Margaret Thatcher, the posturing far-right ideologue provocateur who was Prime Minister of the UK at the same time Ronald Reagan, posturing far-right ideologue dumbass was President of the United States, conducted a life-long political love affair with Reagan and shared his delight in empty rhetorical blustering, coddling of fascists, and aimless anti-communism. For the rest of her life she basked in the same mindless right-wing praise that Reagan lapped up for “winning the cold war” after delivering his trademark slogan at the Berlin Wall: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”
Turns out, now, that, two years after that event, during East German unrest just before the Wall actually did come down, Thatcher met with Gorbachev and personally begged him to do whatever he could to prevent East Germany from merging with West Germany, guaranteed protection for Communist rule in Soviet-bloc nations, and offered a unilateral non-aggression pledge to the Soviet Union itself. George Bush and Francois Mitterand, right-wingers who also presided over noisy anti-communist parties in their countries, backed her assurances to the Communist leader and pledged themselves to prevent German re-unification in any way they could, including with military alliances with the USSR against their official ally West Germany.
In an extraordinary frank meeting with Mr Gorbachev in Moscow in 1989 — never before fully reported — Mrs Thatcher said the destabilisation of Eastern Europe and the breakdown of the Warsaw Pact were also not in the West’s interests. She noted the huge changes happening across Eastern Europe, but she insisted that the West would not push for its decommunisation. Nor would it do anything to risk the security of the Soviet Union.
Even 20 years later, her remarks are likely to cause uproar. They are all the more explosive as she admitted that what she said was quite different from the West’s public pronouncements and official Nato communiqués. She told Mr Gorbachev that he should pay no attention to these.
“We do not want a united Germany,” she said. “This would lead to a change to postwar borders, and we cannot allow that because such a development would undermine the stability of the whole international situation and could endanger our security.” . . .
She spoke of her deep “concern” at what was going on in East Germany. She said “big changes” could be afoot.And this led to her fear that it would all eventually lead to German reunification — an official goal of Western policy for more than a generation.
She assured Mr Gorbachev that President Bush also wanted to do nothing that would be seen by the Russians as a threat to their security. The same assurance was later spelt out in person to Mr Gorbachev at the Soviet- American summit off Malta. . . .
Mrs Thatcher was not the only one worried by events in Germany. A month after the Berlin Wall came down, Jacques Attali, the personal adviser to President Mitterrand, met Vadim Zagladin, a senior Gorbachev aide, in Kiev.
Mr Attali said that Moscow’s refusal to intervene in East Germany had “puzzled the French leadership” and questioned whether “the USSR has made peace with the prospect of a united Germany and will not take any steps to prevent it. This has caused a fear approaching panic.”
He then stated bluntly, echoing Mrs Thatcher: “France by no means wants German reunification, although it realises that in the end it is inevitable.” . . .
Astonishingly, [a top USSR Communist party official] noted, in France Mr Mitterrand was even thinking of a military alliance with Russia to stop it, “camouflaged as a joint use of armies to fight natural disasters”. . . .
Even in 1990 Mrs Thatcher was still trying to slow things down. “I am convinced that reunification needs a long transition period,” she told Mr Gorbachev. “All Europe is watching this not without a degree of fear, remembering very well who started the two world wars.”
“The reunification of Germany is not in the interests of Britain and Western Europe. It might look different from public pronouncements, in official communiqué at Nato meetings, but it is not worth paying ones attention to it. We do not want a united Germany. This would have led to a change to post-war borders and we can not allow that because such development would undermine the stability of the whole international situation and could endanger our security.”
“In the same way, a destabilisation of Eastern Europe and breakdown of the Warsaw Pact are also not in our interests. Of course, internal changes are happening in all Eastern European countries, somewhere they are deeper than in others. However, we would prefer if those processes were entirely internal, we would not interfere in them or push the de-communisation of Eastern Europe. I can say that the President of the United States is of the same position. He sent me a telegram to Tokyo in which he asked me directly to tell you that the United States would not do anything that might put at risk the security of the Soviet Union or perceived by the Soviet society as danger. I am fulfilling his request.”
