Starting to See Why Ignorance Prevails

Many things have happened in the last weeks that I have thought about writing about. But today pushed me into action. I am not even going to get into the whole scenario around Health Care Reform, except to say that watching those votes come in was one of the proudest moments as an American I have had in a long time.

But I think I am beginning to somewhat understand how the right has pushed fear of communism to the point that it pervades so many people's brains here to the exclusion of logic. Take my brief experience not 30 minutes ago. I stopped in to my local pharmacy to pick up a prescription for my husband, and there was a woman complaining about the rules of her prescription plan, Caremark, which is a subsidiary of CVS. I had this plan when I was an employee of Petsmart. They actually have a decent program where if you order your prescription through their mail order service for a 90 day supply, you can actually get substantial discounts. I did this all the time, and when I placed a refill (which can be done 24 hours a day, on the phone or online) the order arrived in just a few days, often as little as 2. If you choose not to, you can only get the bigger discounts by going to a CVS (there are several of them right in Hattiesburg).

So she was complaining about "not knowing" she couldn't fill it at the local pharmacy. Truth is, the instructions are very clear - and in this case I am actually coming to the defense of a corporation - and if she didn't make a point of reading the very clear information that comes with your membership materials, that's her fault.

The pharmacist's reply? "It's communism in the works......they want to tell you where you can go and what you can do...".......!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!??????????  Excuse me?? How is this communism when CVS is a PRIVATE corporation??? The ignorance boggles my mind like it hasn't been boggled in....well...I live in the South now, so I guess it was boggled quite recently....

My point is, ANYTHING that people don't like now is labeled "communism" - it's the new buzz word for the clueless and uneducated. Sad thing is, the pharmacist, I can only assume, has to have some level of education to do what he does........

I can guarantee that the overwhelming majority of those who use that word now with the intended venom of a four letter word are the ones who have no clue what it means, nor have ever read a word of Marx and Engels.