:murmuring: Tell me, #Obamacare defenders: have you read Shaw?

Specifically, George Bernard Shaw’s preface to his Saint Joan*?

No?

Ah. Well, I suppose that access to such texts is not guaranteed for either the public school or the Ivy League student. Pity.

Moe Lane

*Let me unpack that: there is a certain segment of the law’s apologists who seem to think that they can respond to an emotional issue with convoluted legalisms and hairsplitting, leavened with a healthy dose of condescending pity.  As Shaw pointed out in said Preface, an attitude related to that got both his Joan and Socrates killed.  The analogy is not perfect, or completely apt – Obamacare defenders are after all wrong, while Joan of Arc and Socrates tended to be right – but it’s still a good warning to people to address what the person you’re trying to debate is actually upset about.

Of course, how a Democrat can successfully address an issue of You rat bastards killed my healthcare policy that I’ve been worriedly fiddling with for years and made me start the whole thing over again under the gun and I hate thinking about this and I didn’t ask for your help and now I’m going to die the next time I get sick because of you Democrats is left as an exercise for the reader.