Now, you can understand why England and France would be leery of a resurgent Germany. And it’s welcome news that the winger dunderheads who spent their lives fighting past wars through a dense ideological fog may finally have glimpsed that knee-jerk anti-communism was neither meaningful nor helpful in the real world they occasionally noticed they were living in. But secretly selling out an official ally to the same communist country you built your entire career out of publicly demonizing, while personally assuring those very communists that you didn’t really mean it – that your entire ideology and public persona were a shameless lie intended to deceive your own constituents, while you favored your nominal enemies with the truth – is rather low even by conservative standards.
The magnitude of the hypocrisy astounds, even in the context of past behavior by these people and their parties. Think of it: communism and the USSR were basically the only reason the right wing existed in the post-colonial/post-segregationist world. (Especially in America. English and French wingers also made some hay out of attacking each other, the rest of Europe, and India and Africa [respectively] as well, but even in those countries Communism was what right-wingers did when they didn’t have anybody else’s sex life to meddle in.) To this day, Reagan and Thatcher are right-wing fetish objects, and Bush and Mitterand are remembered for their “strength” and “moral clarity”. Reagan was out of office and out of his mind by the time Germany was reunified, but Thatcher, Bush, and Mitterand – the reactionary lions who kept the world safe from the Red Menace – were in office raving about Communists, while actively conniving against a fellow NATO ally and offering security guarantees and military alliances to the Soviet Union and the international communist movement. The fate of the entire Western world was shaped for generations by a cherished and husbanded conflict that its noisiest exponents didn’t really believe in, in which they actively and explicitly sought to protect and preserve their own opponents against their own allies when it suited their purposes, while deliberately whipping up storms of paranoia among their mislead and misinformed supporters to further their own political power. Not even the Cold War “doves” were as pro-Soviet as Margaret Thatcher, but she made her career out of vilifying both them and the Soviet Union – while working to destroy the former within her own country, and shield the latter outside it! Bush and Mitterand not only knew this but did the same.
A few lessons come from this: First, we should take Thatcher at her word, about this and everything else she ever said: it was a lie; her ideological stances were empty rhetoric; her political career was a sham perpetrated on her own constituents; her ravings about security threats and international conflict were deliberate falsehoods and propaganda; and she was willing to sell out the future of a close ally to her self-named enemy for temporary political advantage for her country, while continuing to lie about it to her own people for temporary political advantage for herself and her party. After all, this is what she herself told Gorbachev she was doing – how can we not believe her? Second, we should take Bush Senior and the other Western reactionary leaders at their words as well: their rhetoric was equally empty; their lifelong ideological stances were equally insincere; their most prominent political positions were equally meaningless and self-serving; the nation-draining conflicts they manufactured and nurtured – to great political and not rarely financial advantage to themselves – were equally contrived and illusory; and the security threats they called upon to bankrupt their countries, prosecute pointless and inhuman wars at incalculable cost in money and lives, and institute nascent police states within their own borders were equally cynical fabrications fobbed off on their own supporters to manipulate them against those who saw and said the truth.
More importantly, we must recognize that right-wing hypocrisy and cynicism is as alive as ever, no matter how wrong they are and how often, no matter how much of history has gone agains them or how far behind in it they fall, no matter how clearly their lies and deceits, and the falsity of almost everything they say or say they believe, are brought to light. For Christ’s sake, they’re still using “communism” as a pejorative, usually with hilarious obliviousness. And the fact that the most strident public anti-communists in their Pantheon who were still in power at the time were actively seeking to preserve the Soviet bloc both politically and militarily, as an expressly communist alliance, specifically to maintain the German division they had simultaneously been using as an anti-communist symbol, will almost certainly not take the wind out of the sails of the morons who are using the same slogans in the same mindless way yet today. But it cannot not be known, now, that that stance is not just stupid and mindless, it isn’t even real. The people who made their careers out of hostility to communism, and forced their countries into terrible crimes and sacrifices on that basis, were not only hypocritical liars but in fact preferred the presevation of the Soviet Union and its influence to the alternative, and secretly worked in high office to achieve it.
