In watching the ministrations of fury and folly that is our dyspeptic and near psychotic relationship with our government; particularly the jihad over health care, whether for or against, I must remark on the telling disconnect on what we think or believe ourselves to be, and what we really are.
Are we a pull up our boot straps, when the going gets tough; the tough get going, self reliant, can do people? Or was that our forebears? Are we less so? Are we more demanding of government, whether we're ambivalent about it or not, than those who trod before us?
Have we been so debilitated over government by all the bad press, republican hatred ( loathing; despising, whatever adjective you might ascribe to ), and sob stories that we, at once, are certain we're nothing more than lemmings led over the proverbial cliff while, paradoxically, fearful of having no one, or no institution to look after us?
The government does belong to the people. And whether the government does good or bad; represents all of us, or those able to exercise influence through lobbying or insider contacts; is efficient or non-functioning, is a byproduct of our oversight and participation. It is, whether we like it or not; our mess!
Whatever you may think of the good folks venting their spleens at the town hall meetings over health care, they do have a right to vent. They also ought to have the decency to sit down and shut up so others may vent their spleens. Evidently, based on the frenzied media coverage, this isn't happening. Rather than a spirited dialogue as to the nature and content of the bills the Congress is considering, we get to witness shouting matches and bizarre rants on the certainty of the governments plan to set up death camps for the elderly or any other non productive members of society who may burden our already over burdened health care system. There's a joke about that applying to members of Congress, but we won't go there. Seems unlikely. These are also the good folks who are certain that the gubmint is going to take their guns, that the UN runs the country, that good middle American folks will be run over by rapacious illegal immigrants who will suck every last dollar out of the public coffers first. Well, maybe not all of them; certainly some. It has also been pointed out by others that this wave of illegal immigration has been steady since 1492. I know a goodly number of folks who have many guns and none have had them confiscated or been forced to abide by pernicious and constraining laws.
Yet many of these same folks who are certain that the gubmint want to do great harm to them in their pursuit of happiness, are demanding that the gubmint forcefully, and through the full malice of the law, decide how others should pursue theirs. Judicial advocacy is good only when it is advocating what you may believe, and bad when it's for something you don't. So long as the great unwashed masses are not sucked into any overly distorted propaganda, most of this hand wringing happens on the fringes of society, as they say. Of course, history is replete with bad situations giving the fringe the power over the masses resulting in some of, if not the worst of, human terror. Remember, before the Great Depression, the Nazis were nuts on the right fighting the commie nuts on the left. Fringe groups ignored by the center.
That's not to say that the venters we see today are in the same boat as Hitler, although it's remarkable that republicans would liken Obama to him, but we risk losing the forest for the trees if we stand on the sidelines and allow their rants to shape the discussion on health care, particularly as it has no actual relevance to health care as so far written.
The fears about health care are, more over, revelatory as to our ambivalent feelings towards government control over it. Never mind that government already controls elder care which is happily roaring into insolvency. This is a byproduct of our inability to focus on what needs to be done before it becomes a crisis. So we'll wait until it is insolvent and then rush in as we did with the financial meltdown. Do we wait until health care itself reaches the point where it is unaffordable before we enact the necessary changes? I personally would not be surprised if it comes to that.
If so, then that answers our question. Doesn't it.
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