GOP BUDGET IS INHUMANE

A person who supports cutting educational budgets espouse at length the virtues of expanding private and public school curriculums to teaching art appreciation is not telling the truth.  He wants to expand the curriculum or he wants to cut school budgets. This morning on MSNBC, Joe Scarborough was up to his usual tricks—supporting everything that is good and condemning everything that is bad. Of course, he defines what is good and what is bad based on public opinion. Like the proposed budget, this is just one more example of why I am finding the fanciful world of Republican thought amazing.

In general, terms, they want everything to go their way. For example, destroy any effort at increasing minimum wage yet cry bitterly over existing wage disparity. Complain every day about the nation debt but refuse to raise taxes to pay the debt. Decry the efforts of the government to work toward peace in the Middle East yet invite a warmonger from Israel to speak to Congress. Privatize the post office, privatize social security, privatize the army, and many, many other etceteras. They know social security eliminated old age poverty, as well as they, know a minimum-wage worker cannot afford to save for “privatized” retirement.

Democrats know every position they take has an economic base, which is something they deny just as Joe can claim not see the connection of tax dollars and expand art appreciation education. What Republicans are saying is they base our philosophy on greed and greed is ugly. That is not amazing but what is amazing is that they are unable to explain the connection between their political stances. For example, they were boldly able to make the claim they were in favor of building the Keystone Pipeline but cannot give one verifiable reason they support it. There will not be jobs created nor will “we the people” benefit in any other economic way. The idea of paying more taxes to pay the nation debt is another example. Increased taxes will hurt job creation; there has never been even on shred of evidence that is the case. It all boils down to how you explain greed.

Greed, fear, love, gregariousness, hierarchy dominance among many other things are innate. We have to resort to animal behavior and from there we have to backtrack to certain chemical relationships, which is what hormones are. Republicans seem to be lacking in their humanization because they are not able to realize what biologists know so well, which is the ugliness of “survival of the fittest”. The weak die, while the strong live. What do we do when social security is “privatized” and we have starving old people on the streets? Think about the Republican proposed budget in the context of what it means to be human. Eskimo villagers set an old, old woman adrift on an ice flow with at knife in a classic but high disputed movie, The Savage Innocents. The interesting part of the dispute over the movie for me was that the thinking of the person disputing the accuracy of this depiction. He wrote, “A grandmother, however infirm, would never be left out in the open to be eaten by a polar bear (a special igloo would instead be prepared, with important personal items, and then sealed up, after which the village would be moved)”. As with social security, it is his or her fault for getting old and not saving enough money to survive. It would be wrong to give that person a knife and put them on an ice flow where everyone can see what is happening. It is somehow humane, as long as long as it happens to someone else, and they will not see the consequences of their actions. The problem is it will happen to them, but they cannot help themselves because growing old is as innate as is their greed. 

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