Willing To Die Due To Hatred for Obama (With Update)

My wife was recently contacted by a friend she hadn't spoken to since high school.  This friend has some pretty serious health problems, and told my wife all about them.  She then added that her health insurance was cancelled last year.  My wife then asked the obvious question:  "Well, did you look into ObamaCare?"

The friend responded:  "No -- my husband and I refuse to have anything to do with that man."  She then added that if her health problems continue and the medical bills started to pile up, then she and her husband would sell some of their stuff to pay those bills.

This floored me. Here is someone who would rather sell off all her worldly goods and risk death than sign up for ObamaCare.  I can't imagine someone willing to die over racial hatred for a President, but there it is.

I hate Dick Cheney.  Anyone who has read my blog knows this.  I hate him with every fiber of my being.  I think he's a war criminal and I also think a particularly warm place has been reserved for him in the lowest depths of the Infernal Regions.  But if he had come up with an idea that would have saved me a lot of money, I would have taken advantage of it despite my intense hatred for him.

But not this woman.  She hates Obama so much that she'd rather die than sign up for health insurance under ObamaCare.

When I heard this story, the first thing that popped into my head was suicide bombers, who have so much hatred that they are willing to die in order to inflict a wound on the people they hate.  But the analogy isn't a very good one because my wife's friend isn't hurting anybody except herself by refusing to sign up for ObamaCare.  What makes this even more sad/hilarious is that the individual health care mandate -- the centerpiece of ObamaCare -- was a fucking Republican idea!

Anyway, if this woman were to die due to her health problems, she should be given the Darwin Award.

UPDATE:  On a somewhat related note, here is what a TPM reader had to say about the current state of racism in America:

I believe Fox has changed what counts for permissible rhetoric on race and social ills in this country. And I think that the old, suppressed views on race from the childhood of older Boomers and the remaining Depression-era generation are liberated by that permissiveness. It's not Fox spewing hate that makes these people hate. They already hated, but for decades it just wasn't ok to say it out loud, and you saw little of it in the mainstream media. Now, however, it's ok to say it out loud because the guys on TV say it, and so others must also believe it. Scary stuff.

I couldn't agree more.