Obama is a Communist? Well, that’s idiotic, but what do you say to this: Margaret Thatcher was secretly an active supporter of Soviet military domination in East Germany and of communism within the Eastern bloc, and used her office to coordinate with other NATO allies, including George Bush Sr. and Francois Mitterand, to provide military support to the USSR for that purpose? Kind of makes the old “pinko” label look sort of weak, doesn’t it? Hell, it makes The Manchurian Candidate look like a documentary – except here the crazed Western politicians weren’t brainwashed by Communists, they freely joined them while brainwashing their own voters. Now we know: anti-communism isn’t just a self-indulgent obsession of the right, it was a cover story aimed at their own constituents, which they boasted about to the Prime Minister of the Soviet Union while pledging him active military and political support against their countries’ allies. And the c0ntinued use of that hackneyed old political shibboleth can only be, more obviously than ever before, a deliberate embrace of a deception perpetrated upon those who accepted it, by those who cared so little about their own beliefs they were willing to turn their entire nations’ might against their own stated policies, but not willing to say so truthfully.
And finally: everything else the right wing obsesses about is just the same. The same people who inherited Thatcher’s and Bush’s rhetoric and political party apparatus, the same people who still point to the Cold War that Thatcher and Bush were fighting on the other side as a mainstay of their own ideology today, are the same people now shouting “communism” about health reform, environmentalism, and religious freedom. They are the same people raving about “protecting marriage” and “the breakdown of the family”. They are the same people who deny global warming, peak oil, and evolution. They are the same people still claiming they believe in market deregulation and supply-side economics. They are the same people gibbering about “Islamofascism”, the “liberal media”, “the Global War on Terror”, and their bizarre, distorted version of feminism. None of it means anything. Nothing they say is worth believing, because truth is not an operative consideration in right-wing ideology. The ones who really believe the nonsensical rhetoric that spews out under these headings are the dupes of their own leaders and celebrity ranters. They think Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Michelle Malkin, and Ann Coulter are legitimate, in the same way “marks” used to think professional wrestling was legitimate (the difference is that, I’m told, there are no more real “marks” in the wrestling crowd). But the ones who do the shouting are the modern-day Margaret Thatchers – liars and hypocrites on a scale so mind-boggling it becomes its own Big Lie. Occasionally they even boast of it: Limbaugh is the acknowledged opinion leader of the Republican Party and explicitly uses his power to influence policy, but calls himself an “entertainer”; Coulter invariably says that her offensive remarks were only meant as jokes -but continues to make them; the unnamed Bush operative who famously referred to liberals as “the reality-based community” also stated explicitly that senior Republicans were contemptuous of the religious right but needed their votes; it has often been reported that a not-talked-about tenet of Straussian neo-conservatism is that religion is only for the gullible masses, as a way to keep them docile, but the enlightened can make their own rules. I suppose the Iraq invasion hardly needs mentioning. Right-wing rhetoric, values, beliefs, and policy stances are as real and meaningful as Margaret Thatcher’s anti-communism: they exist only to manipulate and energize the right-wing constituency, to provide power for enactment of entirely unrelated policies for entirely self-serving reasons. Thatcher may finally have done the world some good if only she succeeds in convincing her own supporters – who have for so long doted on her every word and deed – of this basic fact about herself and her kind.
NOTE: To the dickhead[s] who keep posting comments containing irrelevant campaign pitches for a particular candidate in a local New York City Council race: knock it off. I’ve deleted those comments. The next one to appear will earn you a detailed post highlighting the accomplishments of one of your opponents. I don’t have anything particular against your candidate, but some of his supporters are obviously assholes, and I’m willing to revise my opinion of him also on that basis.
Judd
Kevin
Kevin T. Keith
leanleft
tgirsch
There is the rather obvious possibility that Thatcher and her allies were lying to Gorbachev, though I don’t know enough history to see what that would imply.
On the other hand, the comment by David Bugeja at http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6829735.ece (Sorry, don’t see a way to link to it directly) is a poignant one to have dated “September 11″.
Francois Mitterand was many things, but he was most definitely NOT a right-winger.
Like most of the French elite (past and present) he was a somewhat authoritarian technocrat, very much in love with France’s traditionally centralized system of government in which the President is nearly untouchable.
However, he was an outspoken socialist – head of the French Socialist Party. But given France’s and his personal history with Germany, his strong push against re-unification is somewhat understandable.
