Socialized bullshit

by Rich Miles

Yellow Dog's post today, generally on the topic of socialized medicine, put me in mind again of a public encounter I had a week or so ago.

I was in the Rite-Aid on Midland Trail, picking up a prescription (that, coincidentally, costs me $60 a month, even WITH insurance), and in the interest of being sociable, asked an older gentleman who was in the store how he was doing.

His reply, testy in the extreme, was that he might have been all right, were it not for Obama and his socialized medicine.

I, having a lifelong inability to keep my effin' mouth shut, said, "What the hell are you talking about? Do you use Medicare? What the hell you think Medicare is but socialized medicine?"

The old man said something rude, and left the store.

So anyway, here's the thing: most of the people who use the expression "socialized medicine" haven't the first fuckin' clue what that expression means! They think that anything with the word "socialized" in it refers to something communistic. Something the Soviets would have thought up, or perhaps did think up, back in the 50's or 60's.

Not that that would have made it a bad thing in any case. Some of that Soviet stuff worked pretty well.

But I'm gettin' pretty tired of listening to the right-wing fearmongers trying to drag us back into the 50's "Communists scare me" bullshit about healthcare.

How much fear can these fuckers mong? If that's the right word, and it's probably not.

We're supposed to be afraid of damn near everything. So the bad guys in our government can keep control over us. And most of them are Republicans.

You wanna be afraid of something? Be afraid of Republicans. And don't ever stop.