Never Forget

I see a few people are getting into the 9/11 spirit right away, saying we should never forget. For them of course, it means not forgetting that there are brown people on the other side of the world who wear funny clothes and don't talk like us who always want to kill us blah blah blah. Here's a list of things I wish we would never forget:

• Never forget that, and this is the nicest thing I can say about them, we had an Administration who didn't take the threat of terrorism seriously enough, which allowed the attacks to happen in the first place


• Even if the attacks would have happened regardless, never forget that they were used as an excuse to invade a country that was no threat to us, a crime for which those responsible have yet to be punished for


• Never forget the 4,000+ American soldiers or the tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis who lost their lives because of this illegal war


• Never forget that anyone who bothered to speak out against the war was labeled a traitor, and that many of those in the press who were so wrong in the content and context of what they wrote are still gainfully employed and taken seriously, while those who were correct are still being marginalized


• Never forget that this country, while in the process of capturing a few actual terrorists, kidnapped hundreds of people whose only crime was being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and brutally tortured them in violation not only of the law but of any sense of common decency


• And finally, never forget that this is what happens when we praise stupidity, celebrate greed, and elect people into government who hate the very idea of government. Citizens can hold their elected officials accountable when they break the law, peasants ignorantly follow leaders on the assumption that the leaders are "their betters"

That's just a short list. I used to think we were better than all that, but I was wrong.

The Bottom Line

Failure to enact any kind of health care reform simply means that our current system will remain as it is for at least another generation, and there's no reason to believe that the "free market" will improve things: after all, the only reason we are having this argument again is because the private sector has done nothing to improve things since the last time reform was defeated sixteen years ago.

The reality is this: There ain't no such thing as a free market. Unregulated capitalism doesn't promote competition, it destroys it.

Give everyone the choice of buying into Medicare or some other public option before they are 65 and we'll see what happens.