The United States Joins The Modern World

It looks like the lunatics and fanatics have made their last valiant stand to keep America firmly in the 19th century. It appears they have lost. Public health care is coming to the US. And it is coming despite a majority who have been bludgeoned into believing that it is some evil communist conspiracy meant to destroy "American values" (yeah sure, those wonderful values that let an accident bankrupt a family, that wholesome world where people have to choose between paying for food or paying for medicine, that wonderful world of gaudy private excess in the midst of mean-spirited public impoverishment).

Here's a bit from a Paul Krugman op-ed in the NY Times noting this halting step forward by the American body politic:

Imperfect as it is, the legislation that passed the Senate on Thursday and will probably, in a slightly modified version, soon become law will [to] make America a much better country.

So why are so many people complaining? There are three main groups of critics.

First, there’s the crazy right, the tea party and death panel people — a lunatic fringe that is no longer a fringe but has moved into the heart of the Republican Party. In the past, there was a general understanding, a sort of implicit clause in the rules of American politics, that major parties would at least pretend to distance themselves from irrational extremists. But those rules are no longer operative. No, Virginia, at this point there is no sanity clause.

A second strand of opposition comes from what I think of as the Bah Humbug caucus: fiscal scolds who routinely issue sententious warnings about rising debt. By rights, this caucus should find much to like in the Senate health bill, which the Congressional Budget Office says would reduce the deficit, and which — in the judgment of leading health economists — does far more to control costs than anyone has attempted in the past.

But, with few exceptions, the fiscal scolds have had nothing good to say about the bill. And in the process they have revealed that their alleged concern about deficits is, well, humbug. As Slate’s Daniel Gross says, what really motivates them is “the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, is receiving social insurance.”

Finally, there has been opposition from some progressives who are unhappy with the bill’s limitations. Some would settle for nothing less than a full, Medicare-type, single-payer system. Others had their hearts set on the creation of a public option to compete with private insurers. And there are complaints that the subsidies are inadequate, that many families will still have trouble paying for medical care.

Unlike the tea partiers and the humbuggers, disappointed progressives have valid complaints. But those complaints don’t add up to a reason to reject the bill. Yes, it’s a hackneyed phrase, but politics is the art of the possible.

Future historians will look back and be horrified at how the US went from being a force for good in the WWII and immediate post WWII years to being a backer of dictators and a roadblock to a better future as Cold War politics had the US bully nations around the world. Then as the Cold War morphed into Reagan's "Morning in America" the US became an oddly backward 19th century "capitalism unleashed" economy that allowed the rich to become fabulously wealthy at the expense of everybody else. So while the US marched firmly backwards the rest of the world has slowly fumbled toward the light, toward the 21st century.

With this vote, the US may be showing an intention to stop its destructive devolution into a heartless capitalist hinterland and rejoin the community of nations. I say "may" because polling shows that most Americans happily embrace the world of misery and denial of the 19th century. Their moralistic souls enjoy seeing suffering because their theology apparantly tells them that they can find God's love best only when there is an immense amount of suffering going on.

... but, maybe the US isn't ready to join the modern world:

If you want an insight into the Cultural Wars behind the anti-health care side, there is no better posting to read than Et tu, Mr. Destructo?:

In this video, a caller and teabagging enthusiast asks Senator John Barrasso (R-WY) why Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) wasn't able to attend the health care vote.

Now, this guy starts openly weeping on the phone because he thinks that he or Barrasso have killed Inhofe. Why? Because Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) got on the floor of the senate and urged all Republicans to pray that certain people would be incapable of attending the health care vote, that God would somehow prevent them. The implication in Coburn's prayer was pretty clear, as the very ill and 92-year-old Robert Byrd (D-WV) was expected to cast the filibuster-proof 60th vote for the health care bill. Thus, Coburn's exhortation was little more than the Christian dog-whistle equivalent of asking God to kill Byrd for Republicans, babies and America — a less overt version of Pat Robertson praying that God start killing Supreme Court justices so George Bush could replace them with religious conservative appointees.

The whole clip is barely a minute long, but it's absolutely captivating television. This man is openly weeping, not because he asked a merciful and loving God to murder another person for a political victory, but apparently because he thinks that Senator Barrasso failed to pray hard enough, or that he himself failed to pray hard enough, or perhaps that his omnipotent and all-knowing God somehow got the wrong signal at the end of the God Switchboard — like he shook his God Cell Phone as it garbled, stared at it, furrowed his brow, then said, "Well, I'm God and all, but how the hell am I going to figure out what he just said? I know—fuck it—I'm gonna kill Inhofe."

God is a vicious, impatient and intercessory God. The New Testament never happened. God waits by the blower eternal, ready for the impious to be smitten, brought low and then completely fucked up. Any day now he'll get a misdirected prayer letter from 1993 and turn Hillary Clinton into a pillar of salt, her useless barren womb snowing pure white grains out her crotch and forming a mountain in front of her like she's got a uterine Tony Montana working the bellows somewhere in the pit of her stomach. God hates fags. God hates Democrats. God has watched every John Mellencamp "This Is Our Country" Chevy Silverado ad and is even now making an executive's finger hover over an office telephone button, ready to commission more. God thinks Mexican food sucks everywhere outside of Texas, including Mexico.

And the best part of all — despite the fact that Byrd is alive, was wheeled into the senate at 1:00 a.m. with a runny nose, rheumy eyes and a handkerchief before casting the 60th "aye" vote and literally fist-pumping while he did it — is the righteous and emotional investment the man has in an ethos he clearly knows nothing about. He cares enough about America and about Christianity to weep openly about them and to pray intensely without ever connecting a health care bill with lessons that Christ taught about healing the sick, a rich man's limitations, the meek's inheritance or the goodness of surrendering material wealth for the enrichment of all. He's managed to internalize his belief strongly enough to sob about it on national television while giving the whole mercy/tolerance/cheek-turning thing a complete pass. In the season of peace, honoring the birth of a God-made-man who raised his hand to no one and instead chose to die to save us all, this caller chokes up with impotent despair that his plans to kill another fucking human being went awry.

The sad thing, of course, is that perhaps this man would have learned what's wrong with this kind of thinking if only my people hadn't so successfully prosecuted our War on Christmas. Our insistence on acknowledging that other religions celebrate things in winter has made it impossible for even Christians to remember what it is they allegedly believe in.

Go to that posting to watch the video.