Thinking is just soooo hard to do...

Man, we Americans have it so easy, we almost never have to think critically about things. We're spoonfed our opinions by the nightly news, even if it's WRONG, and other things like current events and international affairs, hell, we just don't have to care about them so that saves us even more thinking time.

Today's new outrage is that the U.S. is going to give some money to the states to help alleviate the costs of paying for healthcare for illegal immigrants. Before I put my "critical thinking skills" into much needed action, this can indeed be an outrage. All over the news this morning, right wingers were dismayed about the 45+ million Americans without any health insurance whatsoever, which is interesting, because just a couple of weeks ago, these same people (*cough* Hannity *cough, cough* O'Reilly *cough, cough* and their ilk) talked about these 45+ million people without insurance as worthless trash who can't get a job and quit smoking crack and forego every other stereotype out there. And when liberals talk about giving these 45+ million people universal healthcare, we're called Communists. So forgive me if the right winger's concern over these poor uninsured Americans really doesn't pass as sincere in my book.

Anyway, getting off the subject of the right wing scumbags, it seems like common sense almost to get our own citizens insured first before we pay for illegal immigrants, right? Right??

Well... This is where that critical thinking thing comes in. I know it takes a little time, but trust me, it's worth it.

What we have here are really two separate issues. The huge amount of uninsured Americans is one issue, and one that isn't applicable here, despite the media pulling in the comparison constantly. So even though that issue is important, forget it for just a moment. It has nothing to do with this one case.

The other issue is the number of illegal immigrants who are already here, for whatever reason (and immigration itself is another issue that should not be compared or conflated with this particular case either, despite the media, again, doing it). When someone is on U.S. soil and that person is in need of emergency treatment, s/he cannot be turned away from any hospital. That is the law, whether it's an illegal immigrant, a citizen with no insurance, or Donald Trump. So the U.S. has already been treating illegal immigrants in hospitals, but the states have been left to foot the bill. This decision by the federal government is simply to give up to a billion dollars to help shoulder the costs that the states have had to take on.

Now, it's easy to say, "U.S. hospitals shouldn't be treating illegal immigrants!" So let's look at that argument. Most of the time, these people are poor, extraordinarily poor. They can also come from countries where there are diseases running rampant that the U.S. hasn't seen in decades, if ever. I'm not saying all immigrants are disease-ridden, but it is in OUR best interest to make sure that the ones who are sick are treated for any illnesses because it could be something spreadable to the general U.S. population. If we leave sick illegal immigrants rotting on the street, there's a possibility that their illness can spread into the air, the groundwater, etc. Diseases that Americans have not been exposed to in a while or ever could be catastrophic, because we would not have built up an immunity. So it is in our best interest to make sure these people are treated.

If we're willing to spend $300 billion on a war that no one remembers what we're fighting for anymore and billions more on tax cuts for the rich that we can't afford in the first place, then $1 billion to keep us from getting sick, and to keep state budgets from going under, and oh yeah, to keep illegal immigrants from dying (because despite the vilification, they are people too, with families, and mothers and fathers and children and brothers and sisters and husbands and wives and hopes and dreams), then I'm not going to complain.

The problem is just that it takes a little bit of thinking to get to that point, and Americans have become so anti-thinking.

And oh yeah, unless you are a native American, you or your ancestors were once immigrants, maybe even an illegal immigrant. None of us owns this country, and if we keep teaching our children this big "melting pot" theory of how life is in America, then we can't try and do everything we can to keep the non-white people out. At some point we might have to live what we preach.