Wolfgang von Skeptik

A PLAGUE ON ALL THEIR HOUSES

I GOT TWO SEEMINGLY unrelated but politically revealing slaps in the face this weekend, and the second one taught me an unforgettable lesson in just why it is 55 percent of the American electorate feels our country is headed in the wrong direction. The first slap, a relatively mild smack on the cheek early Saturday morning, was the surprising decision by the nominally libertarian/conservative website Tech Central Station to suppress a carefully reasoned pro-Bush commentary I submitted in response to an insightfully critical analysis of Kerry Administration foreign policy – a subject I will return to below. The second slap – late Saturday afternoon via the U.S. Mail and more like a knockout blow on the point of my chin – was the discovery that premiums and co-payments for the private-sector health insurance I buy every year will soar a total of 4,155 percent (not a typo) effective January 1, 2005. Had I received the insurance information before I voted – like the vast majority of Washington staters I vote by mail and had mailed in my ballot last Thursday – it triggered such fear and rage I would have voted for John Kerry, U.S. foreign policy be damned. This truly ruinous 4,155-percent hike, which will eventually either force me forever onto welfare or permanently into the ranks of the uninsured, is for reasons that I will explain in a moment entirely the fault of the Bush Administration and the Republican-controlled Congress.

Alas, the foreign policy realities that prompted my vote for President Bush are inescapable, though it took a day of some of the most embittered reflection of my life to bring me back to that realization. But I am left with such anger at the GOP’s Marie Antoinette indifference to people at my end of the socioeconomic spectrum – let us all eat (outsourced) jobs – I will surely never vote Republican again, just as I have not been able to bring myself to vote Democratic ever since my career was destroyed and my life thus ruined by feminist quota-mongering – quota-mongering that perfectly expresses the racial hatred and gender-war bigotry that is the core ideology of today’s Democratic Party. But even ideological posturing is ultimately a red herring. The ugly truth of America in the 21st Century is that – unless you are upper middle class or better – neither party gives a Big Rat’s Ass about you or yours. Those of us who live below the ever-more-insurmountable class barrier have absolutely no place to turn for political representation. The last time this was true of U.S. politics – at the beginning of the Great Depression – it was only the miracle of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his New Deal that saved our nation from Communism and Nazism: kept us from probably embracing each ideology in equal measure and fighting a second Civil War to determine whether our lives would be run by oberfuehrer or kommissar.

But now it is the epoch of the New Poverty, and my personal insurance crisis is typical. Because Medicare is worthless unless you are independently wealthy – the co-payments are typically $50 per doctor-office visit, the deductibles can add up to $34,428 per year, no typo, and the collection agencies are vicious beyond belief – I have long supplemented my Medicare coverage with private-sector insurance. Since I live in Western Washington state, I am fortunate enough to have access to the finest health insurance available in America: the Group Health Cooperative, a true non-profit insurance co-op that was organized here by local citizens shortly after World War Two and to which I have belonged off-and-on since 1972, long before I became Medicare eligible. Group Health combines all the benefits of private-sector insurance with all the benefits of socialized medicine and none of the disadvantages of either. It is also democratic as few organizations are: any insured can become a member of the co-op (as I have been since ‘72) and thus gain eligibility to vote on GHC policies. Though I differ with GHC administration over some positions – I do not for example believe that members of the co-op should have to pay for the birth control and gynecological services that finance the sex lives of young single women – I have never felt enough inclined to impose my own values on others to become an activist over these matters.

It is perhaps an aside, but I do not believe it is in my interest – or in the interest of anyone else on the short end of the socioeconomic stick (which includes most single women) – to allow the indifference of the plutocracy to set all of us here below the salt at one another’s throats. Fighting over the few scraps and tidbits we are flung by the barons of the boardroom and their wanna-bees in the electorate merely perpetuates the vast dearth that has already led us to a two-party system that represents only the wealthy. The truth of this statement is proven absolutely by the present health-insurance crisis: the rich have their insurance, and their politicians in the White House and Congress and the 50 state houses and legislatures don’t give a tinker’s damn that paying for it is beyond the reach of all the rest of us. If it were otherwise, the problem would have been solved years ago.

