Are You A Parasite Or Gangrene?
by digby
This is one hell of a pitch from Georgia congressman Lynn Westmoreland at the Faith and Freedom coalition. I wonder how it’s going to go over with the public?
WESTMORELAND: If we hold the line, if we get those courageous men and women to be part of our majority. If we say look, the American people we’re listening to the American people, this is what we’re going to do. If government shuts down, we want you with us. We want you with us. We gotta have you because later on you all will call us and say look I didn’t get my check. Daddy can’t go to the VA. You know, the National Parks are closed.
We need to be sure that you are with us because let me tell you this, all Americans need to understand. We need to understand this and I hope you can help share this analogy with people. Just as when you talk about what is going to possibly happen, you know I was unfortunate to cut myself with a chainsaw. I don’t know how many of you have cut yourself with a chainsaw.
Chainsaw is not the cleanest instrument if you’re going to cut yourself. […] He said this is going to sting a little bit and it hurt like crazy. But you know what, if he didn’t clean out that wound, it would have never healed. I would have got gangrene. I would have died from it. And what has happened with this country, we have put bandaids on things that need to be cleaned out. It’s going to take some pain for us to do the things that we need to do to right the ship.
It’s the first time I’ve ever heard of sick veterans and old people referred to as “gangrene” but I think it fairly well describes how conservatives see sick, old and poor people in general.
I don’t know if they’ll be stupid enough to do this in the middle of a terrible economic slump, but they just might. And I think it will be an excellent demonstration of just how their philosophy plays out in real life. If the American people like it and reward them, then we’ll know that their dystopian Mad Max vision of America is a reflection of the desires of the citizens.
If people don’t like it, then perhaps it would be wise for Democrats to be prepared to offer some kind of specific message and agenda. I would expect that people might be willing to listen.
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