3/24/2010

The Terror Begins

It's been three days since the House of Representatives passed the health-care reform bill and two days since President Obama signed it into law. If you believe the tea partiers, that's two (and possibly three) days since tyranny came to our shores and killed off the America we all know and love.

It is, of course, nonsense. But the scary part is not that the tea partiers believe it. The scary part is that some of them, goaded on by their leaders, are descending into violence.

The offices of Democratic representatives around the country have been attacked and vandalized, often with rocks or bricks thrown through the windows.

A number of Democrats have received explicit death threats, both at their Washington offices and at their homes. Many have had to request Secret Service protection, not just for themselves but for their spouses and children as well, who in many cases were also directly threatened.

Virginia teabagger leader Nigel Coleman posted what he believed to be Rep. Tom Periello's home address on his Facebook page, telling his equally rabid followers to "drop by" and harass the man at home. But Coleman didn't even bother to get it right - he posted Periello's brother's home address. Shortly afterward, the brother found a threatening letter in his mailbox as well as a slashed and leaking propane gas line on his barbecue grill.

Coleman's response to the vandalism was, if possible, even more reprehensible than his original actions. "Do you mean I posted his brother's address on my Facebook?" he wrote on his blog. "Oh well, collateral damage."

Collateral damage.

This is not political discourse. This is terrorism. It might be conducted by Americans instead of Arabs, but it's terrorism nonetheless.

When Democratic representatives were spat on and taunted with racial and sexual epithets, the Republican leadership grudgingly told their followers to cool it. A bit late in the game, especially since that same leadership had spent months twisting people's minds with lies about "death panels" and "Marxism," endlessly using the language of war and killing, recklessly stoking the fires of hate ever higher until the day when something truly ugly becomes inevitable.

That day has arrived.

The teabagger movement has long turned a blind eye to the racists and crackpots and haters in their midst, but they can hide no longer. The Republicans, from Sarah Palin and John Boehner on down, can't hide anymore either. Like Dr. Morbius' "monsters from the id" in Forbidden Planet, the demon of fear and hatred they created has started to run amok.

So what happens now? Will the Republican and teabagger leaders tell their followers in no uncertain terms that violence is un-American and will not be tolerated? Or will they continue to remain silent, unwilling to surrender their weapon of an angry mob even if someone gets killed?

Even if they speak out from pure self-preservation, they'd better do it, and damn fast too. The first murder will doom the Republican Party for a generation and destroy the tea party movement forever.

3/19/2010

The Tyranny of Health Care

The loudest voices opposing health care reform howl about how passing the bill currently in Congress (or any bill, really) will usher in a new era of despotic socialism. They warn of the approaching thud of jackbooted feet trampling all over us, poking into every nook and cranny of our lives, requiring us to exchange iceberg lettuce for arugula and buy a $59.95 Michelle Obama Triceps Cruncher.

I got into a scrape on Facebook yesterday with a friend (at least, I hope she's still a friend) who calls the bill "tyranny." She hates everything about it, from the requirement that we carry some form of health insurance to the (minimal) regulation of some of the insurance industry's worst abuses to the fact that the bill even exists, as she claims it to be unconstitutional. Every change to the bill, including the removal of a public option, has been met with the same response: it's tyranny. As she is very politically involved, I asked what I thought to be a reasonable question: since she rejects all proposed reforms, how would she fix the system? After all, having many millions of Americans with no reliable health care combined with medical and insurance costs rising far faster than inflation is a serious problem.

It's a fair question; one cannot say "no" to everything. Simply raging against fictional socialist death panels and demanding that Congress "kill the bill" doesn't fix anything. Proposing an alternative would be nice, especially since the status quo is so unsustainable.

She did not take it well. As we went back and forth, she mostly dodged the question and then eventually blew up, accusing me of presenting my case in "partisan terms." She even posted on her own blog a long screed saying I was a "distraction" using "talking points straight off of Moveon.org's playlist." Neat trick, since I don't follow MoveOn.

Silly me, I thought I was talking about the basic facts of the health care brouhaha: the yanking of insurance on the flimsiest of excuses, the high-deductible coverage which doesn't cover much at all, the penny-pinching, the denial of care, the use of pre-existing conditions, the fact that money spent on health care pays off (and then some) in the form of higher productivity and thus higher tax revenues, the fact that 62% of bankruptcies involve medical debt and that 78% of such bankrupts had insurance which didn't protect them.

It appears not. Despite Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, which specifically allows Congress to levy taxes in furtherance of the nation's "general welfare," any insurance mandate is apparently unconstitutional and tyrannical control of our lives, and any requirement to treat people who can't afford care is socialist slavery.

This shows an ugly trend in this whole debate: the attitude of "I've got mine, so screw you" on display everywhere. Stories of how people lose their insurance based on made-up excuses are greeted with shrugs. If someone loses their life savings or their home, well, them's the breaks. It's your own fault for getting sick in the first place. Or you should have shopped around to pick the right hospital after your stroke. Being comatose is no excuse.

One particularly sickening video posted yesterday showed a man with Parkinson's disease being harassed by protesters who call him a Communist. One man sneers in his face that "if you're looking for a handout, you're in the wrong end of town." Another scornfully throws a couple of dollar bills at him, shouting, "I'll decide when to give you money!"

Their message is simple: Go ahead and suffer. Go ahead and die. I don't care.

And this illustrates the deep divide between our two philosophies of life. Progressives believe that we are all in this together and that what strengthens the nation as a whole strengthens each of us individually. The teabaggers reject the idea that we, via government, are our brother's keeper and claim that anyone who believes otherwise is an apologist for slavery.

But even if requiring us to carry health insurance is tyranny (and that's a Brobdingnagian if) is it not more tyrannical to live in constant fear of getting sick or injured, not knowing whether your insurance will really protect you? Is it not a form of slavery to be all too aware that should you lose your job, you would be unable to buy coverage on the private market because of a "pre-existing condition" in a loved one? Since the United States is the only developed nation in the world without some form of universal health coverage and where the obscenity of medical bankruptcy is allowed, does that mean we are the only free nation on Earth?

Back during the bad old days of the Cold War, we were told that we had to possess thousands of nuclear weapons because the Soviets had them as well and that our freedom depended upon remaining under the threat of mutual annihilation. Do we now have a 21st-century version of that atomic Sword of Damocles? Can we be free only if we live in perpetual danger of financial ruin for the crime of getting sick?

Not in my America. My America is a nation where we look after each other and where no one is condemned to exist in pain and suffering, or be forced out of their homes, because they can't afford to see a doctor. If others believe that represents tyranny, then so be it. We have to agree to disagree.