Tuesday, February 06, 2018
By Michael Corcoran, Truthout | News Analysis
About 500 protesters chanting Kill the Bill, Don't Kill Us! filled the street outside the New York Stock Exchange on December 19, 2017 -- where the resources siphoned from the poor and middle class by the Republican tax bill will be concentrated. (Photo: Erik McGregor / Pacific Press / LightRocket via Getty Images)
About 500 protesters chanting "Kill the Bill, Don't Kill Us!" filled the street outside the New York Stock Exchange on December 19, 2017 -- where the resources siphoned from the poor and middle class by the Republican tax bill will be concentrated. (Photo: Erik McGregor / Pacific Press / LightRocket via Getty Images)
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In Kurt Vonnegut's 1965 book, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, the protagonist inherits a massive sum of money from his wealthy family. Rosewater, who has no use for the American class system, decides the money should be spent on a foundation that gives money and love to people who are deemed as "useless to society" by the "rapacious citizens who have come to control all that is worth controlling in America."
He is taken to court by an irate family whose lawyers argue that such unconditional generosity is evidence of mental instability. Vonnegut's alter ego, Kilgore Trout, feels otherwise, saying this kindness meant "our hatred of useless human beings and the cruelties we inflict upon them for their own good need not be parts of human nature."
It is fitting that this book was released the same year Medicaid was passed. Vonnegut's disgust at this sinister view on humanity stands out as we watch the GOP's latest effort to reshape Medicaid in all sorts of regressive ways in states across the US. In January, President Drumpf made the unprecedented decision to allow states to add work requirements and other obstacles to Medicaid by applying for a waiver from the administration. It is a backhanded way of achieving one of the many goals of the failed Trumpcare bill: gutting Medicaid.
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