A prolonged, nasty, unproductive debate with a Facebook
acquaintance has left me struggling to find a pithy, coherent way to address
the morass of issues that has consumed the healthcare debate. We have truly
lost our ability to discuss issues with civility and an open mind. I am as
guilty of lowering the level of debate as the next guy, but you’ll have to
forgive me if I feel somewhat justified in having reached the end of my rope
with this particular opposition. I do not, for example, think it unreasonable
to say that They – let’s generalize and call them Conservatives – can claim a
whole lot of intellectual credibility after remaining largely silent for eight
years while a conservative President sank us into a murky abyss of debt,
recession, and international interventionism. I do not think it unreasonable to
expect them to realize that the decent thing to do right now is to give this
President a little breathing room, not only to clean up what can only be
described as a calamitous clusterfuck, but to institute the kinds of
progressive, liberal policy positions that won him a decisive victory in a
national election. In other words, I do not think it unreasonable to hope that
Conservatives would moderate the vociferousness of their antagonism for a brief
spell.
Alas, while trying to have a sincere debate about how to
curb the upward trajectory of Americans’ health care costs – costs that are
eating deeper and deeper into already strained family budgets – we are instead
discussing whether or not Barack Obama is a legal citizen, whether or not the
President of the United States should speak to school children, whether or not
we’re on the verge of becoming a Nazi-like state, whether or not Barack Obama
is going to “pull the plug on Granny,” and whether or not he plans to institute
“death panels.” And so on. All the while, the legislative possibilities have
dwindled so precipitously as to render the whole debate nearly meaningless
anyway.
I don’t even know what the fuck we’re all talking about
anymore. Conservatives are still ranting and raving as if we’re still debating
a wholesale switch to a single-payer, universal health care system. We’re not.
We’re barely even considering a public alternative to private insurance at this
point. I’m not entirely convinced that we’re not about to make matters worse
for the average American and a whole lot better for the health industry.
If an actual debate had taken place, if real ideas had
clashed in the arena of public opinion, and if health care reform had gone down
on its merits, I would hold my head up high and take the defeat with an ounce
of dignity. But that did not happen. Health care reform has gone down on a
heaping pile of horseshit, bludgeoned to a bloody pulp by the blunt force of
ignorance disguised as principle, poisoned by sour grapes masquerading as
righteous revolution. So you’ll have to excuse me if I’m sitting here painting
the walls with my own shit and piss, plotting to rape and kill the next leprechaun I see
in my yard.
In this Théâtre de l'Absurde, President Barack Obama is
evidently required to appease all of the objections and accept all of the demands of the party that was dramatically ousted from power on the basis
of its miserably failed stewardship over the previous eight years. Any idea that does
not accord with their vision – a vision, mind you, that bankrupted and indebted
us, oversaw the collapse of our financial system, sent thousands of our young
men and women to killed and maimed in a futile search for non-existent weapons
of mass destruction, etc. – is met with a charge of “Socialism!” Never mind
that they don’t understand that Socialism is not a political system, but an
economic idea, no more inextricably tied to the villains of Europe’s past than
baking is to the Holocaust. Not only would they eat their babies rather than
give up their Medicare or Social Security, they don’t even understand that
these are socialistic programs.
What Conservatives don’t seem to understand is that when we
participate in any insurance program – health insurance, car insurance, dental
insurance, flood insurance, life insurance – we are participating in a
collectivist enterprise. What is collectivism? It is “the
practice or principle of giving a group priority over each individual in it,”
according to the Oxford American Dictionary - aka socialism! Insurance is simply the pooling of resources to
protect the long-term interests of everyone in the pool. It relies on the bell-curve produced, actuarial reality that some people will end up paying more than they take out – aka wealth
redistribution.
Consider our socialized fire protection system: Your tax
dollars go to pay for your local fire department. In the unfortunate event of a
fire at your home or business, a big, red, expensive truck will show up and
attempt to rescue your family and put out the fire. Now, we could privatize
that system. I mean, it certainly has nothing to do with the national defense.
Instead of paying an infinitesimally small percentage of each paycheck toward
that service, you could pay a monthly fee to one of several competing private
companies, each of which would have their own big, red, expensive trucks,
other associated overhead costs and an unquenchable thirst for profit – a goal that might be realized by opening fewer fire
houses, purchasing fewer trucks, or refusing to come to your house if you
forgot last month’s payment. That sounds like a pretty dumb idea, doesn’t it?
You might say that would be playing with fire.
Now I know it’s easiest to just think that Liberals want the
government to give us all free healthcare, but that’s like saying that you want
the government to give you free fire
protection. They don’t give it to you for free. They take from
your paycheck what is needed to pay for that service – and not a penny of
profit. That is what Liberals want. We want the government to take
significantly less out of our paychecks
than the insurance companies are taking out of our pockets (or than our
employers are invisibly taking out of our wages to pay the insurance
companies).
Anyone with health insurance has already signed on to collectivism
and wealth redistribution. What’s left is simply a question of who
administrates the benefits – a profit-motivated corporation or a neutral
government agency?
If your fear of government is so profound that you would
rather line the pockets of Aetna’s shareholders, then you must, in the interest
of consistency, begin to inveigh passionately against all socialistic programs
– not just the ones that Barack Obama might be fantasizing about. You must call for the immediate dissolution of
Medicare, Social Security, unemployment insurance, fire and police departments,
public schools, and so on and so forth. You cannot simply fight Barack Obama’s
socialistic policies. You must fight FDR’s, Lyndon Johnson’s, Richard Nixon’s,
Gerald Ford’s, Bill Clinton’s, and yes, George W. Bush’s. You must exhibit
greater personal fortitude!
If you are not up to that task, then you must sit down and
shut the fuck up. You must stop regurgitating what Glenn Beck said last night.
You must stop sending bogus emails to all of your friends and family. You must
have the decency to stand aside and let the democratic process work without
you.
You must sit down and shut the fuck up – not because your
opinion doesn’t matter, but because you don’t have the courage OR the
convictions to be relevant or useful.
