So, Random Liberal Jackhole over at the New York Left-Wing Times wrote an OpEd last weekend that, upon reading it, made me want to track the guy down and forcefeed him Spam and Slim-Jims. I mean, in darn near every single paragraph he says something that makes you want to punch him in the face as hard as you can. You really have to wonder what the hell is wrong with these people that they can come up with stuff like this and think themselves both righteous and brilliant. It truly boggles the mind.
The jerk starts out his article with two obvious ad verecundiams. “The need is indisputable,” he says, “experts increasingly recommend.” He doesn’t tell us who these “experts” are or why the “need” is “indisputable”—it just is and they just do. Shut up and just believe him.
As you can imagine, I was only eye-rolling at this point. But then this asshole starts going further.
Yet the food industry appears incapable of marketing healthier foods. And whether its leaders are confused or just stalling doesn’t matter, because the fixes are not really their problem. Their mission is not public health but profit, so they’ll continue to sell the health-damaging food that’s most profitable, until the market or another force skews things otherwise. That “other force” should be the federal government, fulfilling its role as an agent of the public good and establishing a bold national fix.
Well, at least he admits that the “fixes” aren’t the problem of the food industry. Because it’s not. And no, it’s not because they’re “confused or stalling”—it’s because THEY DON’T CARE. NOR SHOULD THEY.
The truly galling line, however, is that bit about “until the market or another force skews things otherwise.” See, Libtard here KNOWS that the market isn’t going to do it on its own. Why? Because, despite his protestations, people keep exercising that insufferable individual liberty and freedom of choice of theirs. That is, they WANT soft drinks and Twinkies. Why? Because it TASTES GOOD and they ENJOY IT. They decide, all by themselves, that the health detriment is not outweighed by the pleasure benefit, so they CHOOSE TO KEEP EATING IT. God damn them!
So, clearly, the solution is to have Big Brother step in and start running their lives. He calls this “fulfilling its role as an agent of the public good” (which isn’t their role in the first place—read the Constitution, jackass) but this is clearly a subtext for “protecting you stupid ignorant unenlightened morons from yourselves.” You see, people can’t be trusted to voluntarily do what this guy wants them to—so he’s says they should be made to. By force. What force could he be talking about, you wonder? Well, that should be obvious:
we should turn the tables and tax things like soda, French fries, doughnuts and hyperprocessed snacks.
Ahh, sin taxes. One of the more malevolent forms of government bullying in order to unjustly coerce people into doing what the Powers That Be want.
How do people pretend that there’s nothing short of a dictatorial mindset in that kind of thing? Also, I wonder if they realize that when they do that, they’re essentially attacking the poor. Do you think the rich give a damn if Pepsi costs $1.44 more? No. But the poor? Essentially this jackhole is saying to them, “YOU DON’T GET PEPSI. YOU GET APPLE JUICE. NOW SHUT UP AND LIKE IT.”
And on top of that, consider a company like Yum Brands, which is a subsidiary of PepsiCo (which itself merged with Frito-Lay). This jackass is talking about taxing virtually every single thing these companies produce. This will, of course, drive up costs and lower revenue—and guess what that leads to? Yup, layoffs and decreased job creation. Screw having a job, what’s important is that you’re eating the zucchini you can now no longer afford to buy. I mean, for pete’s sake people—this is the convoluted short-sighted “logic” of these morons.
But to that he says:
This program would, of course, upset the processed food industry. Oh well. It would also bug those who might resent paying more for soda and chips and argue that their right to eat whatever they wanted was being breached. But public health is the role of the government, and our diet is right up there with any other public responsibility you can name, from water treatment to mass transit.
Really? In the face of taking away individual freedom and killing MORE jobs (in a 9% unemployment country), his answer is “Oh well?” You see now what I’m saying how you just really want to punch him in the face?
AND NO, PUBLIC HEALTH IS NOT THE ROLE OF THE GOVERNMENT. There is not ONE LINE IN THE CONSTITUTION that enumerates that power to them. NOT ONE. (Nor does it enumerate them the powers of “water treatment” and “mass transit.”)
Oh, and how about this line:
our health care bills are on the verge of becoming truly insurmountable, this is urgent for economic sanity as well as national health.
You notice how he presumes the necessity of socialized medicine? Yea, here’s a thought—if you eat yourself into a diabetic coma, it’s your own problem. The national “economic sanity” does not need to be concerned with that. It’s no different than if you intentionally chop off your own arm. Why should “national health” fix you up when you’re an idiot that injured himself? It’s total nonsense.
You know what? This guy is a moron. Plain and simple. He’s a frickin’ idiot that should be punched in the face for being a jackass. It’s as simple as that. I’m not even going to devote any more serious consideration to this. But, I do have some glib one-liners…
Other countries are considering or have already started programs to tax foods with negative effects on health.
Well then move to one of them, asshole.
The need is dire: efforts to shift the national diet have failed, because education alone is no match for marketing dollars that push the very foods that are the worst for us.
The national diet doesn’t NEED shifting, because it’s nobody’s problem but one’s own.
we could perhaps live with reduced consumption of triple bacon cheeseburgers.
But what kind of self-loathing masochist would want to?
Forcing sales of junk food down through taxes isn’t ideal. First off, we’ll have to listen to nanny-state arguments, which can be countered by the acceptance of the anti-tobacco movement as well as a dozen other successful public health measures.
You gave me the cookie, so now I want a glass of milk. (Oh and god forbid you “have to listen” to nanny-state arguments—when that is EXACTLY what you’re proposing. “NOBODY QUESTION ME GODDAMMIT!”)
A 20 percent increase in the price of sugary drinks nationally could result in about a 20 percent decrease in consumption, which in the next decade could prevent 1.5 million Americans from becoming obese and 400,000 cases of diabetes
Mathematician coming through. Think about those numbers real hard, buddy. If anybody needed any more concrete proof of this man’s idiocy and absolute inability to reason—this is it.
By profiting as a society from the foods that are making us sick and using those funds to make us healthy, the United States would gain the same kind of prestige that we did by attacking smoking.
And the icing of the cake: this jackhole ADMITS that it’s nothing but an image thing.
God, is this not textbook liberalism in a nutshell? Damn whether it makes sense; damn whether it’s good for the country; damn whether it’s good for the people; damn whether it has bad long-term consequences—just so long as we look good.
I kid you not people, if this had been a speech I’d been attending, I literally would have walked up and punched this guy in the mouth. No joke. I’d have broken his goddamned jaw and then said, “Enjoy your liquid vegetables for the next six months.”
You know, it just… this kind of thing is everything that’s wrong in the world. It really is. I mean, it’s not as glamorous as the debt crisis or is upsetting as a terrorist bombing—but that’s what makes it so bad. It’s so subtly insidious. And for no good reason but that petty ideologues want to force their way on others at the cost of freedom and individual autonomy. That’s wrong. That’s about as wrong as it GETS.
“WHAT will it take to get Americans to change our eating habits?” he asks.
You know what, Mark? When it comes to what I’m eating, you let ME worry about that. Mind your own goddamned business.
