Politics
So much for a quiet August in Washington.
Traditionally the time of year when Senators and Congressmen return to their home districts for a month to catch their breath, escape the swampy heat of D.C., and feign erotic interest in their spouses while quietly dreaming of their paramours back in Georgetown or Foggy Bottom or even Tenleytown, August this year has turned out to be louder and more stressful than Capitol Hill on voting day. The debates over health care, the daily confrontations at town hall meetings, the rabble-rousing of the media’s lunatic-fringe, and the patriots with thigh-holsters have conspired to turn what should have been a sleepy summer into one of the more disheartening eras in American democracy since Republican preppies tried to turn the Miami Elections Office into a frat house after a home loss.
As depressing as the last few weeks of political uh, debate, have been, what’s really sad is that the right-wing approach – trumped-up grass-roots mobs shouting down whomever they disagree with – appears to be working. Late last week, Democratic officials admitted that end-of-life counseling reimbursements in the House bill would probably have to go, a concession to the absurd allegations from right-wing demagogues like Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich that the sessions would be little more than “death panels” run by big-government bureaucrats granted the power by Barack Obama to decide who lives and who dies in America.
Then on Sunday, newspapers started reporting that Obama was considering dropping the bill’s “public option,” long coveted by liberal Democrats convinced that government involvement in health care is the only way to guarantee coverage for every American. Hemming and hawing and parsing his words like a true modern-day Abe Lincoln, Obama claimed at a town-hall-style meeting in Grand Junction, Colorado, that “[t]he public option, whether we have it or we don’t have it, is not the entirety of health care reform. This is just one sliver of it, one aspect of it.”
Wait. Didn’t we win the White House in 2008? Didn’t Obama run on a platform of hope and change and a belief in the positive role government should play in American life? And didn’t he come into office as the leader of a party with control of the House and a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate? So what in the world is he doing listening to the demands of the psychotic fringe of the Republican Party, much less giving in to them? Shouldn’t he just stick them in a corner and forget about them for the next three and half years while passing the laws he wants passed?
Well, unfortunately he can’t, for the simple reason that it isn’t the Republicans he has to worry about. Just ask Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel. Back in 2006 it was Emanuel who decided that the best way for the Democratic party to reclaim majorities in Congress would be to sacrifice core values in the name of appealing to the vast political center. Looking to win at all costs (not such a bad idea at the time, considering we were coming up on year seven on an unfettered Bush administration), Emanuel recruited dozens of moderate Blue Dog Democrats – many of whom were pro-life, pro-business, and pro-gun – to knock off the ultra-conservative Republicans who had finally started creeping out the average American voter. Figuring even moderate Democrats were better than Republicans, Emanuel (along with Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and Harry Reid) sold out his party’s philosophy in the name of securing his party’s dominance.
In other words, that filibuster-proof majority is really nothing of the kind, Al Franken or no Al Franken.
Because in return for selling our souls we got “Democrats” like Mike Ross of Arkansas, a man whose main priority in the health care debate isn’t making sure that every American is covered or that insurance companies can’t turn down people based on pre-existing conditions, but rather that the plan be deficit-neutral. That’s it. Deficit-neutral. Oh, and that it not provide health care for illegal immigrants or funding for abortions. In other words, we got a Republican. A Republican from 1992 maybe, but still a Republican.
Serves us right. We liberals wanted so desperately to hand Bush and his crew a defeat in 2006, we checked our ideals at the door and supported anyone with a “D” next to his or her name. Pro-corporation? Anti-immigration? Pro-life? Anti-environment? Who cares; come on in! Anything to pad our numbers and make everyone feel good about themselves. Only now that little Faustian bargain is biting us in the ass – a part of the body, it turns out, not covered by any insurance company.
So when Representative Ross of Arkansas spits out a piece of pandering, insidious, reprehensible, irresponsible, shameful, vacuous nonsense like “I will never vote for a bill to kill old people. Period” (how very brave, Mr. Ross, to come out in favor of old-people), like he did this past weekend, we on the left have to pretend we didn’t hear him. We expect this kind of bullshit from Republicans – Obama’s plan will force euthanasia on the elderly and haul retarded babies into work camps? Who here was honestly surprised to hear Sarah Palin say that? – but from a Democrat? Really? Was that devil’s bargain really so costly that we have to count Mike Ross as one of our own? That the success of Obama’s health plan, not to mention the rest of his agenda, is in the hands of moral and intellectual half-men?