The same personal motives – experience and memories of WWII – also played a role for Thatcher. Still doesn’t excuse this move, though.
As for Reagan… well, the man never neaded a reason to behave like a moron. He simply WAS one.
“Reagan was out of office and out of his mind by the time Germany was reunified.”
Well, he was out of office … he was out of his mind long before then.
However, empty rhetorical flourish is not the sole purview of the right; Obama specializes in it.
I don’t see what would be gained by lying to perhaps the one person in the world who would know whether her words were true. I think what we really see here are 2 things: right wing duplicity in the whole business, and a Soviet Union so weakened by its hopelessly garbled policies that it withered and fell of its own dead wait.
Sorry, Ronnie. Sorry John Paul II. You guys took credit for killing the bear, but it was old and full of cancer when you arrived on the side of its death bed. You didn’t even have to press a pillow to its face. And Ronnie’s “Pull down that wall,” was — as it turns out — empty rhetorical posturing. It was like Ronnie had gone to Times Square on New Year’s Eve, and said “Mr. 1983, leave at midnight and let 1984 enter.” He might have been given credit by a few lunatics for changing the year — but it would have been a gross exaggeration of his influence.
DanM:
“There is the rather obvious possibility that Thatcher and her allies were lying to Gorbachev, though I don’t know enough history to see what that would imply.”
Well, what they were saying to Gorbachev is that they wanted him to act against East Germany because they wanted to prevent German unification. If they were lying, presumably they were lying to goad him into some sort of action, and the only likely result of such a lie would be that he would in fact act to prevent German unification – which, if that was all a lie, would be the opposite of what they wanted. If they really believed their own “tear down this wall” posturing, then, when Germany was in fact on the point of tearing down the Wall they would have wanted the USSR to stay out of it – which could most easily be achieved by not meddling, or perhaps by threatening consequences if the Soviets did get involved, but certainly not by asking them to do that very thing. (That “reverse-psychology” stuff doesn’t really work all that well.)
You could posit some sort of grand conspiracy to lure the USSR into intervening and then using that as a pretext for a war, but I suspect even Thatcher and Bush weren’t that crazy. (Mitterand – the only one who actually lived on the continent where that war would have been fought – couldn’t have been.) At the very least, there were many opportunities for war with the Soviet Union – an awkward conflict over East Berlin could hardly have been the most militarily advantageous, and it’s notable that even the craziest leaders on both sides had turned down such opportunities in the past (including one involving an awkward conflict over East Berlin). As a military planning scenario this one seems implausible. As an act of soulless hypocrisy, it hardly needs explaining at all.
.-= Kevin T. Keith´s last blog ..“Mr. Gorbachev, Build Up This Wall!” – Jackass Rightwingers’ Cynical Hypocrisy Hits Historic High =-.
VV:
“a Soviet Union so weakened”
The Times article (first link above) is actually quite fascinating. It not only reports the story of Thatcher’s and Bush’s collusion to prop up the Eastern Bloc, but it gives a quite detailed overview of the intra-Bloc politics that tied Gorbachev’s hands. In particular, Gorbachev hated East Germany’s Honecker (who was, in fact, literally old, weak, and riddled with cancer at the time) but couldn’t force him out of office, which left East Germany almost leaderless and the USSR unable to intervene. The USSR had its own problems, but East Germany collapsed on its own; Gorbachev did not have the dictatorial powers there that some people like to think, and politics is politics everywhere.
.-= Kevin T. Keith´s last blog ..“Mr. Gorbachev, Build Up This Wall!” – Jackass Rightwingers’ Cynical Hypocrisy Hits Historic High =-.
You wrote : “George Bush and Francois Mitterand, right-wingers who also presided over noisy anti-communist parties in their countries”.
That is factually wrong. Francois Mitterrand was the head of the French socialist party. He was first elected in 1981 with the help of communist votes. Socialists, communists and other smaller leftist parties were associated around a left-wing reform plan called the “Programme Commun” designed in the 70′s. From 1981 to 1983 (if memory serves), Mitterrand even had a handful of communist ministers in the government, a first in the Fifth Republic, and a cause of hysteria in the rich and corporate world.
