Stephen_Coyle
Really Experienced
- Joined
- May 4, 2017
- Posts
- 233
Recent events have had me thinking about Ebenezer Scrooge.
Now, when Charles Dickens wrote the Christmas Carol back in the 1840’s, I’m certain he wasn’t thinking about the American political parties or their political philosophies, however, as I write this (in America, in the year 2021), I cannot escape the fact that Ebenezer Scrooge begins the story with the attitude of a modern-day Republican and by the end of the story he has the attitude of a modern day liberal Democrat.
He starts off sounding like Greg Abbot, Dan Patrick, Rick Perry or Tim Boyd.
When asked by members of Victorian society to donate money to help the cold and the hungry and the poor during the Christmas Season, Scrooge insists that he has no intention of helping the poor. And if the poor are hungry, they can always go to the debtor’s prisons or the workhouses.
Scrooge is told that many of the poor can’t go there; and many would rather die than go to those horrible places.
Scrooge than replies, “If they would rather die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”
“Yes, this “let the poor die” attitude is very Republican.
Trump and his fellow Republicans have repeatedly called for cutting federal heating assistance to the millions of Americans who cannot afford to heat their homes in the winter. This is basically calling for poor Americans to freeze to death and thus “decrease the surplus population.”
And speaking of Americans who cannot heat their homes during the winter…in Texas, the state’s power grid failing this winter, leaving millions of Texans without heat or electricity in below-freezing temperatures. To make matters worse, many also lacked running water, forcing them to haul in heavy buckets of snow each time they needed to flush their toilets.
When freezing citizens of Colorado City, Texas asked whether the small town planned to open warming shelters or provide some sort of assistance for the firefighters who could not do their job without water. But when the Republican mayor of Colorado City’s mayor chimed in, he said that the local government had no responsibility to help out its citizens, and only the tough would survive.
“No one owes you [or] your family anything,” Tim Boyd wrote to his constituents. “I’m sick and tired of people looking for a damn handout!”
Boyd’s tirade also demanded that “lazy” residents find their own ways of procuring water and electricity. Mayor Boyd rejected the notion that municipal governments or utility companies had any obligation to provide paying customers with necessities like heat and running water during a catastrophic winter storm.
Ted Cruz is a United States Senator representing the state of Texas. In a crisis where millions of his constituents are without power and at risk of freezing to death, you think he would do something.
He did do something. But being a Republican, he was like Scrooge. He didn’t want to help people in need, he wanted to help himself. He grabbed his family and he jumped on a plane and they all flew down to sunny Mexico for a vacation. Millions of Ted’s constituents were suffering, but Ted and his family flew down to where they could enjoy the sun and the sand.
Perhaps Ted felt that if his constituents didn’t want to die, they could go to a prison? Or perhaps they could die and reduce the surplus population?
Of course, if you’ve read the Christmas Carol, you know that Scrooge was visited by a series of ghosts who tried to teach him not to be such a heartless sociopath and to develop empathy. They try to get him to change his ways and stop being such a useless, deplorable wretch.
And, in the end, they succeed.
Of course, the Republicans of today would refer to the ghosts as the “liberal media” and castigate them for pushing their “liberal agenda” and their “socialist ideas” on Scrooge.
No longer acting like a Republican, Scrooge promises to donate large sums of money to the poor and makes plans to give his employee, Bob Cratchit a large raise and assist his troubled family.
Scrooge’s behavior at the end of the story closely mirrors the behavior of Democrats like Alexandria Ocasio Cortez who raised three million dollars in relief to Texas families or Beto O’Rourke who led a phone-bank that made over 784,000 calls to older Texans to help connect them to water, food, transportation and shelter during the power outage.
In the midst of the worst winter storm in Texas history, where we’ve seen Texans die of carbon monoxide poising, die from exposure or die as their homes burned down as they tried to keep warm, we see the Republicans turn their backs on the people of Texas, while the Democrats pitch in and help to keep people alive.
Now, when Charles Dickens wrote the Christmas Carol back in the 1840’s, I’m certain he wasn’t thinking about the American political parties or their political philosophies, however, as I write this (in America, in the year 2021), I cannot escape the fact that Ebenezer Scrooge begins the story with the attitude of a modern-day Republican and by the end of the story he has the attitude of a modern day liberal Democrat.
He starts off sounding like Greg Abbot, Dan Patrick, Rick Perry or Tim Boyd.
When asked by members of Victorian society to donate money to help the cold and the hungry and the poor during the Christmas Season, Scrooge insists that he has no intention of helping the poor. And if the poor are hungry, they can always go to the debtor’s prisons or the workhouses.
Scrooge is told that many of the poor can’t go there; and many would rather die than go to those horrible places.
Scrooge than replies, “If they would rather die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”
“Yes, this “let the poor die” attitude is very Republican.
Trump and his fellow Republicans have repeatedly called for cutting federal heating assistance to the millions of Americans who cannot afford to heat their homes in the winter. This is basically calling for poor Americans to freeze to death and thus “decrease the surplus population.”
And speaking of Americans who cannot heat their homes during the winter…in Texas, the state’s power grid failing this winter, leaving millions of Texans without heat or electricity in below-freezing temperatures. To make matters worse, many also lacked running water, forcing them to haul in heavy buckets of snow each time they needed to flush their toilets.
When freezing citizens of Colorado City, Texas asked whether the small town planned to open warming shelters or provide some sort of assistance for the firefighters who could not do their job without water. But when the Republican mayor of Colorado City’s mayor chimed in, he said that the local government had no responsibility to help out its citizens, and only the tough would survive.
“No one owes you [or] your family anything,” Tim Boyd wrote to his constituents. “I’m sick and tired of people looking for a damn handout!”
Boyd’s tirade also demanded that “lazy” residents find their own ways of procuring water and electricity. Mayor Boyd rejected the notion that municipal governments or utility companies had any obligation to provide paying customers with necessities like heat and running water during a catastrophic winter storm.
Ted Cruz is a United States Senator representing the state of Texas. In a crisis where millions of his constituents are without power and at risk of freezing to death, you think he would do something.
He did do something. But being a Republican, he was like Scrooge. He didn’t want to help people in need, he wanted to help himself. He grabbed his family and he jumped on a plane and they all flew down to sunny Mexico for a vacation. Millions of Ted’s constituents were suffering, but Ted and his family flew down to where they could enjoy the sun and the sand.
Perhaps Ted felt that if his constituents didn’t want to die, they could go to a prison? Or perhaps they could die and reduce the surplus population?
Of course, if you’ve read the Christmas Carol, you know that Scrooge was visited by a series of ghosts who tried to teach him not to be such a heartless sociopath and to develop empathy. They try to get him to change his ways and stop being such a useless, deplorable wretch.
And, in the end, they succeed.
Of course, the Republicans of today would refer to the ghosts as the “liberal media” and castigate them for pushing their “liberal agenda” and their “socialist ideas” on Scrooge.
No longer acting like a Republican, Scrooge promises to donate large sums of money to the poor and makes plans to give his employee, Bob Cratchit a large raise and assist his troubled family.
Scrooge’s behavior at the end of the story closely mirrors the behavior of Democrats like Alexandria Ocasio Cortez who raised three million dollars in relief to Texas families or Beto O’Rourke who led a phone-bank that made over 784,000 calls to older Texans to help connect them to water, food, transportation and shelter during the power outage.
In the midst of the worst winter storm in Texas history, where we’ve seen Texans die of carbon monoxide poising, die from exposure or die as their homes burned down as they tried to keep warm, we see the Republicans turn their backs on the people of Texas, while the Democrats pitch in and help to keep people alive.
