In a Facebook showdown with a fellow writer antagonized (by me) to move beyond his cryptic comments regarding progressive rhetoric, and own his Tea Party/Libertarian (T&L) persuasion. What did I say to make an honest man of him? I merely posted “If it's a choice between Obamacare and Tea Party/Libertarian who gives a f----ing care, I'll go with O.”

I was intrigued by his careful articulation of right wing, what we called in the Marine Corps, shit on the shingle, a dysphemism, which denotes a culinary dish of creamed chipped beef on toast, comprising a white sauce and rehydrated slivers of dried beef. In other words, generic meat and grease served up in place of real healthy nutrition. At least with Spam, we would get a different gravy each time, making it more all purpose for different occasions. But the right just sticks to SOS, no matter what. Like an standard LP ballad back in the day, the T&L keeps the turntable on repeat, whatever the occasion of political or religious intercourse. (Today for the 33rd time, the Tea Party Congress voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act.) To explain himself and his ilk (in advance of the vote) who I accused of elite indifference, he got out the old chipped beef and created a masterpiece:

[Your]  Saying the Tea Party/Libertarians don't care about people is not true. Most of those people do care about their fellow human beings. We just don't see making someone dependent on government for every single thing in their lives as helping them. If anything, it stifles their growth as a human being. I'm all for helping those who truly, truly need it. But a lot of people can do for themselves, especially if the government gets out of our way allows businesses to grow and more jobs to be created so people can work hard and have the chance to better themselves, and as a result, make the country better. As for Obamacare, most people in the country do have health insurance. Basically, all 300 million of us will be made to suffer because of about 10 million who don't have it. Making everyone equally miserable is not a way to solve a problem. There are better ways than forcing everyone to buy health insurance or else face a fine. And if folks in the government had any brains, they would use the money to hire an army of IRS agents to enforce Obama Care to instead try to encourage more people to become doctors. What is needed more for health care? Doctors or IRS agents?

My response was as follows:

All that is well and good as an old refrain that flies in the face of reality. Post World War II and the New Deal forged the most universally prosperous period for the majority of Americans, and created a new middle class of American who owned their own homes and actually had vacation time and discretionary income. All this despite the social ills of class, gender, and racial disenfranchisement. 

As far has government goes, it's been charted, going back 60yrs., that the U.S. economy always does significantly better under Democrats. This is not liberal bias: Except for the top 5 percent, everyone's income grows more under Dems than Rep, and the poor and middle class do much better. The top earners themselves do almost as good. This has been consistent since the end of the second world war, and spans five Democratic and six Republican presidents. It is indisputably factual, and all the ideological arguments over "small government" don't change these facts, nor do they erase the fact that America's economic engine depends on a strong, viable well-educated middle class. 

Actually, there are 30 million people without health insurance, and most Americans cannot afford health care, if having to pay out of pocket in the private market. It's nice to dream when you're young, healthy, and feeling a sense of immortality (and if we’re going to be totally honest, looking back on our youth – selfish); fantasizing of being that "self-made" individual who triumphs over life by grit, ingenuity, and enterprise. We all have our "don't tread on me" issues, wanting government off of our backs, but 309 million people is a big back that requires some major chiropractic at times. There's one thing to rein in government waste; there's another to rein in government needed oversight. There's one thing to give away 700 billion in free-ride tax cuts, unpaid for, but insist on needed bridges and highway infrastructure be halted, until every penny is accounted for – while at the same time, getting into women's' reproduction business at tax payers' expense. 

No department of education, no FEMA. Ron Paul wants you to go to your church and beg, when fire, hurricane, and earthquake devastate your life. He wants you to pay for the high cost of education right out of pocket, because education is between you and your family fortune or lack there of. Just one month from 77 yrs. old and this lifetime politician is still just as selfish as when he was the age of his 30-and-younger admirers who can’t see beyond me, myself, and I. Oh, yeah, they don’t want to have anything to do with the military-industrial complex bankrupting America, while politically wedded to “fiscal responsible,” permanent, unpaid tax cuts for the wealthiest of Americans. Sounds like Wall Street collusion, if you ask me. Can we ask how the Paul collegiate crowd is paying for their education, certainly not by Pell Grants and Stafford Loans. Certainly these self-reliant, non-parasites would NEVER rely on… shall we say that ugly phrase: “the family wealth.” One can only assume then that they are financing college by full-time, non-unionized, non-government subsidized, non-scholarship-hand-out employment. 

There are no examples in history, where a huge disparity between rich and poor, where government took no role, but that of serving the interests of an affluent, minority elite that ultimately went well. We can argue these points till the cows come home, but at the end of the day, we either find a way to promote an equitable society, or all the fighting and effort toward a sustainable economy will come to naught. If we are what we eat, we are certainly what we value as a people.

In other words, shit on the shingle is still rehydrated filler substituted for real food-for-thought – full of empty calories and additives, full of empty rhetoric, full of euphemistic word play to hide a basic selfishness. Just pure junk food for a sick nation.