8.12.2009

Rush Limbaugh, Sara Palin, Glen Beck: the Modern Voice of Holocaust Denial.

Is this the scene that Rush, Glen and Sara imagine? It's the 1940's and a kindly Nazi doctor in an SS uniform sits down with a nice Jewish family to discuss the government's plan to exterminate their entire family and all of their friends and business associates, after seizing their possessions or working them to death as slaves. The government mandated options are many; death by firing squad in a Polish forest, asphyxiation in the back of a specially prepared van, or zyclon B from a shower head. Comparative effectiveness research has shown the zyclon B to be the most efficient option for the State run program. Or they can opt to work for Werner von Braum in a cave making V2 rockets until they die of starvation or illness along with 40,000 similar 'patients'. Other options are available but all have a common end point unless the Allies reach them first. Are you people insane, stupid or plain evil?

Yes, I can see how a neocon could see that as equivalent to a family practice physician sitting down with his elderly patients and openly discussing with them what they would want done if they got really sick. Deciding medical contingency plans for 'what if' situations. The same thing that's done now just doctors could be payed to help their patients with the resources and information they need to make informed decisions. BTW, no of those options involve gas of any kind, save anesthesia should surgery be required.

To equate the systematic state and culturally supported extermination of millions to informed medical consent is unforgivable. Unforgivable. Forgive my bluntness, but to use the Holocaust metaphorically in such way is either criminally stupid or evil in the extreme. Which are you Sara, Rush, Glen? I feel dirty even having to point out the difference. Your voices no longer have the capacity to spur meaningful debate for you have gone so far off the political reservation that no one who believes in true democracy and debate can reasonably listen to a word you say.

Dr Arthur Caplan, a well known bioethicist wrote far more eloquently than I ever could. His essay is a must read in my opinion.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32372258/ns/health-health_care/

Time to boycott and denounce these people once and for all.

4 comments:

Stacy S. said...

Let's just ignore them. I think that would hurt most of all.

mac said...

It's a typical right wing nutjob policy to compare anyone they don't like to Hitler or Nazism.

It would seem the neocons have finally realized THEY are more akin to Hitler than anyone else. Nazism is, after all, a far-right political stance?

Harvey said...

The three people you mention are representative of what the far right seems to see as the best way to attack anything supported by liberals and/or Barack Obama. I doubt that their real motivation has anything to do with health care delivery in the United States. It is much more concerned with playing "dog in the manger" while they wait for their chance to get back into power. Note that none of these individuals seems to have a viable counterproposal to what is being considered in Congress. They simply need to find ways to obstruct, impede or avert any positive changes that might later be attributed to the current administration.
With these thoughts in mind, I choose to doubt that all of them are closet antisemites (at least to any greater extent than most mainstream conservatives may be). As a Jew, I have been acutuely aware of overt antisemitism, as opposed to the usual "Well, they are different from us, but I don't have any real dislike for particular individuals" that is generally pervasive in the American population. Rather, I think this is simply a convenient way for these demagogues to "stir the pot", maintain some of the chaos that Rush likes to do, and galavanize the larger part of their support base who will not bother to question anything they say, no matter how outrageous.

Asylum Seeker said...

The public representatives for Republicans in this country just seem to delve more and more into hysteria and falsehoods that are ridiculous on their face. I really wonder what is going to happen due to that fact. It seems that more people are being driven away due to realizing how abjectly wrong many of these people's arguments are, and how outright evil some of the implications they try to use are. But I still don't know whether these people outnumber those who buying it. And how dangerous those true believers might become as they drive the "facts" ever more into the realms of absurdity...