What is with this country? Why is this stuff even up for debate? Why are we listening to these people claiming death panels and Nazi chemotherapy rationing? And why are we humoring the low-lifes who believe what they say? How much respect do we have to have for differing opinions if those opinions are built entirely out of lies? At what point, in other words, do you cross the line from debate into lunacy?
Obama may claim to be a populist, but he must be looking at all those Glen Beck fans regurgitating lies in the streets all over this ridiculous land of ours and just dying to drop a giant blanket over all of them. And well he should. Volatile debate is necessary to a democracy and should be welcomed. And god knows health care is a complicated enough issue to support many different, even opposing, opinions. What doesn’t need to be welcomed, however, is willful ignorance, barely shrouded racism, implied threats, and sheep-like obedience to liars and fear-mongers. It’s time for Obama to step up to the bully pulpit and let the world know that a bold new age of American intelligence is at hand, that this country will no longer be held hostage by any nitwit who comes along with a gripe and a big megaphone.
From now on, only very special nitwits will get that honor.
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>> What is with this country? Why is this stuff even up for debate?
As much as I’d like to believe that this is a country of rational sentience, there are deep pockets of abject mental instability laying in wait. I can understand the temptation to ignore these outbursts of death panels and Nazi-Socialist warnings as just ravings of arch-racist nonsense, but let it wait. Let them have their time in the sun.
I’m not saying try to dialogue with them and convince them otherwise. That would be feckless. You could say something like, “there are no death panels”. Simple as that. It’s such an easy statement to counter with. “But you didn’t know about the FEMA Trailer Assembly meeting in August of last year that put together a proposal to massacre the elderly.” Is it true? Absolutely not, but who can argue with such detail. Every obscure theory and rabbit hole has been thoroughly and obsessively mined by these psychotic mole rats.
They are loud and crazy and they’re not going to take “it” anymore. “It” being an unknown quantity. These barnstorming barbarians braying at the gates have been kept down long enough and now they want to be heard. And I say let them. Glenn Beck already has an hour-long show on Fox, let’s give him two on prime-time television. In fact, let’s give him a whole daylong telethon to spout his dramatic fear-mongering hysterics. Even better, let’s give him and Lou Dobbs a big parade down old Broadway and through every Main Street in America surrounded by heavily armed militias and enough American flags to keep China’s garment industry running for years on end. They should have a right-wing Burning Man that’ll make Sturgis look like the Lilith Fair. Maybe they can get Lee Greenwood or that Rappin’ cowboy, or those two Nazi twin girls, and a whole slew of country stars to re-enact their own special right wing Woodstock. We’ll all sit back and watch it and deride their protest sign antics and yell at them to “grow some hair for goodness sake”. If they want to repurpose
stealsixties radicalism techniques originally meant to stop wars and promote civil rights into psychotic pro-corporate messages against providing health care for the poor, they should take the whole sixties package with them.But most importantly, we get as many dyed in the wool Red state senators to attend and be photographed amongst the hordes. Get them on record gallivanting about with Glenn Beck on a jingoistic meth bender. Pictures of a Congressman alongside militia members and Montana separatists might stop any future attempt of them hiding behind Nationalism and the flag. Just like how the more people watch Fox, the more the Republicans lose power, the crazier they get, the more fractured their base becomes.
Sure there are a lot of crazy people ranting against health care reform, and most of them shouldn’t be given drivers licenses let alone a voice in the public sphere, but the idea that their madness might be winning people over is unlikely. While talk show hosts know how to pander to an audience, unrehearsed ranting madmen don’t. When removed of their talking points and disruptive tactics, they really don’t have much to say. It’s not a matter of arguing with them but just letting them have their time moment in front of the cameras. Then let the people decide on that.
Then pray that there’s not a majority of psychotic conspiracy theorists out there in the world.
[...] anyone keeping an eye on the U.S. political scene as it has devolved over the past couple of months, health care would seem to be the only issue on the national agenda. [...]
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