Shameful Wagitators

Posted on September 14, 2004 in Accountability Campaign 2004 Medical Ethics

When I am momentarilly seized by a paranoid frame of mind, I wonder if my former GP and his cardiologist were trying to assassinate me. First, the whole incident with the security guard. Second, the nasty letter. Third, the possibility that the GP has not been monitoring my chloresterol even though my chart says that my father died of a heart attack at age 55.

I soon recover my senses, however. Incompetence, arrogance, and callousness alone explain these three factors. But there is no doubt that there is an attitude pervasive among the wealthier supporters of George W. Bush which calls for punishment of those who voice support for John Kerry. We have not seen this kind of behavior since the days of Henry Ford. History books taught us that it was a stage through which America had passed. The age of the tinpot despot, we were told, was over.

Recent evidence, some of which has been cited in this blog, suggests that the optimistic assessment was premature. The latest horror story comes out of Alabama:

Lynne Gobbell never imagined the cost of a John Kerry-John Edwards bumper sticker could run so high.

Gobbell of Moulton didn’t pay a cent for the sticker that she proudly displays on the rear windshield of her Chevrolet Lumina, but said it cost her job at a local factory after it angered her boss, Phil Gaddis….”I asked him if he said to remove the sticker and he said, ‘Yes, I did.’ I told him he couldn’t tell me who to vote for. When I told him that, he told me, ‘I own this place.’ I told him he still couldn’t tell me who to vote for.”

Gobbell said Gaddis told her to “get out of here.”

“I asked him if I was fired and he told me he was thinking about it,” she said. “I said, ‘Well, am I fired?’ He hollered and said, ‘Get out of here and shut the door.’ “

This same man put a letter in every employee’s paycheck envelope, telling them to vote for Bush.

With all due apologies to Andrea, I offer a term to cover boorish behavior by uppity doctors, employers, and others who are rude in the name of Bush: Wagitation.

Wagitators strive control the hearts and minds of those who sell their hands to them at an hourly wage or an annual salary. The object is to Win by upsetting those who speak out, by Waging class Warfare against those who do not toe the line. Such behavior comes right out of Pinochet’s Chile: it is not American, not in the spirit of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. These clowns believe their private oppression to be “freedom” and protected. There is an unholy demand being made here. America was founded on the spirit that an employer and his employee could hold different views, that their differences could be settled by the ballot box. The contract between them only applied to one thing: the delivery of services.

In a free country, those services can never include one’s vote.

I want that America back.

As I creep towards Friday, visiting the hospital for routine tests, relaxing, and watching my diet, I find myself under terrific stress. How much worse would it have been if I had stayed with the man who betrayed my comfort? What if I had gone along doe-eyed and soft-spoken? One in every five thousand angioplasty patients dies on the table, a small number, but large enough to hide a murder. How could I have trusted the monster who kicked me out of his office for stating that I do want my medicine injected with a dose of politics — any politics? I calm my fears by remembering that I walked. I still have that power when it comes to choice of doctors. Wagitators mix politics and business constantly. They will not let up. They scream about class warfare, but the principal antagonists in that struggle are themselves. A bumper sticker is not a bullet or a bomb. If there is a war, the only one firing salvos are Bush supporters. And their weapons are denial of service and denial of jobs.

E.B. White said that the only thing a dictator fears is a drunken poet making a crack that sticks. I do not drink or fog my mind with chemicals, but I am a poet and a writer. Whether I live or die after Friday (the chances are far better for the former), let this new word be my legacy: wagitator. And let it stick in the craw of those who misuse their power in defense of the indefensible Bush.

P.S. I trust my new doctor.

UPDATE: Gobell has been offered her job back.