In the middle of his farewell address on Tuesday, President Barack Obama offered some advice: "It’s up to all of us to make sure our government can help us meet the many challenges we still face. We have what we need to do so. We have everything we need to meet those challenges." And then he warned, "Democracy can buckle when we give in to fear. So, just as we, as citizens, must remain vigilant against external aggression, we must guard against a weakening of the values that make us who we are."
Implicit in these and other parts of the speech was an acknowledgement that we are, basically, fucked right now. Obama was preparing us for what's coming and telling us not to fall into despair or apathy. "But, surely, we are well and truly fucked now," he was saying without saying, even amidst all the optimistic words. "Oh, dear, sweet Jesus, we are fucked backwards and forwards and in every hole and in some holes we didn't even know we had and in new holes that they just made to fuck even more. Now what the fuck are you gonna do to stop getting fucked?"
And, by telling us, in essence, to save ourselves, Obama was also saying that there's no one who's gonna Spiderman in and catch us as we plummet off this bridge.
Right now, good liberals, I'm sure you're comforting yourself with all the articles and think-pieces assuring you that there's no clear path to repealing the Affordable Care Act: that its popular provisions (which would be nearly all of them) are too deeply embedded in the health care system; that to repeal without a comparable replacement would create uncertainty in the insurance market, leading to chaos; that one, two, five Republican senators are actually thinking about voting against their party and not supporting a repeal without an automatic replacement.
Yeah, all that got flushed down the shitter last night when the Republicans in the Senate, minus a Rand Paul, voted on a budget that will eventually allow them to repeal the ACA with a simple majority in a reconciliation bill with the House. In doing so, they defeated every Democratic amendment that attempted to keep provisions like preventing insurance companies from denying you coverage for preexisting conditions. The GOP doesn't fucking care what the outcome will be. They are driving this car into that blizzard, fuck the consequences and don't you dare tell them they can't.
So you pretty much just saw any attempt at moderation get stabbed in the chest. It might not be dead yet, but it's got a sucking chest wound and, chances are, won't be able to afford coverage to get it fixed.
These GOP motherfuckers don't give a damn who dies as long as they get to prove a point: Democrats shouldn't have allowed the poors to think they're people. They get uppity that way. They must be punished, and, luckily, too many of them were too dumb to understand that in November.
I'm sticking with what I said in December. You gotta peel senators away from the Republican Party. Promise them anything. Money, pussy, dick, committee chairs, whatever.
Because Republicans are gonna act like Republicans, and that means with dishonor and cowardice and malice towards all who are not them. And, despite President Obama appealing for us to work across differences, we have to fight back with even more malice.
