Calling out a Passive-Aggressive Movement on the side of Democrats is long overdue. On a personal level it's how those who voted for Trump have been manipulated by Democrats into restraining from expressing their opinions for fear of being called racist, or Nazi, or anti-immigrant or anti-climate not because we are but because we're accused of being so simply for the fact of choosing differently from some Democrats.
On the Democrat side it's the manipulation by deceit, maybe self-deceit, definitely public deceit of attributing nothing but good, kind, down-to-earth motivations in their every action and characterizing all dissent as rooted in prejudice, stupidity, racism.
And President Obama? He's still riding the passive aggressive wave, stunningly achieving any approval ratings at all in the wake of the misery he's cultivated in his use of public office for petty self-interest and self-promotion. For me, the Obamas are marvelous examples of passive aggressive and I hope the expiry of their term of office is a turning point for the Democrats. It starts with undoing the Obamacare legacy--an example of the dangers of a passive-aggressive President.
Definition of Passive Aggression: So what is passive aggression for laymen? More formal definitions include: "A passive aggressive might not always show that they are angry or resentful. They might appear in agreement, polite, friendly, down-to-earth, kind and well-meaning. However, underneath there may be manipulation going on - hence the term 'Passive-Aggressive,'" Counselling Directory.org.UK.
Ah, manipulation while seeming "kind-hearted," it worked on me and got me to vote for Obama the first time around as he "felt our pain" in our health conglomerate crisis. Six years into the mess of Obamacare, six years into discovering the manipulation of the American people--Not so much and looking forward, consumers are warned--we don't need another manipulation deceitfully characterized as "kindhearted."
Obama lied about Obamacare from the first. Only in November of 2016 did he finally tout why he's still claiming Obamacare was a success, because it achieved HIS goals (not the goals we thought we shared such as affordable health insurance, savings of $2,500 a year, a plan as good as his families) but his real goals--It saved the government money: "President Obama's Moment of Truth: "Saved the Treasury Hundreds of Billions of Dollars," 11/15/2016. And the other big lie--how he achieved those goals--by enacting an ageist, sexist piece of legislation that exposed a payoff deal with insurers.
And so a second deceit exposed, Obamacare was a deal with the insurance lobby that Obama made to be able to politically leverage a false claim that he would get insurers to NOT deny those with pre-existing conditions health insurance. Except, the Obama subterfuge went deeper and we now know that it was the INSURANCE LOBBY that formulated that deal in their 2008 AHIP document, "Health Plans Propose Guaranteed Coverage for Pre-Existing Conditions and Individual Coverage Mandate."
What does passive aggression look like? PSYCHOLOGY TODAY's Preston Ni describes it in "How to Spot and Deal With Passive-Aggressive People," Jan. 5, 2014, "They're unreasonable to deal with, they’re uncomfortable to experience, they rarely express their hostility directly and they repeat their subterfuge behavior over time."
What is likely to happen if you note and express your feelings that someone's a passive aggressive? Preston Ni states, "When confronted, the passive-aggressive will almost always deny responsibility."
Obamacare's stunning failures? It's the Republicans' fault, it's the insurance company's fault, it's the young-healthies' fault…Never the bad law's fault even as the government exercised the ridiculously unbridled power granted to Human Services and CMS and the IRS under Obamacare and changed the law over 50 times since its enactment.
And consumers? We should never have put up with the law, we should have pressured our legislators Democratic and Republican early on, especially after they opted out of Obamacare by enjoying the "benefits" offered by their employer, the Federal government, paid for by citizens while the rest of us suffered--This too was the passive aggressive. LikeHarry Reid, whose response to this governmental exemption, "We are just following the law," CNN, 12/4/2013, “Some Reid staffers exempt from Obamacare exchanges,” Chris Frates. Yeah, we bought it, after all the laws they COULD change, suddenly the Dems were "bound" by the law that allowed them to avoid compliance with Obamacare.
This is why it is ESSENTIAL that any national healthcare law must apply to public employees first not NEVER as in the case of Obamacare. It also coincides with advice about dealing with passive aggressive from Preston Ni: "Tolerating passive aggression will only encourage the negative behavior to continue and intensify."
And so we saw Obama brazenly attack the young-healthies in his effort to fulfill his deal with insurers to preserve his agendized Obamacare legislation and force everyone to buy in. First, the law itself attacked the young-healthies by forcing everyone to purchase health insurance or pay a fine, and forcing everyone to pay for health plans that cover a wide variety of "required" things that young-healthies and others could not opt out of.
More lies, because contrary to Obama's untruthful claim of "a single risk pool," Obamacare first singled out people based on age or tobacco use ONLY as legitimate reasons for insurers to charge more…So now instead of charging cost centers more based on falling into a variety of categories such as child-bearing years for women, drug abuse, alcoholism, obesity, and pre-existing conditions, Obamacare singled out tobacco users and older people alone for paying more.
But nobody spoke up. Nobody cared that older people could be charged more in premiums and that this age-based discrimination had become federal law (because age is a protected class and because by doing away with any other statistically justifiable reason for charging more besides tobacco use, Obamacare actually CHOSE to penalize tobacco users and smokers only in defiance of the facts of the costs of other human conditions such as obesity, drug use, alcoholism, pregnancy, pre-existing conditions). And the young people often ignorant of Obamacare's provisions didn't notice that by tolerating age discrimination in premiums that they screwed themselves because Obamacare hinged the rates they pay to the amounts paid by older people, who of course, Obamacare had singled out for penalizing with higher premiums. So young people watched the amounts they could be charged go up as part of this nationalized age discrimination since they could be charged based on a ratio of 1:3 of what older people were charged.