Back to the topic of Group Health, I have never known GHC to misinform its members. With this preface note the co-op’s apologetic explanation of its unprecedented Medicare program rate hikes: “...although the federal government increased its payments to us for your care by about 5 percent, the cost of that care is rising far more than the increase in payments – by 12-15 percent a year. Multiply that rate of increase by the amount of care we provide, and we end up with significant increases to our members.” On two recent occasions, when the Washington state Congressional delegation was finally pressured to act on this issue, the Medicare reimbursement formula was modified enough that GHC was able to give its members and ratepayers substantial premium reductions. But the federal changes were never anything more than emergency measures, supposedly preludes to more extensive reforms – reforms that never occurred. Why? The Republicans aren’t concerned about anyone save the fat-cats who contribute to their coffers. And the Democrats are not one scintilla better: Sen. Patty Murray was too busy defending Osama bin Laden – and then too preoccupied with her fight for re-election – to trifle with fulfilling the real needs of any Washingtonians outside her immediate matrifascist constituency. Hence the increases that take effect January 1: an annual premium increase of 22 percent, from $924 to $1128 per year; a 50 percent increase in co-payments for office visits, from $10 to $15; a 333 percent increase in the stop-loss ceiling (the maximum amount of co-payments you have to make in a single year), from $300 to $1000; a 750 percent increase in the ambulance-service copay, from zero to $75; a 3000 percent increase in the hospitalization copay, from zero to $300.

The worst part of the impact of all this on me personally is its Catch-22 element. Because eviction from my longtime country home forced me into “Senior Citizen Housing,” the amount I can earn in a given year – pension included – is strictly limited. The upper margin is about $15,000 per year – which is why I am not (and will never be again) allowed to work full-time even if my health permitted it. But the sum I need to earn so I can pay for my medical insurance without severely handicapping my ability to pay other bills will exceed $15,000 as soon as the increases become effective – especially since the standard federal Medicare premiums, which I also pay, soared an unprecedented 17 percent to $78.20 per month – this thanks to the Bush Administration’s bogus prescription drug “benefit.” Which means my total annual predictable medical costs, including prescription drugs, will top $3000 – small change for some executive-suite oligarch, but fully a third of my pension and a fifth of my total allowable income. God forbid I should have to go to the hospital: it will truly bankrupt me, something from which at my age there is no recovery. In other words, it would literally be better I die. Will the bureaucracy raise the income ceiling for my housing? Maybe – if it gets around to it. Medicare costs went up last year too, and the ceiling was not raised. So in reality, the ceiling will probably stay the same. And I will be, in a word, screwed.

But our entire nation will be screwed if Kerry wins the election – which brings me to the Tech Central Station matter.

One of its better writers, Carroll Andrew Morse, discusses at some length how U.S. foreign policy has often been based on what he labels “declinism” – the notion that America is in decline and therefore cannot impose its will abroad. Morse discusses this in the context of refuting the hawkish beliefs that prompted Andrew Sullivan and Christopher Hitchens to endorse Kerry, but actually Morse’s primary thrust is a critique of Kerry himself. Here is Morse’s key paragraph:

Now, a third wave of declinism is taking shape. The new declinists, like the first wave, assume that the idea of pursuing victory is too risky to be considered -- the world is too dangerous, and outright victory over terrorism is not possible for any President. Instead, the primary function of the President should be to manage the damage created by terrorism. Kerry expressed this view in his New York Times interview with Matt Bai, saying "We have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they're a nuisance". Senator Kerry is not alone in this belief. Just one year after September 11, for example, Arthur Schlesinger wrote an op-ed where he said, "Americans can learn to live with minor terrorism, as the people of Britain, Spain, India, Ireland, Italy, Russia, Sri Lanka and most of the world have already learned to do."

The rest of Morse’s piece is available here. The commentary I sent to TCS in response – the commentary TCS suppressed – is below:

I agree with Mr. Morse's analysis as far as it goes, but I believe he overlooks five revealing elements of Kerry's history: (1)-Kerry's avowed opposition to United States Southeast Asian policy and his concurrent support for the Viet Cong, the National Liberation Front and the Communist government of North Vietnam during the early 1970s; (2)-his record in the Senate of reflexively opposing all increases in defense or intelligence spending; (3)-his repeated pledge to unilaterally disarm the United States of its nuclear bunker-buster bombs, the only weapon in the U.S. arsenal that promises effectiveness against the bunkerized nuclear sites in Iran and North Korea; (4)-his 100 percent record of favoring draconian anti-Second Amendment measures, which reveals that despite his "hunter" smokescreen, he views an armed population at home with as much repugnance as he views an adequately armed United States military; (5)-his ongoing refusal to answer Bob Woodward's 22 key policy questions.

The portrait of Kerry that emerges from these indisputable facts is not that of a "flip-flopper" but rather of a leftist ideologue whose values are remarkably constant -- and cleverly concealed in the interest of winning election.

