By Judith Gayle | Political Waves
I’m being stalked by a word: conciliation. It intrudes on me night and day. I hear it in the back of my mind at the oddest moments; I dream it, along with a note-to-self to ‘remember’ when I awaken. My inclination is to ignore it, but I know I can’t. In such deeply divided political times, the concept strikes me as feeble, weak-kneed and pleading, like the whine of battered victim of police brutality, Rodney King, when he said, “Can’t we all just get along?” With emotions gone wild and fears escalated to pitch-point, conciliation is not a first choice of response for the battle-weary. In short, it’s not a word we might use in facing down a radicalized, fascist right wing, nor is it a policy I would recommend to those who are standing up for their rights, perhaps for the first time. Still, it’s a word — and a concept — that won’t leave me alone.
The level of activity coming from the Republican right wing is relentless. Having barely avoided a government shutdown, we expected to take a breather for a few days, to ruminate on how close we came to complete chaos and discover how cruel are the cuts to programs that kept many of us functional in this economy. But no — not in Paul Ryan’s America. Today the House of Representatives will vote to crush Medicare under its heel, exchanging it for a program of vouchers that will pay a mere portion of seniors’ medical insurance instead. They’ve already repealed part of health care reform, removing money from communities for preventative care. Both of these pieces of legislation will be vetoed if they pass through the Senate successfully, but they are the equivalent of shots heard around the world. This is the vision of a Republican America — privatized, ruled by lobbyists at the behest of wealthy benefactors and completely for-profit. As pundit Ezra Kline asserts, the Righties work tirelessly to prove that “America is an insurance company with an army.”
This week Obama reframed the conversation in his budget speech, asking us to choose which version of America we stand behind. Essentially, he said the nation was founded on the notion that we are our brother’s keeper and asked us to reaffirm that choice with him. He was harshest on the Ryan proposal, which effectively guts any assistance for our most vulnerable citizens (and those soon to become so), while protecting and rewarding the military-industrial complex, corporate welfare and the wealthy. The rashness of these proposals is stunning. I don’t understand where the Righties think these fallen citizens will go when there is no health care or food and housing assistance for them. Pubs are very vocal about seeing such ‘trash’ wandering the streets, panhandling. They’re vehemently against funding shelters or programs to ‘enable’ the poor in their ‘lazy’ lifestyle. Are they simply to disappear, those millions of Americans unable to scale the financial and social hurdles that corporations put in the way of the average citizen?