Ignorance is Bliss
Until it isn’t.
By Keith Thomas
3/4/2025, 2 pages
Astounding lack of knowledge
I received a letter from Speaker of the House Johnson today. The envelope on the back had a nice little picture of their Official Team Führer logo on the back. Team Führer! Johnson wants my input. (I don’t think he really does.)
Johnson said, “Your name was forwarded to me as a truly loyal and dedicated Republican – someone who understands that my fellow House Republicans and I must partner with President Trump to crush Socialism and protect our nation’s future.”
Yep. He wrote that. Protect our nation’s future. Crush Socialism.
What the uneducated MAGA cult base hasn’t seemed to have grasped yet is that MAGA Republicans in Congress consider Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare and a host of other vital government programs and subsidies that all Americans can access to be SOCIALISM.[1] [2] They insist that these essential programs are full of fraud, saying they are wasteful, and prone to abuse. They are cutting funding to as many “socialist” programs as they can. But tax cuts for the rich, subsidies to wealthy corporations and military contracts in Elon Musk’s pocket – yeah, that’s not Socialism.
Like the original Führer’s Hjalmar Schacht, Musk is cutting off funding like that MAGA farmers received from the Biden Administration,[3] which they need to survive (BTW they weren’t grateful to Biden either.) And the farmers aren’t alone.
MAGA won’t admit that they’re cutting Medicaid by 880 million dollars, but the only way they can cut that much money is to gut it. But that’s waaaaay too difficult for the MAGA base to understand.[4] Apparently, it’s also too much to expect them to understand that federal Medicaid is the foundation on which state medical assistance programs rest. Seen on Facebook not long ago: It’s a good thing for Congress to cut Medicaid! It won’t be a problem for me – I have MediCal (or KanCare, or any other state program)!
Remember Republican opposition to the Affordable Care Act (ACA)? The ACA resulted in millions of Americans being able to afford health care coverage that couldn’t before. Conservatives and liberals alike signed up for coverage under the ACA. Something like 40 million Americas now have medical insurance thanks to the ACA and thousands of lives have been saved.[5] MAGA Republicans unironically praise the ACA but voice their opposition to ObamaCare not knowing that it and the ACA are one and the same.
The Trump Administration is cutting funding for the ACA.[6] Think that the MAGA base covered by the ACA knows that? Nope. Do they even have any idea that they only have health insurance in the first place because of the ACA? Nope. Do they have any notion what the consequences to their lives will be in the wake of these cuts? Nope. They are just interested in burning the big bad federal government down.
Trump supporters will make the most astonishing comments.
Why do we need farms when you can buy everything at the grocery store?
That’s the level that we’re dealing with a lot of the time. It’s hard to have a conversation with people that have that level of non-understanding about the world let alone knowing how government works. MAGA cultists believe (because Trump and Musk tell them so) that government employees sit around doing nothing and collecting fat-cat salaries at their expense. One reason they can believe that government employees don’t do anything is because the system works (most of the time), invisibly, and efficiently. One of these days it won’t – more and more planes will fall out of the sky, veterans will be unable to access needed medical care, seniors dependent on Medicaid for their very existence will lose their homes – and life as we know it will look very different. It’s only when MAGA cult assistance is cut off that they will understand they’re in the same boat as the rest of us.
But it still won’t be their dear Führer’s fault.
[1] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-overwhelmingly-leads-rivals-in-support-from-less-educated-americans
[2] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-love-poorly-educated/
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Nazi_Germany
[4] https://www.axios.com/2024/11/07/college-degree-voters-split-harris-trump
[5] https://www.statista.com/topics/3272/obamacare/#topicOverview
[6]
https://www.hfma.org/payment-reimbursement-and-managed-care/trump-administration-starts-to-tweak-the-affordable-care-act-as-subsidy-debate-looms/
Copyright © 2025 Keith Thomas. All Rights Reserved.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please avoid name calling, personal and/or abusive language. In other words be civil. We need a lot more of that these days. Try and confine your comments to the topic of the post.