Health care’s too expensive. Illegal immigrants are about to bankrupt all our hospitals, suck all our tax dollars down like tequila, and we just can’t afford to give doctors to poor people for free.
Education’s too expensive, too. Where’s the money going to come from? To pay for new textbooks and paint and new windows and boiler systems and to pay teachers enough that they stay at one school forever and ever, and if kids don’t even want to learn, why do we want to blow all our cash on them anyway?
The space program’s too expensive. Urban redevelopment is too expensive. Food pantries are too expensive. Homeless shelters? Too expensive. Rebuilding New Orleans? Good Lord, look it up and it’s the definition of too expensive.
Whenever I’m talking social programs with Republicans, or fundraising with nonprofits, people always talk as though this country and all its inhabitants are on the verge of complete and total bankruptcy. The economy’s terrible, it’s no time to run a capital campaign to help poor homeless kitties. There’s no money to fund the kind of health care program needed to solve the crisis in this country. People don’t care, they won’t give, blah blah blah and it’s never more than complete and total bullshit, and if you need proof of that, look no further than this fucking thing.
The science is what offends most people, the affront to knowledge. I’m more annoyed by the amount of money it cost. I mean, do whatever you want with your cash, really, but nobody can ever tell me this country is poor, or that the money isn’t out there to be had.
Talking with a local social service org the other day, they were saying, “But the economy’s so bad, we can’t ask people to give,” and I replied, “So long as people are still shopping for gas grills the size of my car at The Great Indoors every weekend, the economy will support your asking for help.” I think from now on I’ll tell them the story of this creationist monstrosity, and how so long as people can plunk down $27 million for that, they shouldn’t be shy about asking for a few hundred bucks to save lives, educate children, or house and feed animals.
A.