So, Mitterrand was a left-winger, associated with French communists. Now, he could be a sneaky bastard and a cynical manipulator from time to time, but he was certainly not a right-winger.
Other than that, interesting and eye-opening article.
Speaking of coddling fascists…
http://www.actblue.com/page/kossacks4miller
Now, I’m fine with people expressing their political sentiment regarding the particular lawmaker-in-mention here, but it kinda freaks me out that their selling point is “let’s ostracize him because he called Obama a liar,” and that’s gonna be taken to heart at face value by a the wrong group of people: the ones who don’t know why they like Obamacare, they just know that they like it because “it feels right.”
For all of our political differences, I gotta respect you guys, even KTK (a whole lot actually, despite the fact that his posts induce my upchuck reflex) because he (and you and kevin, but especially KTK) obviously and passionately cares a great deal and pays very close attention to what is going on. But the crap – like the above website – that is aimed at recruiting those who tend towards social behaviours resemblent of animal herding kinda reminds me of “the Wave.” Well, actually, strike “kinda reminds me,” replace with “it’s pretty much exactly like it.”
.-= Shoothouse Barbie´s last blog ..Dog bloggin’! =-.
Kevin writes:
“You could posit some sort of grand conspiracy to lure the USSR into intervening and then using that as a pretext for a war, but I suspect even Thatcher and Bush weren’t that crazy. (Mitterand – the only one who actually lived on the continent where that war would have been fought – couldn’t have been.)”
Except that I remember growing up in this period in the US, when the fear wasn’t that another war would break out in Europe, it was that the nuclear superpowers would destroy civilization in a global thermonuclear orgy of destruction.
That only heightens the terrible, cynical hypocrisy of Thatcher, Reagan, Mitterand, and Bush, Sr.
Barbie -
You’re projecting again.
By the way, can you tell me precisely what elements constitute “Obamacare?” I mean in detail sufficient to reach beyond the capacity of a bumpersticker.
“Obamacare?” What was that about “behaviours resemblent of animal herding” and “the Wave?”
.-= LarryE´s last blog ..Predictions =-.
blue, how is Obama not a right winger himself? Look at his cabinet and his policies.
Boy is this soooo not about me, LarryE, or what I think about Obama’s proposed medical care plans.
.-= Shoothouse Barbie´s last blog ..Dog bloggin’! =-.
SB -
Pretty feeble attempt at a dodge. So you think you are under no obligation to explain the terms you use, even when it’s one of those vapid bumper sticker slogans the right uses to dismiss ideas without considering them and which you – “animal herding” style – have adopted, apparently while being unable to define it?
Bluntly, that’s lame.
.-= LarryE´s last blog ..Noted in passing =-.
Define what? The current bill which remains under-construction? Or the earlier versions which outlined the creation of 50+ more beurocracies to rewrite what constitutes “reasonable” care and to guide doctors medical decisions? IMO, “Obamacare” is a reference to the ideologues, and since it’s an incindiary term, I did change it to the politically correct “Obama’s proposed medical care reforms” in my previous comment, and you would be fair to note that.
Bluntly, your nitpicking over my wording is what’s lame. About as lame as the house Dems trying to officially bring the congressional stamp of dissapproval over Rep. Wilson’s refusal to issue a redundant apology on the house floor after his first apology was accepted by the president. Ohhhhhhh snap.
.-= Shoothouse Barbie´s last blog ..Bravo, Democrats! =-.
SB -
So in the course of going on about “behaviours [among the left] resemblent of animal herding” and “the Wave,” you adopt a term (“Obamacare”) used by the right and apply it to, by your own account, the “ideologues” on the left who – again according to you – don’t even know what they’re supporting but do it anyway because “it feels right.”
But you won’t define the term, you now admit you can’t define the term, you just adopted it without having a meaning for it (Again, what was that about herding behavior?) and try to weasel out of it by claiming it’s lame to call you on it – while tossing in both another vapid right-wing buzz phrase (“politically correct”) and another example of right-wing-generated paranoia (that some faceless bureaucracy was going to tell doctors how to treat their patients) and capping it off with a complete irrelevancy on an entirely different topic so as to change the subject.
