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Six Things I Think: Stunning Hypocrisy Edition

 

When hypocrisy is a character trait, it also affects one’s thinking, because it consists in the negation of all the aspects of reality that one finds disagreeable, irrational or repugnant.”  – Octavio Paz

 

Six Things I think About Recent Political Hypocrisy

1 ) After taking a few moments to read the fine print on the new MacArthur amendment to the objectively dystopian American Health Care Act the GOP is still trying to ram through Congress, I think the Republican Party should just come out and admit that they’re fine with killing poor people for insurance companies and they consider just being a woman a pre-existing health condition. While few would accuse the Democratic Party of strict honesty, the number of outright, comically transparent lies GOP officials have told the public in an effort to sell this turd is truly goddamn staggering. The simple truth is that this new version of “Trumpcare” has addressed few (if any) of the horrifying flaws in the previous version of the AHCA and despite the many protestations of professional Republican liars, the bill will allow insurance providers to price older customers out of the market and it will allow these leeches to charge people with absurdly common preexisting conditions exorbitant premiums – attempts to disproportionately offload the cost of increased corporate profits on (often poor) people who are forced allow their coverage to lapse & women in general, merely represents a cynical attempt to repackage a bill nobody wanted the first time. This of course might also explain why House Republicans are desperate to pass the bill quickly, with no impact assessments and before voters realize it’s the same shitty plan they already tried to foist on the American public two months ago. Naturally, the House is far less concerned with rushing to remove the waiver exempting members of Congress and staff from losing their healthcare.

Update: while I was writing this, the GOP managed to pass the AHCA (with amendment) in the House; shockingly the Democratic Party’s response was to sing – I couldn’t even make this shit up if I tried folks.

2 ) I think we are indeed watching the final death spasms of freedom in America when a 61 year old woman can be convicted of a crime and be facing down up to a year in jail for laughing at a monstrous shitheel opportunist like US Attorney General Jeff Sessions. You can cite all the arguments about disturbing the peace and interrupting a confirmation hearing you like; when merely laughing at a bald-face lie uttered to defend disgusting racist ghoul like Sessions is a crime, it is impossible to say that there is still a right to protest in America. Of course, perhaps it’s foolish of me to be surprised by this development in the wake of America’s longstanding, multi-administration assault on protest rights, privacy rights and freedom of the press. When the head of the CIA and the Justice Department can both openly tell the media they’re trying to find a way to prosecute what is ostensibly a public media outlet for leaking evidence of crimes committed by the US government at home and abroad how can anyone argue that America is a “free” county with any sincerity? While the Trump administration certainly represents a further assault on the rights of all Americans, it’s important to remember that this is to some degree a bipartisan issue; after the head of the FBI smears Wikileaks as “intelligence porn” while refusing to acknowledge the vital role they play in the global media environment, one might expect the opposition party to object as a matter of principle – instead, many American Democrats openly support prosecuting Wikileaks because they’re still pissed off at Julian Assange for telling the truth about Hillary Clinton.

3 ) I think US Secretary of State and noted Exxon thug Rex Tillerson has to have brass balls the size of boulders to casually drop news that the United States government isn’t even going to pretend to give a shit about human rights anymore while crafting foreign policy during a speech in front of a nervous State Department facing impeding layoffs; even if the move exposed a terrifying level of naivety on the objectively unqualified Tillerson’s part. This is of course because one does indeed have to wonder what practical effect the Secretary’s decree will really have when the United States has openly maintained longstanding alliances with known human rights violators like Israel and Saudi Arabia; not to mention America’s own absurdly brutal human rights record – which laughably doesn’t even count the devastation and suffering the United States has unleashed and helped unleash on places like Iraq, Libya and Yemen. Maybe Tillerson was just tired of answering questions about Trump’s newfound fascination with murderous Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte? Speaking of Duterte and hypocrisy; has anyone been able to figure out why mainstream American liberals are outraged by inviting him to the White House but were completely fine with Obama sending Kerry down to visit the Philippine head of state with millions of dollars in aid despite knowing about Duterte’s unarguably psychotic “war on drugs?” I certainly can’t.

4 ) I think that with the appointment of religious liberty advocate, conservative thinktank minion & anti-LGBT lawyer Roger Severino to head up the Office for Civil Rights at the Department of Health and Human Services it’s time to accept that Donald Trump has assembled an anti-government designed more to incapacitate numerous important regulatory bodies, rather than administer them. Whether we’re talking about a Housing and Urban Development Secretary who thinks purposely making public housing uncomfortable represents a form of compassion, a pinhead fundie Secretary of Education who’s openly trying to sell off the entire department to the highest bidder or a crooked EPA administrator who has made it a career-long goal to obliterate environmental regulations – the clear goal here is to destroy, not protect. While some might argue that Trump is simply following a political doctrine that has been popular in the United States since the fall of the Johnson Administration, I suspect the truth behind the swine emperor’s attempts to destroy protective regulations is much simpler; it will make his donors and allies even more stinking fucking rich.

5 ) I think it’s absurdly hypocritical for mainstream American liberals to ignore and even justify the inherent homophobia in comedian Stephen Colbert’s recent late night monologue about Trump because they believe a half-baked, almost birtheresque conspiracy theory tying the (admittedly odious) President to Vladimir Putin is true. I also think the ostensibly “liberal” mainstream press is brazenly parading it’s own toxic hypocrisy by refusing to even cover the objectively Orwellian revelations from legal hearings in Florida on the motion to dismiss the DNC fraud lawsuit; there is simply no way in hell you can tell me DNC lawyers arguing that the word impartial has no legal meaning and insisting the Party has a right to “pick candidates in back rooms” isn’t newsworthy. Speaking of the “liberal” press, I find it disturbingly hypocritical that virtually nobody in the media establishment seems to have a problem with an editor from Ms. Magazine openly celebrating the fact that some day Bernie Sanders will die; although I can’t pretend that I’m surprised.

6 ) Speaking of Bernie Sanders, I think the left-wing populist Senator from Vermont needs to stop breaking my heart. While many have always recognized that Sanders is more than just a little “loose” on the subject of US imperialism (which is part of the reason why he’s very much a compromise for some on the real left) it has become utterly impossible to ignore the staggering hypocrisy he occasionally exhibits. As a politician, Sanders has far too much experience to not realize that when he defends Anne Coulter’s free speech rights even though they weren’t in any way under attack, only to follow that up by condemning the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement in an official letter to the UN that every member of the US Senate signed – he’s making a very clear statement about who he believes has a right to speak and who doesn’t. Furthermore Sanders can spare me his bumbling excuses about how he didn’t write the letter and the UN really does have an anti-Israel bias because he signed the damn thing knowing full well what the letter said and his accusation of anti-Israel bias at the United Nations simply isn’t fucking true. Frankly in light of all the assistance US politicians have already given the apartheid regime in Israel, I think I’m also getting a little fucking tired of listening to disingenuous complaints of discrimination against Israel from a violent, reactionary occupying nation every time someone points out Israeli atrocities in Palestine.

Bonus International Hypocrisy: I think that someone at the United Nations must’ve been playing some sort of sick prank when member states voted to allow Saudi Arabia (an openly misogynist regime infamous for the abusive practice of male guardianship; among many other restrictive practices towards women) to serve on the UN Commission on the Status of Women, a body “dedicated to the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of women” – and no, I don’t think I believe Belgium’s excuse that the needed more time to realize the Saudis had no place on such a panel either.

 

  • Nina Illingworth

 

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