Over the years, I and the other writers here at Crooks and Liars have written a lot about right-wing talkers on Fox News and elsewhere fearmongering about "death panels." It was always a ridiculous construct. No one on the left was talking about euthanizing Granny, but here we are. And not just Granny, but anyone over the age of 60. Seriously, they are having this conversation in a serious way over on the right side of the political spectrum.
But this asshat who manages somehow to scrape together enough people to keep on poisoning them with toxic politics really takes the cake.
“I sincerely hope that we are not at a place, as Americans, where we are going to let the Democrats jam down the Green New Deal because we’re at home panicked,” Glenn Beck told his viewers. “I want to have a frank conversation with you and ask you where you stand. I mean, I’m in the danger zone. I’m right at the edge, I’m 56. In Italy they’re saying if you’re sick and your 60, don’t even come in. So I’m in the danger zone.”
WHAT danger zone? There is NO danger zone. We are not going to leave people over 60 to die in the street in the greatest nation on earth, are we?
Well, no. We're not. And even Beck concedes that. Like Tucker Carlson the night before, Beck has the idea that the elders in our society should sacrifice themselves on the altar of St. Dow or Sister NASDAQ.
“I would rather have my children stay home and all of us who are over 50 go in and keep this economy going and working,” he continued. “Even if we all get sick, I’d rather die than kill the country, because it’s not the economy that’s dying, it’s the country.”
Here is Glenn Beck with Gimmetarian (thanks David Waldman/Daily Kos for that) Rand Paul in 2009:
Paul: Well, you know, the president says he isn’t going to pull the plug on grandma, but what I think he really means is, he’s not going to put the plug in in the first place, because you have to decide, some committee’s going to have to decide, what is the cost-benefit analysis for grandma? Grandma is not just your grandmother, she's a statistic, we have to decide, what is the cost to society to keep her alive? And I think she won't get plugged in. Her ventilator won't be plugged in if she's 92 years old, because society may say we don't have the money to do that.
Turns out the committee is the Sacred Order Of The Stock Market, which Beck mistakenly equates with the economy.
Here's Glenn Beck a month or so later in 2009:
"We have raised a generation of potential killers," he warned, inspired by a letter to the editor from a young woman who wants health-care reform for her generation especially. Yeah, that's exactly the same thing as pushing for euthanasia.
Apparently he was talking about his generation. His right-wing, libertarian, fascist, throw Granny off the bridge generation.
It's not coincidence that all the wingers are talking about this now. This is their official message. Die, you Boomers over 60. Die now because those vampire billionaires need you to in order to reap their billions.
This is their official message on Fox News and other right-wing outlets. It's also what my colleague Red Painter says:
The new GOP talking point about letting the economy open, even if it means elderly and sick die, is a Josef Mengele Nazi eugenics viewpoint.
I guess the transformation is complete.
The GOP are now officially adopting Nazi eugenics policies. #coronavirus— Red Hates Dirty Hands (@Redpainter1) March 24, 2020