Yep, we tolerated this age discrimination codified in Obamacare and as Ni stated, IT GOT WORSE.
For young healthies, in 2015 insurance companies whined that young healthies weren't choosing their more expensive silver plans but were instead choosing cheaper bronze plans, so the passive aggressive Obama Administration OK'd a greater increase in the cost of bronze plans than silver plans for the benefits year in an effort to push young-healthies into the more expensive but "better deal" of silver plans. (It's not our fault, insurers did it). Still not enough young-healthies signed up to satisfy insurers, so the government exercised its unbridled authority under Obamacare and CMS enacted rules to prevent young-healthies from using short-term health insurance plans in June of 2016, specifically noting that young-healthies were using the plans and avoiding enrollment in Obamacare plans(CMS, 2016).
And for older Americans, that got worse too as CMS decided to PAY providers to counsel older sick people about the cost-benefit of possibly life prolonging or lifesaving treatment.
And it got worse regarding the sexism we tolerated as law in Obamacare as well. Nobody spoke up when Obamacare codified sexism including superior benefits for women over those available for males AND making males pay for inferior treatment. So, Obamacare forces everyone to pay for women to have annual "free" checkups (not males), women to have free domestic violence counseling (not males) and free sterilization (not males). And Obama's anti-working male prejudices? We tolerated that too and IT GOT WORSE--
As Obamacare unfolded the FAMILY GLITCH revealed itself where employed heads of household could not afford health insurance for their families because insurance companies had no limits on what they could charge for DEPENDENT COVERAGE. Since in 2013 60 percent of heads of household were males, (See PEW RESEARCH, May 2013, 'Breadwinner Moms'), this GLITCH painfully undercut an employed male head of household's ability to provide health insurance to his family and remains unsolved with Obama's Administration unable (meaning unwilling) to do anything about it.
And Obamacare's waste of our tax dollars? We tolerated that too and it got worse as we remained silent even as the government decided not to count what it spent on infrastructure and public employee salaries and benefits in connection with Obamacare but would only count how much it actually spent paying for publicly funded enrollees “…[e]stimates address only the insurance coverage provisions of the ACA and do not reflect all of the act’s budgetary effects…", (“Updated Estimates of the Insurance Coverage Provisions of the Affordable Care Act,” http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/49892-breakout-AppendixB.pdf, page 1.)
And when the government went to court to SPEND MORE in a strained interpretation of Obamacare, we tolerated that too (King v. Burwell).
And though Obamacare, a national disgrace founded in subterfuge, filled with ageism and sexism is a chief example here of our passive aggressive President, it is not the only one as Obama, unchecked threw Israel under the bus last week.
And so we get Obama's parting shots evidencing his hatred for and anger at Israel--This week, amidst the feel-good reporting of recipes and holidays, the passive-AGGRESSIVE Obama had an opportunity to give a parting shot to Israel with a US "abstention" rather than veto of the UN Security Council's anti-Israel Israeli settlement proposal.
For the passive aggressives, they'll focus on the Obama usual: "I didn't do anything," after all "abstention" is the very definition of doing nothing, even though only the most ignorant fail to know that the US via Obama's abstention gave support to the UN's most current anti-Israel policy. (I'll refer you to Andrew C. McCarthy's article in the National Review, 12/24/2016, "Obama’s Betrayal of Israel Is a Black Day for American Diplomacy.")
So moving forward what should we do? We refer back to Preston Ni who advises, "The ability to identify and assert consequence is one of the most powerful skills we can use to "stand down" a passive-aggressive person. Effectively articulated, consequence gives pause to the difficult individual, and compels her or him to shift from obstruction to cooperation."
Politically, voting against the passive-aggressive Democrats was good. But the undercurrent is still there. Obama still blames "racism" for his failures obscenely ignoring that Americans of all races voted for him and therefore claiming that those voters were racist is not only dishonest but an excuse, a denial of responsibility, we still have Democrats blaming their loss on Russia, James Comey, the media, and we still have Dems defending Obamacare--the brutal law that embraced the forced purchase of a financial consumer product or face a tax penalty, that codified ageism and sexism, that ignores our poorest citizens and that has exempted the very public employees imposing their vision on us exempt from following the same rules.
So we must be outspoken, specific and relentless in fighting the passive AGGRESSION of the "new" liberals and other politicians who would perpetuate Obama's style of subterfuge and denial in order to manipulate the American people.
For the NEW YEAR, enough subterfuge--If Republicans start using terms like "continuous coverage," they're talking about forcing people to purchase the consumer financial product of health insurance or pay a higher-premium penalty (part of the newest insurance company lobby memo) THAT removes consumer choice.
If Republicans are talking entitlements, then they'd better include public employee entitlements, VA benefits, their own benefits, in addition to the paid in benefits of older working Americans for Medicare and Social Security and Medicaid, so that cuts better start with them: After all EIGHT PERCENT of our federal budget is paying PUBLICE FEDERAL WORKER RETIREE BENEFITS and $267 BILLION goes out in FEERAL WORKER SALARIES AND BENEFITS. (Remember, Obama managed to give another pay increase on top of an original pay increase to public employees this month.)
OUR concern is what Trump promised, draining the swamp and it starts with making public employees live with the uncertainty, brutality, and expense of what private sector employees have been living with under the false "kind-heartedness" of Obama. OUR premiums have gone up 24 percent (as of 2015) and 67 percent for how much more we have to pay before insurance kicks in, TIME, Here’s How Much the Average American Worker Has to Pay for Health Care, Kara Brandeisky, 9/22/2015.
So let's start there--the law applies to public employees FIRST. That's not racist, it's not Republican and it's not Nazism, it's common sense.
