Playground Arguments

June 22, 2017

Today, the two-hundred-twenty-sixth since the election was secured by the Trump-Putin alliance, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will finally release the Republican health care plan. We all wait with bated breath for today’s disclosure, because the Senate bill has been written in secret. The thirteen white men “crafting” the legislation over the last few months have done so without input from women, Democrats or, even, other Republicans. It’s like they’ve been writing a Apple product release, without a cool new product that is.

When challenged about the secrecy, Mitch replied with, “The Democrats wrote Obamacare in secret, without oversight – so there!”

While Mitch’s statement is flatly untrue, the ADA was the result of 18 months of hearings and debate and contained over 100 Republican amendments, that’s really not the point.

The point is: someone doing something shitty first is not a good reason for a second, third, or tenth shitty response. The reasoning, “I hit Nancy, because she hit first” is a grade school argument that most parents have heard and disallowed from their toddlers,but for some reason, find perfectly reasonable from grown men.

Perhaps if we were to play a thought experiment and imagine a Democratic controlled congress creating a thirteen women committee, that secretly rewrites, I don’t know, the tax code. Since the Republicans did the secret thing with health care earlier, why not? After all, they hit first!

I suspect our conservative friends would have a problem with that committee’s secrecy (not to mention the gender inequality – such snowflakes).

The republic has too many problem and issues to be entertaining bullshit reasoning like “he did it first”. We need to learn to say, “We don’t care who started it! Go to your room and think about what you’ve done” every time politicians, from either side, offer us such childish reasons for their unacceptable behavior.

If we don’t, they’ll never learn.

In Peace and Justice,
osv

PS-
Yes, we skipped blogging yesterday, the two-hundred-twenty-fifth day of post-election bliss. Instead of Trump immersion we spent the summer solstice in the woods enjoying the sun. It was great, you should all try it; take an unscheduled day off – do nothing productive, shirk responsibility for a day. It’s okay, if anyone complains, blame us for setting a poor example and doing it first.