I repeat: Lame.
.-= LarryE´s last blog ..Noted in passing =-.
So, when did “politically correct” become a right-wing buzz phrase, let alone vapid? Seriously, I’d like to know; I learned what “politically correct” phrasing meant in highschool, as we were instructed on the differences being what is PC and what is not PC, and that we should make every attempt to be PC. I also explained the virtual etymology – if you will – of the word “Obamacare” in the manner I was using it, and still you’ve continued to take my words out of context and also condescendingly insist that I’ve adopted some term out of being a vapid sort of weasel. Condescention gets you nothing, sir.
Why don’t you put your money where your mouth is (and stop putting words in my mouth – “…and another example of right-wing-generated paranoia (that some faceless bureaucracy was going to tell doctors how to treat their patients)” is your wording, and not what I said. Here, you’ve inserted your own phrasing, which is the very right-wing generated crap that you denounce yet is not what I’ve actually said – so that you can then attack me for it. F***ing weak, dude. Try attacking something I’ve actually said for a change) and tell me what is and isn’t included in Obama’s/ congress’s proposed reforms before calling me a hypocrite. What do you want me to do, personally read you the HITECH act word-for-word?
.-= Shoothouse Barbie´s last blog ..Bravo, Democrats! =-.
I did go after what you said: “Obamacare.” It’s a right-wing buzz phrase which you adopted – by your own, albeit indirect, admission now – despite having no meaning to apply to it. Which seems a pretty good example of the “animal herding” you mocked.
I went after your reference to people on the left who “like Obamacare” – whatever the hell that means; again, you essentially admit you don’t know – without even knowing what it is. Just like you. Except for the “like” part.
I went after your statement “the creation of 50+ more beurocracies to rewrite what constitutes ‘reasonable’ care and to guide doctors medical decisions” by calling it paranoia “that some faceless bureaucracy was going to tell doctors how to treat their patients.” If you would care to explain precisely how my characterization was wrong, please do. Otherwise, I stand by it.
I went after “politically correct.” That will take a bit of explanation. The term actually arose on the left in the ’60s as a way of mocking some of the extremely doctrinaire types, particularly Maoists and RCP types. Later it was applied to attempts to recognize and avoid offensive language, which lead to a handful of over-the-top experiences. Those were manipulated by the right to hijack the term and use it to mock and deride all attempts at advancing social justice. Every complaint about racism, sexism, homophobia, whatever, was met with a right-wing chorus of “oh you’re just being [sneer] politically correct!” It did not start as a right-wing buzz phrase, but it has become one and it is no longer possible to read it without hearing a sneer in the writer’s voice.
Call you a hypocrite? When did I do that, Ms. “stop putting words in my mouth?” I said you were trying to weasel out of directly admitting that you’d glommed onto a right-wing buzz phrase without regard to any actual meaning. Which you were. Have no fear: If I had intended to call you a hypocrite, there would be no doubt in your mind about it.
What did I want you to do? I said at the top: I wanted you to define the term “Obamacare” “in detail sufficient to reach beyond the capacity of a bumpersticker.” You failed to do so or even attempt to do so. (And no, saying “Obama’s proposed medical care plans” changes nothing since almost immediately after that you were saying “Define what?” Which means you still haven’t/can’t explain what you actually mean by the term.)
Instead, in response you first said “this is not about me,” you second said “Define what?” and charged “nitpicking” before bringing up a totally different subject, and you third said “out of context” and “putting words in my mouth.” So I take it I have my answer: You haven’t defined it because you can’t. You just followed the “herd” and did “the Wave,” adopting the right-wing terminology without thought.
Oh, one last thing: If you think I’m condescending to you, it’s only because you’ve lowered yourself so far.
I’m done. Have at me.
.-= LarryE´s last blog ..Noted in passing =-.
“So I take it I have my answer: You haven’t defined it because you can’t. You just followed the “herd” and did “the Wave,” adopting the right-wing terminology without thought.”
Whatever helps you sleep at night, hermano.
.-= Shoothouse Barbie´s last blog ..Bravo, Democrats! =-.
