Atrios is sure right about this:
The London apartment tower fire was a council (public) housing tower in a rich (and getting richer) part of London. Rich councils have been pushing out such things in various ways, both to get rid of the icky poors and to make real estate developers rich. They put some fancy dress on this one to make it prettier for the surrounding rich residents. It was flammable. The material is banned for this use even in our regulation free libertarian nirvana. They could have used the fire resistant version for 5 thousand pounds more, a rounding error on a project of that magnitude. They didn’t. Whether or not it was a major contributing factor in the fire, it could have been, and it shows the contempt for the poors. Their deaths just don’t matter.
In our little country, there is this notion that Both Sides (the archetypes of the two parties, anyway) want roughly the same things (peace, freedom and prosperity), but we just disagree about how to get there. I don’t think this was really ever true, but if it ever was it isn’t anymore. The health care debate shows that one side thinks that if you’re poor you should fucking die, the sooner the better, and the other side doesn’t. (Within Team D is actually where this imagined Both Sides debate is – whether the free market fairy should be harnessed to give most of us health care, or whether it’s time for full socialism. Elected Team R, except for maybe about 3 of them, thinks the poor should just fucking die already, whether in fires or untreated cancer).
