For the first time in his campaign, Bush hinted today at what he'd like to do if elected - he'd encourage "ownership".
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x702875Sounds nice, but what it actually translates to is: privatization and individualization of retirement and healthcare benefits. "Ownership" as the opposite of "collectivism", "ownership" as an example of "personal responsibility" (the kind that applies to Martha and "welfare queens" or women who get pregnant but not to corporate welfare queens such Bush/Harken or Lay/Enron or Cheney/Halliburton or men who do coke into their 40s.)
"Ownership" is another stealth buzzword like "pro-life", "clear skies", "leave no child behind", "school choice" (or the negative-sounding stealth buzzwords "death tax" and "partial-birth abortion"). These buzzwords, dreamed up by guys like Grover Norquist (who wants to "drown the Federal government in a bathtub" - actually just the social and environmental budgets, not the military, law-enforcement and surveillance budgets of course) and carefully tested on focus groups, are weapons of mental destruction designed to trick people into supporting policies which hurt them.
We should kill this word "ownership" before it spreads. We need to think of two words of our own:
- a more accurate word than "ownership" to describe Bush's proposed destruction of Medicare and Social Security.
- a buzzword of our own to describe what WE propose, something catchy that means "universal healthcare".
You gotta hand it to the Republicans, they
do do their homework. Everybody's gonna love "ownership" - until they realize that it means the elimination of their beloved Medicare and Social Security. We (meaning the Kerry campaign, I guess) need to do our homework too and come up with an answer to "ownership".