Reasoning backward from point (5), if Kerry intended to fulfill his own promise of vigorously waging the war on terror, he would have had no difficulty answering Woodward's revealing questions; the pacifist support Kerry would have lost (probably to Nader) would have been more than compensated by hawkish independents, political eclectics and conservatives who are appalled by Bush's dunderheaded ineptitude if not by his (theocratic?) arrogance. But if Kerry plans to order a wholesale retreat from Iraq -- as I believe he does (and precisely as his history indicates) -- he could not answer Woodward's pointed questions without ensuring his defeat on Tuesday. Hence his silence -- the very silence that proves my analysis is correct.

Alas, I believe Kerry will win the election by a small but decisive majority. Thus I believe we will see an utterly shameful withdrawal from Iraq within months -- a replay of our equally shameful withdrawals from Vietnam, Lebanon and Somalia. Concurrently Kerry would set about fulfilling all his other campaign promises. He would unilaterally disarm America of its nuclear bunker-busters even as he imposes a parallel disarmament policy at home, browbeating Congress into approving anti-Second Amendment tyrannies that could well include the worst elements of New York City/New Jersey/Massachusetts/Washington D.C. gun control, not to mention universal permits and national registration. Meanwhile, to silence the growing outcry over the rebounding threats from criminals and Islamic terrorists, Kerry would propose hate-speech laws identical to the most restrictive of those already enacted by Canada -- laws that effectively outlaw critical discussion of feminism, Islam or any other ideology associated with protected groups and minorities -- and he would achieve passage of these too when religious fundamentalists unite with feminists and other victimhood ideologues to pressure Congress. Just as Mr. Morse said, "effectively incorporating a constant threat of terror...into a permanent part of day-to-day life."

Since the essential objective of Kerry's Middle Eastern policy would be a return to pre-9/11 "stability," I believe it is at least conceivable he would re-establish Saddam Hussein as dictator in Iraq. (Yes I admit this is far-fetched, but it is not without precedent: recall how the British released the MauMau terrorist Jomo Kenyatta from prison and set him up as prime minister of Kenya.)

Unless Bush somehow manages to prevail (I have already voted for him as by far the lesser of two evils), this final twilight of American liberty would truly be all Bush's fault: his repeated blunders combined with his breathtaking arrogance -- not to mention his association with a singularly malevolent form of Christofascism -- will have engendered a defeat that turned the country over to the most dangerously Left-radical ticket ever embraced by the U.S. electorate. The resultant bitterness at Bush and the Republican Party would probably exceed any comparable outpouring in U.S. history.

As for Hitchens and Sullivan -- both of whom I read regularly with considerable respect -- I believe their very Britishness blinds them to the malignance of the poisons that were unleashed in America by the conflicts of the 1960s -- toxins that have been eroding our political system ever since. Speaking as a former leftist, I am convinced Hitchens and Sullivan woefully underestimate both Kerry’s lingering post-Vietnam down-with-America antagonism and the subversive skill of the "by-any-means-necessary" half of the Democratic Party that makes up his true following.

Verily, I fear for the Republic.

Woodward’s 22 questions are available here (sorry, registration required).

Because most of the responses to Morse’s analysis were neither particularly well-thought-out nor especially articulate (and many of them were as long or longer than mine), I can only speculate as to why TCS chose not to run my e-mail. Perhaps my conclusions were too radical for the editor’s comfort – never mind the fact they are solidly based on indications derived directly Kerry’s record. Or perhaps the editor that night was someone who is a clandestine Kerry partisan – and therefore felt that while my letter is pure speculation (note the repeated use of “would”) it is also too dangerously revealing of Kerry’s intentions. Whatever, my readers – especially those on Lucianne.com – know that some of my most seemingly outrageous speculations are often proven true. In this case of course I hope I am wrong – and that is all I will have to say on this or any other subject until after the election.

Nor am I certain just when I will be back: I have seven news reports to research, photograph and write in just three weeks, but the complete electrical-system failure of my 12-year-old Ford Tempo has thrown a huge monkey-wrench in my progress toward meeting the deadline: repairing it with my best friend’s help will kill at least a whole day, more if I have to hire a mechanic. Plus I will lose an entire additional day Tuesday waiting in line for a flu shot. Nevertheless I will continue blogging short posts, but until I catch up on the work that will begin paying the soaring costs of my new living situation, this site is going to take second place in my priorities. Sorry – and thanks for your patience.

Posted by Loren at November 1, 2004 08:47 AM