Well, even Al Gore can't blame climate change for this August. Congress is out of session. The President is on vacation on "the Vineyard". Football hasn't really started yet and the only signs of life in America should be the rush to Target to buy back-to-school-supplies.
Nevertheless, we are being bombarded with an unrelenting, screeching torrent of opinions on how to address the horrific cost of health care in America. Everyone from your mechanic to your mother-in-law to the parent next to you at the Little League field has an opinion. Many of those opinions are deeply held. Many are based on facts not in evidence (OK, so I watch too much court room TV!). One thing is clear: however the Congress finally decides, a substantial group of Americans are not going to be happy.
As always, it is the stated purpose of isitjustme to bring clarity to an otherwise cloudy debate. To wit: let's review the history:
1) Barack Obama ran for President as a change agent. One of those changes was the way we dispense and pay for health care in America.
2) Mr. Obama won the election, bringing with him a truckload of Democratic Senators and Congressmen.
3) Almost none of those Senators and Congresspersons were elected on a platform involving single-payer insurance plans or public options. (Prior to the current conflagration, most Americans imagined that public options had something to do with restroom choices.)
4) The President is determined to use his substantial majorities in both houses of Congress as well as his honeymoon popularity to changes health care in America.
It turns out that the White House has severely miscalculated. For one thing, honeymoons are now defined as the time between your inauguration and the moment you make your first decision. Also, a Democratic majority isn't actually a majority. With Democrats, loyalty to the Party and the President appears not to be a requirement...or even a suggestion. Bill Clinton discovered this lesson when he attempted to introduce acceptance of gays in the military. His party turned on him like a cheering Giants fan at an Eagles home game.
What President Obama has discovered is Americans may vote for change but they really don't want anything to actually change. Social Security, Civil Rights, Medicare, mandatory seatbelts all came into being without popular support. Makes you wonder how Prohibition ever got ratified. The reason that our little democratic republic has survived all these years is, somehow the combined efforts of the 535 self serving, power crazy, egomaniacs in Congress manage to be right more often than they are wrong. Amazing!
Anyway, we have learned a few things as a result of this little dust-up on healthcare:
1) Many Americans now know the name of the Senator from Iowa without benefit of a sordid sex scandal. The only one of his body parts that isn't where it should be is his brain.
2) We have learned that bipartisanship means, "you won the election but you still have to do things our way".
3) We have, at least, discovered a way to get old, fat, white Americans off the couch and away from reruns on the History Channel. Now if we could only get them to stop listening to Rush on the way to the town halls.
4) We've learned what P.T. Barnum, Joseph Goebbels, Joe Stalin and Karl Rove always knew: if the lies are outrageous enough and you shout them loud enough, and they play to your worst fears, you can get a lot of gullible people to believe and repeat them.
5) Sarah Palin is even more of a dillweed than was originally believed.
Sadly, we have also learned that the America of the Greatest Generation has become a timid country. Everything frightens us. Immigrants frighten us. Prisoners from Guantanamo frighten us. Muslims frighten us. Hell, our own government frightens us.(OK, maybe there's merit there.) And, change frightens us to death.
But take heart America. After all, we are still fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Patriot Act is still in full vigor. Karl Rove and Dick Cheney are still not in jail, and the Attorney General is still invoking executive privilege. Gays are still not permitted to marry in most states and they are still being booted from vital jobs in the military. Rush is still drawing killer ratings and no one has blackened one of Bill O'Reilly's eyes. So, aside from the departure of Paula Abdul from Idol, where's all the change?
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