Lines In The Sand

This letter was in our local paper today. I rather like it (the headline was theirs):

Voter malpractice will injure nation When I was in the practice of surgery, had I severely damaged a patient by poor care, the last thing the patient or her family would do when they needed another operation would be to come to me. And yet that logic has escaped those (including, now, the editorial board of The Herald, in its rejection of Rick Larsen) who would return majority power to congressional Republicans and their undeniably failed economic theories. I suppose it can, in part, be explained by the constant bombardment with disinformation from the screamers of the right-wing airwaves. A majority of tea party people, for example, believe the bank bailouts happened on Obama’s watch. Similarly, they’ve been taught to ignore the fact that the vast majority of projected national debt is the result of Bush’s tax cuts and his unpaid-for wars and other spending. But if it’s an explanation, it’s no excuse. Just as proper medical decision-making assumes informed input from patients, democracy demands educated voters. The distractions of birth certificates and mosques, deliberately fomented by the foxy falsifiers to prevent facing facts about what happened to our economy and why, threatens us all. Having spent a long career where the well-being of my patients was paramount, it’s all but unbelievable to me as I observe the carelessness with which people are about to turn our country back over to those whose policies have so grievously harmed it, and who have so selfishly and unanimously refused to help those trying to bind the wounds. Sid Schwab Everett