Aslaug's Axe Shed

I never actually thought I’d have to do this, but this has been nagging me for days, and I’ve finally decided to write something about this. You, the unfortunate reader, will just have to bear with me. Or not read it. Your choice, really.

Lately, I’ve heard the same word used a lot. In the media in particular, but even in private situations as well. It is a word that people have begun using as a catchall for everything they disagree with, without having the least, foggiest clue what it actually means.

Or even worse, they do know what it really means, but choose to use it in an inappropriate context for personal gain.

I never thought I’d find myself actually being forced to take the Tea Party seriously to the point where I feel I have to speak up against their latest attack-phrase.

The word I am referring to is, of course, “Tyranny”.

The word “Tyranny” comes from the ancient Greek word “Tirannos”, and according to the respected Oxford Dictionary, the definition of “Tyranny” is this:

Noun
Cruel and oppressive government or rule.

The Oxford Dictionary further exemplifies thusly:

(Especially in ancient Greece) Rule by one who has absolute power without legal right.

I beg to differ. According to the Tea Party, Fox and the right wing bloggosphere in the United States, that should be:

(Especially in ancient Greece and the United States of America during the Obama presidency) Rule by one who has absolute power without legal right.

You know what that is? It’s pathetic. It’s ridiculous. It’s even downright insulting!

You want tyranny? Real, bald-faced tyranny? Look to Zimbabwe, North Korea or the Sudan. Look to Hugo “Oh how I love to hear myself speak” Chavez’ Venezuela.

Those are all tyrannies. The United States IS not a tyranny, never HAS been a tyranny and in all likelihood never WILL be a tyranny.

And here is the core of the issue. The people calling Obama a tyrant are people shouting up a storm about how ANY government regulation of life is tyranny. Forcing everyone to buy health insurance? Oh GOD how tyrannical … if you ask these wingnuts, at least.

The first of two alternatives was to pay for health care over the tax-bill. Do you think even for a second that these people would think THAT less tyrannical?

The second alternative would be to not have public healthcare in the United States whatsoever. Leaving 41 million citizens without access to basic medical facilities, while still claiming to be the best damned country in the world, and the norm for everyone else to aspire to.

That kind of thing is hypocrisy of the first order.

Do onto others, y’know … unless “others” are poor.

Tyranny means absolute power in the hands of a leadership unwilling to give that power up.

Tyranny does not mean any law passed by a politician you didn’t vote for and with whom you disagree. That, in fact, is DEMOCRACY! Or at least a representative republic (but let’s call it a democracy for ease of understanding here).

Tyranny would be if Obama or Bush before him, had reached the end of their term, and said “Oh, it’s election year. Ah well, y’know, I like being president SO much, I’m just not going to give it up. So the elections are called off. All hail me, your new president for life!”

THAT would be tyranny. There is absolutely NOTHING tyrannical about laws being passed by proper, legislative procedure by an elected, legislative body. One may disagree, one may find such laws unreasonable or wrong, but that is why we have elections. The next time around, convince enough people that those laws were wrong and lo and behold, you can undo them, change them or countermand them to your ‘ickle hearts desire!

I find this tendency to over-dramatization hugely annoying. In fact, it bothers the snot out of me.

When Sharon Angle, in all her divinely inspired folly, speaks of “second ammendment remedies” if Harry Reid should beat her in November, what she is basically saying is this:

“If I don’t win the election in November, the solution is to shoot my opponent.”

Since when did THAT become part of any democratic process??

When the incredibly aptly named Dick Armey rails against the tyrannical government in Washington … of which he was a major part as majority leader of the senate in the 1990′s … and when he incites his hordes of tea-party astroturfers to rail against “Obamacare” or “the Pelosi/Reid socialist takeover of Washington”, what he’s doing is not only nonsense … it’s deliberately lying about his political opponents, in order to make them appear as if they are setting up a nascent dictatorship.

But there are elections in November, folks, and by all accounts, the democrats will lose seats.

Why will they lose seats? Because since 1864, this has been an almost perfect rule. Whenever a new president was sworn in, the first midterm election following his election, his party would lose seats. Only once has this not happened. One time in nearly 150 years.

The reason is simple psychology, and not, as Mr. Army, Mrs. Angle and the rest of their ilk would have us believe, because Americans are taking back power from a corrupt and tyrannical government.

The reason is far simpler than that. There are two elements to this:

Disaffection and a basic desire for checks and balances.

Some people who voted for whoever is president will always feel let down. The fact remains that Obama has managed to introduce legislation on a scale that few presidents can boast of. Hell, every president … EVERY president, REGARDLESS of political party … since Truman, has declared it a political goal to reform the deeply broken, utterly flawed, inhumane and horrible health-insurance system that caused so much misery and suffering, while making insurance shareholders fat and rich in the process. Every president. Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford (Hell, even FORD?? Oh, right … he did it while he was vice president under Nixon), Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan … erh … hang on, Mr. “Government-is-the-problem” wanted to fix the problems with healthcare? … George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and now Obama. ALL have said they wanted to fix healthcare.

What’s the difference here? The difference is Obama didn’t just talk about it. He did something. Was it a perfect solution? No. Was it even a great one? Not really. Was it better than what was there in advance?

HELL YES!!

41 million Americans without health-insurance now get coverage. Think about that number of people, and think about my last blog post. About WWI and the suffering caused by that. I kept returning to those 39 million dead, wounded or missing people from that war. In America of 2009-2010 … the number of people without any kind of health-insurance coverage exceeded that number by a whopping TWO MILLION PEOPLE!

But according to Sarah Palin, Dick Armey, Sharon Angle, Charlie Crist and the rest of the extreme right in American politics today, that’s a GOOD thing.

Getting these people coverage, according to them, is TYRANNY after all. Play ominous music (O Fortuna seems appropriate).

Now, this is a call to the Tea-Party crowd … of whom I actually don’t think I know any, but it’s mostly rhetorical anyway, as I know it’s a forlorn hope to REACH these people with logos-arguments.

But look up the words you sling about left, right and center before using them. Look up what the word “tyranny” really means. Look up what “democracy” means. Look up what a “representative government” means. Look up what “opposition” means too, please, so that you may learn that being in the opposition doesn’t make you the downtrodden masses. It makes you the people who couldn’t get enough votes to beat the other guy last time there was an election. It gives you the right to disagree, even complain and growl … Gods know I do so often enough about politics in my own country. But realize also that as loyal citizens it is NOT your duty to grab your weapons and march on Washington. That would NOT make you patriots. It would make you traitors to the very principles laid out in the American constitution and the Bill of Rights.

Traitors.

Not heroes.

Because traitors are people who deliberately try to undermine the political system of their country, and that accepts astroturfing extremists who will use any damned excuse to complain, except the one that really DOES bother them.

Namely that a black man won the last presidential election in front of a white war-hero.

That is what this is really about. It is obvious to anyone with eyes and ears.

It doesn’t matter what Obama suggests … because in the eyes of the Tea-Party, he could propose legislation taken out of the Republican party manifesto (bloody hell, he -has- in the past), and they will still call it a marxist-nazi communist, Islamist plot to destroy America.

And they won’t even hear how utterly idiotic that sounds themselves.

I mean, I had to rewind the first time I heard someone call him a marxist, a communist and finally a nazi in the space of thirty seconds. I listened to it again. And then I laughed. Very loud, for a very long time and very hard.

I say again … look up the words you use before using them.

Thanks.