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my sense is----but this is only my sense----that the opposition to universal health care from the right plays to the same logic that informed opposition to programs like welfare. the source of it is the usual sense of conservative-as-victim, the upstanding horatio alger type who did everything with no help from anybody or anything, pure gumption and will and all that, who is not being persecuted for real or imaginary financial success by being required to participate in evil programs that redistribute wealth. programs that fashion systems for killing other people in large number are just fine--but redistribution of wealth for some larger socio-political goal--well that's just bad. behind that probably lay class and/or status anxiety, but framed in such as a way as to stand it on it's head.
so the opposition is pitched more toward a kind of shared sensbility or demographic than toward the actual issues involved with this particular proposal.
i think while my exact sense is of course my own, the tactical choices being made by the conservative establishment are pretty clear.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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