During the Bush administration the left was quick to yell about fascism and coercion. Whether it was Natalie Maines Dixie Chix or the Patriot act. The media seemed to buy in to this with if not outrage at least sympathy.
Now that we have a new administration encouraging people to inform on people who are against the current health care reform or threatening insurance companies the outrage has stopped.
Most of these things are a non issue for me. However the latest deal where if the insurance industry wants to point out problems they see from their perspective with the health care reform congress threatens them with legislation just seems wrong.
This truly is an abuse of power.
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I'm unfamiliar with the whole "inform on people who are against the reform" bit, so I can't comment on that. Unfamiliar with the legislation threats, too.
ReplyDeleteI think that the substance of what Bush was doing differs from the substance of what Obama is going for, and so I think it's not mostly a double-standard, but that many people on the left (me included, often) just happen to actually agree with what's going on now.
I think you have a point to some extent, though. And I think the reasons behind it are something like this:
I didn't trust George W. Bush. At all. So just about anything that he did that looked suspicious made me very nervous. Among the many, many reasons that I didn't trust him is the fact that George W. Bush seemed, from the very beginning, to perceive people like me as his enemies. There wasn't really an effort for bipartisanship... and I don't even mean the "reaching across the aisle" kind, I mean the "we all live here together and we need to try to at least tolerate eachother" kind. There was an awful lot of "you're for me or you're against me" rhetoric, and it wasn't aimed only at the "terrorists" in other countries. Me and people like me were part of the "culture of death," there was this vibe that liberals clearly hated America. Animal rights and environmental groups were called the number one terrorist threat in America. Requests for dialogue were ignored. People that I know were thrown in jail (and some of them are still there) for very fishy reasons. After 9/11, there was just this heightened sense of... I don't know what to call it... but it was ugly, and I often felt that I had to look over my shoulder, watch what I said, that there was this climate of "hate the liberal" going on. It was not cool.
And so, in that environment, when a president who clearly doesn't like your kind says that he's going to start tapping phones (or rather, doesn't say it, but has it done), or when people are arrested as "enemy combatants" and are denied access to lawyers, well, you start to be sensitive. You get touchy about things that maybe wouldn't bother you nearly so much coming from someone who either shares some of your ideals, or at least seems willing to let you go on your way without a hassle.
That's my take, anyway.
During the townhall season the president set up a hotline at the whitehouse to report people supposedly spreading rumors about the health care reform. Ostensibly this was only to correct errors.
ReplyDeleteIn Fridays paper there was an article talking about how congress is proposing legislation to take away the insurance industry's anti-trust exemption if they don't quit lobbying against reform.
I can't comment on people you know going to jail not knowing the cicumstances.
Security measures put in place to assure the safety of the country can be disputed in there methods but not there necessity. I believe Bush was not picking on specific groups outside of people who profiled as sympathetic to terrorists. We can disagree on who these people might be.
Your right about the trust thing because I believe most people on the right don't trust Pres. Obama. For good reason Obama has absolutely no track record and proposals he makes are often radical and at odds with the constitution
Jockeystreet,
ReplyDeleteYou stated: "Among the many, many reasons that I didn't trust him is the fact that George W. Bush seemed, from the very beginning, to perceive people like me as his enemies. There wasn't really an effort for bipartisanship..." I've heard that notion tossed out regularly. Problem is it doesn't hold water. Bush genuinely tried to reach out to the left (some would say too much). He pushed Ted Kennedy's No Child Left Behind legislation through a Republican controlled congress. He had Ted & other Kennedys over to the WH to screen a movie about JFK. How did Kennedy respond? By dishonestly accusing Bush of inventing reasons (lying) to start the war in Iraq. There are dozens of examples of Bush reaching out to Democrats and each time getting his hand bit.
Look how Obama acts towards FOX because they are the only network not bending over to kiss his backside. Bush was constantly mistreated by all the networks and never responded like Obama has to criticism.
Jockeystreet wrote:
ReplyDeleteI'm unfamiliar with the whole "inform on people who are against the reform" bit, so I can't comment on that. Unfamiliar with the legislation threats, too.
A few months ago, the White House invited citizens to submit information on a webpage about who was making false claims about the health care reform program. This led to charges from the Right that Obama was trying to stifle dissent.
I think that it was largely overblown. But enough Right-end bloggers kept on submitting their posts that the White House eventually took it down.
At least, I think this is what Bob is talking about.
So it's a trust issue. Those who see the Administration as basically decent will take that at face value... there are people distorting the message, we'd like to get out there and correct those distortions, so let us know if you hear about something. Those who see the Administration as something other than basically decent, who have suspicions from the get go, will see it as something else... an attempt to sniff out dissenters and shut them up.
ReplyDeleteNo Administration should ever be seen as basically decent. Governments should always be thought of as nothing but a criminal overclass. Perhaps they might be useful crooks in certain situations, but they should never be trusted.
ReplyDelete