When The Bleeding Heart Becomes the Iron Fist

“...[Socialism] touches people at every step, but it does so with its ideological gloves on. 

This is why life in the system is so thoroughly permeated with hypocrisy and lies: government by bureaucracy is called popular government; the working class is enslaved in the name of the work ing class; the complete degradation of the individual is presented as his ultimate liberation; depriving people of information is called making it available; the use of power to manipulate is called the public control of power, and the arbitrary abuse of power is called observing the legal code; the repression of culture is called its development; the expansion of imperial influence is presented as support for the oppressed ...

--- Vaclav Havel

From Ricochet:

Welcome to liberal utopia, where barriers are not erected against terrorists or illegal aliens on our nation's borders, but rather against citizens, and where wheelchair-bound veterans enroute to honor their comrades face tighter security than terrorists enroute to murder a US Ambassador.  This is where up is down, wrong is right, illegality is celebrated as progress, and where Constitutionalism is derided as racist.  No longer relegated to the fever swamps of academic fancy, utopia has acquired real estate and made known its demands.

"Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual…" the First Lady warned us, and she wasn't just whistling Alinsky either.  Under King Barack's Reign of Error, your life is no longer your own, for you are now commanded to enter into private contracts by virtue of your simple existence on the planet.  Why?  Because our Sovereign and his fellow travelers are compassionate, of course.  Their hearts bleed for you,…almost as much as your pocketbook will bleed for them.

If you suffered the fate of MSNBC's anchorwoman, you were lucky.  Mara Schiavocampo found the Obamacare website impenetrable, throwing in the towel on live television after 35 minutes and saying, "If I were signing up for myself, this is where my patience would be exhausted."  Unhappily, it isn't just the citizen's patience that is being exhausted, as Eric Levy of Seattle, Washington discovered.

Eric, who felt his previous insurance was too costly, managed to access Washington Health Benefit Exchange, where he was confronted with the fiction of the President's sales pitch that insurance would become more affordable.  "It's another $500 a month that you have to think about how you're going to pay for," said Eric, adding, "The real thing that jumped out at me is all of a sudden I'm required to have maternity coverage."  

Even in our enlightened age of trans-gendered confusion, one has to grant that the odds of Eric getting knocked up are pretty slim, but Obamacare is a collective baby with an insatiable appetite for our money on one end and little sense of responsibility at the other.  

From the Obamacare Facebook page, we read still more reviews on the efforts of our benevolent masters: 

The information is not very complete as I don't see anything about deductible or other detailed info, but it does give an actual price as to the "Premium."  It is VERY SCARY!!  For example, my insurance plan right now for my spouse and I costs $545 a month with 100% coverage after my $2,500 deductible.  We are both 32 years old.  When I looked at this site for 80% coverage it says it will be $954.87 a month!!!!  So compare my old plan: 100% coverage for $545 a month To New Plan: 80% coverage for $945 a month.  This is only an estimate but it is VERY Scary for me see this kind of increase in rates and reduction in benefits!

Or: 

I am so disappointed.  These prices are outrageous and there are huge deductibles.  No one can afford this! 

What happened to the Yes We Can chorus?

YOU ALSO NEED TO READ, MARK STEYN'S SHUTDOWN SIMULACRUM:

Way back in January, when it emerged that Beyoncé had treated us to the first ever lip-synched national anthem at a presidential inauguration, I suggested in this space that this strange pseudo-performance embodied the decay of America’s political institutions from the real thing into mere simulacrum. 

But that applies to government “crises,” too — such as the Obamacare “rollout,” the debt “ceiling,” and the federal “shutdown,” to name only the three current railroad tracks to which the virtuous damsel of Big Government has been simultaneously tied by evil mustache-twirling Republicans. 

This week’s “shutdown” of government, for example, suffers (at least for those of us curious to see it reduced to Somali levels) from the awkward fact that the overwhelming majority of the government is not shut down at all. 

Indeed, much of it cannot be shut down. Which is the real problem facing America. “Mandatory spending” (Social Security, Medicare, et al.) is authorized in perpetuity — or, at any rate, until total societal collapse. 

If you throw in the interest payments on the debt, that means two-thirds of the federal budget is beyond the control of Congress’s so-called federal budget process. 

That’s why you’re reading government “shutdown” stories about the PandaCam at the Washington Zoo and the First Lady’s ghost-Tweeters being furloughed.