We Need Reason: A Health Care Rant

I thought, really, that I had seen it all during the election. The weird spectacle of madness that was put on:  the people at McCain/Palin rallies; that freaky old lady McCain had to admonish. People seriously paying attention to a guy called "Joe the Plumber" who wasn't named Joe and wasn't a plumber. The racist comments. The conspiracy theories.

And then came Healthcare Reform, and my head exploded.

Seriously. Everyone remember back in the day, when "apeshit" was those nutters who tried to spread the story that the Clintons had had people killed to hide their shady business dealings? Oh my Flying Spaghetti Monster, but those days seem sane now.

Watching Obama's speech tonight, I just got so pissed. I mean, at this moment, giving this speech, dealing with this issue, the President of the United States shouldn't have to spend time refuting claims that are so apeshit that apeshit won't go near them. The President actually had to call out the "Death Panels" lies. If that fact doesn't make you wet your pants, doesn't make you think that we are heading towards a national loony bin, I don't know what will. Think what it means:  enough people are worried about that, think it might be true -- this statement that is nothing more than the evil, twisted, fucked up, wicked, asinine ravings of an ignorant quitter from Alaska -- that the President has to waste a few minutes slamming it down. Instead of laying out more concrete details of his plan in the context of a spirited, but cordial, debate, he had to spend time to say, "Hey, Jimmy, don't worry. I'm not going to gas your gramma."

And we keep treating this stuff as if it's rational. We keep letting those voices get microphones, as if they are a serious part of the debate. They aren't. They're con artists or lunatics, or so mentally lazy that they have trouble forming enough of a thought to open a bag of potato chips. Or, to be more succinct:  they're Fox

Image via Wikipedia

News's audience. A minority, I think, in this country, but a big one, and worrying, because they hold ignorance as the highest ideal, truth as anything that is spoken -- or, preferably, screamed -- over and over, and spitting as public discourse.

Of course, there are those who benefit from this debate being nothing more than frothing at the lips. Right wing radio, Fox News (go figure!), the insurance companies, you name it, there's folks that are making money off this whole damn mess, and don't care much if the country lurches into dangerous lunacy in the process. As long as they get theirs, right? Bahamas, here we come! And meanwhile, this "debate," this discussion that is being snowed under by all this anti-rational bs, is about something really, really simple:

In the richest nation on Earth, there are people who die because they can't afford health care.

It's not an academic debate. It's a debate about a tragedy in the real world. It's about suffering. It's about lives ruined and dreams forever deferred because of illness and because of a screwed up system that too often grinds people under instead of helping them.

It's a topic that desperately needs reason. It needs serious, informed conversation, creative problem-solving, intelligence, team-work. It needs all of that and more so we can end this tragedy once and for all.

At this point, I just have to end with a quote from Phil Plait of Bad Astronomy:

If I sound angry, then, yeah, I am. I’m tired of ignorance held up as inspiration, where vicious anti-intellectualism is considered a positive trait, and where uninformed opinion is displayed as fact.
 
It’s killing any real debate in this country, where the system of government depends utterly on a well-informed public. When rampant idiocy is presented as reasonable discourse without any rebuttal, then we all suffer.

What we need are government officials not afraid to talk like Barney Frank did to such a voice of lunacy. To reiterate, crackpots have a right to air their diseased notions, just as we have the right to tear those ideas to shred when they do. More than that, the news media have a responsibility to do so.

(And while you're at it, read the whole article. And also read what John Scalzi has to say in his post "That Obama Speech," which is, like Plait's, about Obama's evil speech to the nation's school children.)

Healthcare madness

I'm still recovering from Death Plague '09. It has royally sucked, let me tell you, folks. But I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Maybe it's having been this sick these past 2 weeks, and without insurance, that has focused my brain, insofar as it can focus on anything, on the whole health care reform debate. I can't say I have anything particularly brilliant to say about it. Mostly what I feel is a simmering anger -- an anger that I had to make choices these past 2 weeks that probably prolonged my agony, simply because of simple issues of money. Probably because I was, and am, well aware of just how sick I was, and how bad it was that I wasn't going to a doctor. I take this issue very personally. I work my ass off, and yet I can't get the most basic of health care in this country.

Mostly, though, I've been half-watching this whole town hall thing, and the utter madness engulfing the conservative elements in our culture, and despairing. This whole debate is showing so clearly how little rational thought is used in American politics. It's showing how divided and extreme things are getting. We're not talking minor divisions here -- we're talking the kind of divisions that back in the day ended up with people being tied to stakes and lit on fire. The rhetoric is mad. The lies are outrageous. The willingness to believe the lies, to not even question them, that is the real kicker, though. A whole segment of the population is proving how little they actively engage their brains.

Not that the other side gets off easily, though. One thing that has been striking me, listening to the fear-mongering from the right, is how much is sounds like the extreme liberal fear-mongering from during the Bush years. Internment camps! Nazis! Death panels!

I have no answers here. We're at a perilous point here -- a government in huge financial trouble, facing real issues of importance, including Health Care Reform (an important part of getting the financial problems under control). We have wars to be dealt with. We have infrastructure problems, international crises, and more. Perhaps more than at any point in U.S. history, we need to be stepping back and engaging our brains. Making decisions based on careful analysis and reason, instead of fear. Instead -- madness.

Maybe it's the last remnants of the sickness speaking, but right now I fear for my country. It feels like we are sliding into an abyss of hatred and fear and division.