I’m not about to argue that socialist healthcare is wrong because its advocates and enforcers are hypocrites. Don’t worry. Although this event is couched in the context of socialist healthcare, this brief piece is meant as nothing more than a close reading, a thin-slicing, of what goes on in a politician’s psyche.
When I read this article about Canadian Premier (Labrador and Newfoundland) Danny Williams coming to Florida to have a more advanced heart operation than what he could get in Canada, a couple things struck me as hilarious.
In a disastrous attempt to downplay the significance of his hypocrisy, he said the following: “”I would’ve been criticized if I had stayed in Canada and had been perceived as jumping a line or a wait list. … I accept that. That’s public life…”
The awesome thing about this statement is his automatic, pre-emptive assumption, that no matter how you slice the healthcare pie, he was entitled to treatment above and beyond that of the citizens he’s supposed to serve. If he hadn’t gone to the U.S., he would have at the very least bypassed the well-documented, sometimes fatal waiting periods for special treatment that exist in his own country.
The sad and laughable thing about this is that he’s using the statement as a defense. He thinks he’s making himself and his situation more sympathetic by clarifying how deeply rooted his beliefs in his own entitelement go.
He later goes on to justify his decision by proclaiming how important his own personal survival is to the Canadian people: “God forbid for the Canadian public I won’t be around longer than ever.”
They say actions speak louder than words, but I’m going to have to say that this man would have appeared to be less of a snake if he’d just had the surgery and kept his cake hole shut about it.
I’m not saying this man’s narcissistic personality disorder, and his blithe ignorance of the fact that condescension and hypocrisy aren’t usually the means by which one evokes sympathy from the Little People proves anything about the moral status of socialist healthcare. All I’m saying is, if Ayn Rand had given these lines to one of her villains, it would be derided as one-dimensional, ham-fisted caricature.
I mean, for Christ’s sake, look at this beautiful double-whammy:
“This was my heart, my choice and my health,” Williams said late Monday from his condominium in Sarasota, Fla.
Really?
“My heart, my choice, and my health”?
The quote itself reads like a sign that one of them racist, uninformed, redneck teabaggers might brandish at one of their staged non-events. Like something the statist media would have pounced on as proof that these astroturf yokels are just neo-con zombies vomiting up undigested Fox News soundbites they don’t understand. Let us not lose sight for a moment of the fact that the opposition movement–all popular movements–are full of people happy to repeat slogans they don’t really understand. Whether it’s a slogan that crystalizes the essence of a thoroughly pondered position, or a vacuous soundbite, it doesn’t change the fact that Williams lifted his defense straight off a teabagger’s sign.
Then, finally, the hail of dropping shoes comes to an end with the article mentioning that he’s making this statement from his condo in Florida.
Jesus. H. Fuck. Am I the only one who remembers the joke about the liberal celebrity giving a statement about the evils of capitalism as he stepped out of the limousine and boarded his private jet?
The last time I stopped to really criticize the way a politician thinks, I turned the lens on a guy I respect, Ron Paul. So anyone who reads this blog knows that spend zero time trying to villify individual politicians with whom I disagree. To be perfectly honest, I’m not even trying to villify this person, as a politician. I read the article, and what leaped out at me was a snapshot of a human being who is clearly detached from reality. Drunk on his own Kool-Aid.
But this could have been any issue. It’s not particular to healthcare and proves nothing about healthcare. I’m just throwing this piece onto the mountain of evidence in favor of what ought to be the uncontroversial understanding that politicians are clods with delusions of grandeur.
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