I learned what “politically correct” phrasing meant in highschool, as we were instructed on the differences being what is PC and what is not PC, and that we should make every attempt to be PC.
Newsflash! High school Education Misses Historical Context with Facile Lip Service to Tolerance!
Not blaming you on this one Barbie, but, yeah, “politically correct” is now a right-wing buzzword for “those silly liberals care about people”, and it was coined to mean “us crazy liberals can’t even talk before deciding who to proclaim the underdog”; it had at most a very short and not very useful life as a positive term for social justice.
I really don’t care if it is now a “buzz phrase.” Whether something is a buzz-phrase or not doesn’t change it’s meaning, but people here think that when they point out the use of overpopularized terminology, it somehow negates the other person’s statement. It’s a terrific way to puss out of debate. *coughcough LarryE*
.-= Shoothouse Barbie´s last blog ..Bravo, Democrats! =-.
Just for the sake of accuracy: A buzz phrase doesn’t have a specific meaning to be changed; that’s one of the things that makes it a buzz phrase. It sounds impressive and appears to express a concept while actually carrying no discernible specific content.
Put another way, used in debate it’s a means of trying to sound like you’re scoring points when you’re really offering vapor. E.g., “I said it the politically correct way.”
And as for whether or not I “puss[ed] out of debate,” I’m more than content to leave it to third parties to read the whole exchange and decide for themselves which one of us “pussed out” on answering direct questions and responding to direct challenges.
.-= LarryE´s last blog ..Noted in passing =-.
Funny story: At some point I got in a flame war with this guy and eventually he declared “I think it’ll be clear who’s right when others reread this thread!”. I agreed emphatically. The next morning, he’d yanked my forum account and deleted the thread. I found that pretty hilarious.
(By the way, I haven’t actually read the comments of LarryE and Barbie actually fighting here, so this comment does not reflect on either of them.)
Sorry, Barbie, but the only one “pussing out” of the debate here is you. You tried to leave a flaming bag of poo on the doorstep in your first comment in this thread, and have been dodging ownership of what you wrote ever since. Had you just admitted it was a substance-free throwaway comment at the outset, you could have saved yourself and LarryE a lot of virtual ink.
.-= tgirsch´s last blog ..Bizarre Video of the Day =-.
Viewing this from a distance (i.e. Canada), can someone please explain to me why Obamacare is a bad word? It seems to me that Obama wants to get full credit for fixing healthcare and is very involved in formulating the bill. If he wants the credit and his supporters like the legislation, why does it bother them that the word Obamacare has been created?
LarryE wanted it laid out by Barbie what she meant by Obamacare. I would like to ask the question – in short form that is easily digested by everyone, can LarryE explain what Obama and the Democrats are trying to push through? He seems to have a good handle on it and I would be curious to see some semblance of detail in regards to what he (or KTK, tgirsch or Kevin) sees in this healthcare reform bill.
After a lot of searching, simply out of curiosity (yes I do get that bored), I have yet to see much clarity or detail being laid out by Obama. I hear lots of political platitudes, but very little detail.
Big U:
When a term becomes widely-used to disparage something, does it really matter how it got that way? The term “Obamacare” is only used by the detractors of health care reform (like “Hillarycare” before it), and is a shorthand for all sorts of not-in-the-bill bogeymen. What’s relevant here is precisely the fact that it doesn’t have a firm defintion — it’s just something that opponents of health care use generically, sheeplike, which is why it was so ironic that Barbie used it when calling out “liberals” for acting, well, sheeplike.
As for the lack of detail from Obama, you’re not finding it because he hasn’t given much. It’s widely believed that part of the reason reform failed in 93-94 was because the administration was too specific about what it wanted. Obama’s approach here has been to go the other way, just to lay out generalities concerning what he wants in a bill, and let Congress do the heavy lifting. Some (including me) believe that Obama has gone too far in the other direction, and that he should be providing more specifics than he has.
As far as what’s common to all versions of the bill, to my knowledge, you have the following:
- An individual mandate to buy coverage
- An end to preexisting condition exemptions
- An end to coverage limits
- Subsidies to help lower-income people afford coverage
What’s still being hashed out:
- Whether or not to have a “public option,” a co-op, or some other low-cost alternative available
- How the startup costs will be paid for (i.e., taxes)
- Just when the individual subsidies will kick in, and how big they’ll be
- Possible Medicaid expansion
- Medicare cost reforms
That’s a high-level, but it’s a start
.-= tgirsch´s last blog ..This One’s For Digg =-.
