On Thursday, I hosted my MSNBC "Ed Show" from the Kansas City Convention Center. There have been few days in my thirty year broadcasting career that have moved me as much as this experience did. I saw the real America. In the middle of the country, two thousand miles from the beltway, I witnessed middle class Americans standing in line for hours waiting to see a doctor. Some had not seen a doctor in years. They have jobs, some working two jobs, but can't afford the cost of insurance and basically are on the GOP plan: pray you don't get sick.
The stories were gut wrenching. I couldn't help but think this is where the Senate needs to do their business. Do it right in front of the eyes of the people in their own country who are struggling to make ends meet and live in dignity. The Senate should do business in front of the families that have played by the rules and have been dealt a personal set back for one reason or another. Have the guts to tell these people to their face that they aren't worthy of health care because they don't have money. They may see these faces briefly on the campaign trail, but they make no decisions in front of them when they are standing in line in pain, in agony and in desperate need.
America has a heartless side to it as well. That is demonstrated when U.S. Senators put the God Almighty Dollar in front of people who put them in office. How any law maker could deny full access and full health care coverage is beyond me. Senators who put themselves ahead of the people and who have been spoiled by the Washington good life have lost their soul and what it means to be an American. We throw billions of dollars at wars, often without hesitation, but some in the Congress are willing to treat humans in their own country like a piece of machinery that can be left in a junk yard.
My God, what has happened to America?
What's happened to America Ed is that America has lost it's collective mind and soul. This country has jettisoned it's moral compass in the pursuit of capitalist nirvana. What can be said about a society that allows 45,000 of it's citizens to die unnecessarily EVERY YEAR simply for lack of access to basic health care? That's the equivalent of 15 9/11's every year.
Here's how bad it is -- the elites in this country have actually convinced their handpicked lackeys in the judicial system, all the way to the Supreme Court, that corporations are "people." And when a precious word like people is reduced to such a degraded, emotionless, legal concept as such, is it any wonder then that the state of affairs in America today is in the sorry condition that it is?
Wake up folks. Wall Street and corporate America DO NOT have your best interests at heart. They never have. I would even go so far as to say that they DO NOT have America's best interests at heart.
Get involved, speak out. Protest. Pick a side (hopefully the good one) and stand up and fight for the principles of justice and righteousness. And while doing it, do not forget that we're all part of the human family.
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