything!

Conservatives are so twisted in their abhorrence of anything that smacks of success at the hands of Barak Obama that they will stonewall issues even though they KNOW they are morally on the wrong side of an argument. 

Why is America the only developed country in the world where a major portion of its citizens don’t feel the moral obligation to care for one another?  In European countries that have successfully instituted universal health coverage, the citizens understand the need to make sure, from a moral perspective, that all members of society should have a basic right to be healthy, and are therefore willing to share resources to make that possible.  Here in the United States, we seem to have people who would rather focus on whether someone’s right to health care means they are somehow getting more than their fair share of resources, and therefore not deserve it! 

That is really twisted.  Being healthy is not about the quest for individual achievement and profit, and whether someone is getting something more than they deserve!  Being healthy is a basic right that is a moral imperative in a compassionate and caring society.

But now that we see the real motivation behind the obstructionist conservatives, we understand their true hearts.  The issue is only incidental!  The only important thing to these people is that whoever opposes them fail.  Their mantra is “let’s embarrass and obstruct anyone who is not us.  If we can’t govern, no one should be able to!  Any argument, even though it makes no sense and might be a lie, is okay in this quest!”

Unless we can somehow re-define the word “WE” in a way that is morally inclusive, or in a way that is productively positive for our society, then I fear we are lost as a country.