Big U -
T. has answered both your questions pretty effectively, but I wanted to add a couple of thoughts.
why Obamacare is a bad word
The term arises from the right wing’s infuriating-but-you-gotta-admire-the-skill ability to create buzzwords and slogans. At the time the term started getting bandied about, there were only a few generalities and no specifics that could be tied directly to Obama – and no single bill to define “what Obama and the Democrats are trying to push through.” (And there still isn’t; in fact there are, I believe, five bills with varying specifics.)
So “Obamacare” was a free-floating term that the right attached to any of their collection of lies and paranoid delusions about what was in any one of the various health care reform bills – so ultimately it became shorthand for “a complete government takeover of health care that will raise your taxes, introduce socialism, destroy private enterprise, and kill your grandmother.”
trying to push through
Again, I think T. has done a good job of laying that out; off the top of my head I’d only add that I believe four of the five bills contain an employer mandate – that is, that companies that employ more than a certain number of workers must either make health insurance available through work or pay into a fund used to subsidize insurance costs for those who can’t afford it on their own.
.-= LarryE´s last blog ..Noted in passing =-.
Thanks tgirsch. That Obamacare explanation makes sense. (kind of like people who label anyone who does not support abortion “anti-choice” – and yes that was a poke at my favorite target on here.
)
Based on the generalities you list, I would be terrified to give the government a blank cheque to complete the details. More specifics would need to be forthcoming to get my support and I don’t really care about the politics so I can see why it would be tough to get Republicans on-side. No wonder there is such wild (and often stupid, from what I can see) speculation that is accepted as fact by partisan people on both sides.
T, LarryE,
so, basically, yes, I did use a popularized term. That I used it while chiding people for not thinking independantly is ironic. It does not, however, change anything else that I pointed out in my initial comment. Just because it’s the pot who is calling the kettle black doesn’t mean that the kettle isn’t black. You guys do this all the damn time: you think that the act of pointing out that the proverbial pot is calling the kettle black – nullifies the assertion that the kettle is in fact black. *That’s* circumventing the issue, as well, my dears.
Also, the lack of detail given by Obama is a frackin’ brilliant political move on his part. He’ll get credit for pushing the reforms if they go through, but by saying “I’m leaving it in the hands of congress”, he’ll be able to keep his nose clean (or cleaner) if it fails. It was a terrific move for him to make. Lookin’ out for his own hide, first and foremost. Just like every other politician does.
.-= Shoothouse Barbie´s last blog ..Barbie’s Lab book [9/16/09] =-.
Barbie:
Disagree on the outcomes. If nothing gets passed, it’s a big loss for Obama. But by being light on particulars, he gets to claim victory if congress does pass something no matter what that looks like. So yeah, there’s a bit of playing politics going on.
And sorry, but the rest of your initial comment was light on substance, too.
Big U:
The particulars are out there, there are just competing versions, none of which the Republicans will support. They’ve essentially made it clear that they won’t support anything the Democrats come up with, no matter what it looks like. They’ve decided that their best political move is to oppose reform while pretending to support reform.
Frankly, the problem with the reforms that have been proposed isn’t that they “give the government a blank check [us spelling],” it’s that the government isn’t doing nearly enough. My fear is that we will get individual mandates but won’t get a low-cost public option, meaning that we’ve just signed a giant giveaway to the insurance industry. I also fear that the subsidies provided to lower-income families won’t be sufficient to allow them to afford decent coverage. I expect that what we get will be an improvement over what we have, but won’t be as dramatic an improvement as I’d like.
.-= tgirsch´s last blog ..This One’s For Digg =-.
Is there a reason why my response to Big U’s questions is still “awaiting moderation?”
.-= LarryE´s last blog ..Noted in passing =-.
I have no idea why your comment got caught in the filter, but now it can join hands and sing the old Negro spiritual.
.-= tgirsch´s last blog ..This One’s For Digg =-.