Can you count the letter t in:
MODERATES HIGH WATER MARK. AFTER THIS, WE GET REAL.
There are lots of words written and spoken about socialism, and in particular that so-called moderates should reject anything different from the way things have been done in the past.
In a moderates column today, The New York Times quotes a person at a Virginia town hall meeting who asked her Congresswoman how she could justify a party (Democrats) who are the party of death and taxes. This is the kind of person held up by corporate media and others as a moderate. See Catie Edmonson and Emily Cochrane, The Moderates Take a Grilling Back at Home, The New York Times, Monday, February 25, 2019, p. A1, apprehensively retitled online with the headline, In Conservative Districts, Democrats Have to Answer for Party’s Left Wing (the newspaper may require a subscription to access it).
Parenthetically, the reporting on town hall meetings does not mention that only Democratic Members of Congress are holding town hall meetings.
The vast majority of people in the United States favor, and will vote for, Medicare for all and single-payer health care. Health insurance companies, hospitals, and many doctors are against it. They make a lot of money the way things are.
Increasing taxes on the rich is also favored by the vast majority of Americans. Rich people are understandably against increasing their taxes, so they spend less money than they would pay in taxes to promote campaigns seeking to make other people believe that everybodys taxes will increase. But only their taxes will increase for the most part, and most people seem to know that in spite of the campaigns paid for by the rich.
The Green New Deal is a resolution, not a statute. When any resolution is adopted -- and the Green New Deal Resolution has not been adopted yet -- it is a talking point, the beginning of a discussion of ways to do things. Again, most people in this country know that the environment of 2019 is going to be way worse in 10 or 20 years or longer in terms of human existence. The vast majority of people think that whether this will continue to look like the same country in 10 or 20 years, and what we as a nation can and should do about it, is a worthy debate to have in the United States of America. Oil barons will turn up their air conditioners when things get too hot; many of the rest of the people will continue to die from the heat.
So, this is the high water mark of moderate stories disguised as reporting. Apparently, moderates are moderates only if they keep you in power. Inevitably, reporting will return to the actual facts. Reality will become reality in spite of what we read and hear now.
In the end, we do not have a real choice.
user
I counted two hundred and sixteen "t"s in that text.
assistant