( – promoted by lowkell)
We’ve been hearing a lot about the Republicans’ deep opposition to Obamacare. It’s not about Obamacare.
We’ve been hearing a lot about the Republican’s ideological positions. It’s not about ideology.
It’s way deeper.
Does it make sense that an idea that came out of the Heritage Foundation, and was put forward in the 1990s by the Republican caucus in the Senate, that today’s Republicans would find it so profoundly objectionable –that they’d truly believe it represented such a monstrous a threat to America — that they’d launch this kamikaze war to oppose it?
(That makes as much sense as that Wayne LaPierre, who supported universal background checks in the late 90s, would truly believe now that such checks would represent the intolerable assault on American liberty he lately declared them to be.)
Does it make sense that if Obamacare were really what’s driving the Republicans, they’d have to wage their campaign against it with so many lies about what it is and what it does?
If they were really against “big government,” if they were really ideologically opposed to government involvement in the American people’s medical process, would this same Republican Party, around the country in the states under their control, be passing versions of the “transvaginal ultrasound” requirement– a politically imposed, medically unnecessary procedure?
No. None of these things makes sense in the terms in which they are presented by the Republicans, and generally discussed in the media.
It’s way deeper.
If there were no Obamacare, the Republicans would launch a political war on something else. Any outfit that will create a national crisis over the implementation of what were once THEIR ideas is simply itching for a fight.
The driving force here is the spirit of war.
It is a spirit that foments conflict, and whips people up into a state where they only feel at peace –only feel in their proper element– when they are at war with some Them.
It’s the same spirit that drives this same political set into anxiety about a plot to institute Sharia Law in America. The same spirit that has made “compromise” a dirty word (that is, until this week when the Republicans brought it out to denounce the president’s unwillingness to “negotiate” the terms on which their blackmail would be rewarded.)
Deeper things are going on here than politics. Bigger things are going on here than the participants understand. The battle is in the political arena but it goes deeper than politics.
Will we as a nation be ruled by the Spirit that builds things, that brings people together, that serves the truth, that values integrity, that fortifies hope, that puts the well-being of humanity as a top priority?
Or will we as a nation be ruled by the Spirit that tears things down, the sets groups of people against each other, that operates through lies, that fosters hypocrisy, that cultivates fear, and that degrades the quality of life for humanity and other living things?
That’s what this battle raging in our political sphere is about.
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