The Importance of Real Debate

One of the saddest things that have happened over the past several years is the total and utter lack of a real debate over issues in Washington, D.C. There was a time when the leaders of both parties could sit down, have a bourbon (or two) and hash out a solution to a problem Did that solution always work? Hell, no. But both parties were on the same page, and the debate was open and honest. For me, the last time this happened was during the debate on education which lead to the "Leave No Child Behind" bill. Ultimately, the bill was flawed and has been a disaster, but the debate was honest.

In the wake of Ted Kennedy's death, its appropriate to note the lack of a true debate in Washington over health care, torture, or the economic stimulus package. And apparently, the climate change bill is also going to be a rough one. The problem is, essentially as I see it, that the two parties live in two completely alternate universes. So instead of arguing the how - as in how do we fix this problem - the Parties argue whether or not a problem even exists. Health care, for instance, is tremendously overpriced in this country (we spend more per capita than any other country in the world, by far), and that has lead to bankruptcies and poor health. But instead of arguing how health care reform should be structured, Republicans argue that there is no problem, or worse, make up things about health care reform.

Where are the arguments about streamlining the health insurance market? Where are the arguments against burdensome regulation, or tort reform? In short, where is the honest conservative argument about health care? Or torture? Or climate change? The Republican argument seems to be to deny the existence of any problem. And ultimately, these made up facts have become an identity and not a philosophy. And that's a shame because conservatives have good points to make. For instance, the deregulation of the trucking industry was, all in all, a good thing. Welfare reform has been largely successful (I think). In other words, the conservative voice, or the good government voice, has been an important part of the Republic.

What's more, I deeply fear the insanity of identity politics in this country. Every day I see more and more harbingers of political violence in this country. Listen to this:



Now, Glenn Beck is a total nutcase, but he's alleging a coup by election - in other words, Obama has taken over the government by winning an election - something that has been done by both parties since 1801. Beck is practically encouraging the violent overthrow of the United States! We have pastors praying to God for Obama's death, and their parishioners are carrying assault weapons to Obama's events. Only 42% of Republicans are certain that Obama is a citizen of the United States!

True, the Democrats have, in the past, demonized the right. As the years rolled on during Bush's tenure as President, we became more and more strident against him. Though, to be honest, he did a lot to encourage our ire. But that outrage and anger took years to develop, and the anger was over policy - Iraq, torture, climate change, Katrina, etc. And it took even longer for our leadership to even acknowledge the anger we felt - this, by the way, is a continuing theme: Republicans fear their base, and are responsive to them (no matter how crazy the base gets), Democratic Leadership thinks the base voters are a bunch of dirty fucking hippies and ignore them. *bangs head against wall*

Ultimately, the change occurred because the Republicans realized that they could win more debates by being ruthlessly partisan, no matter what the facts were. And politically, that's the right move. What drives me nuts here is that the Democrats having faced this exact problem for the past thirty years have yet to realize that they need to be partisan in return. But despite what the Democrats do, something has to break with the Republicans - they can't keep doing this.

Shit is Getting Scary. . .

Whenever I read shit like this (and I suggest you read it), I become very, very worried about this country. If one reads the accounts of the political discourse prior to the Civil War, its filled with Senators fighting each other, and prior to the War itself, people were literally killing each other in Kansas. And to be honest, I see the country going this way again.

For a variety of reasons, political discourse in this country stopped being about which policy is the best to follow, but rather about which reality to live in. For more than a few right-wingers, reality is that Obama was born in Kenya, that he's a Socialist, that he wants to kill old people and children, that global warming does not exist, and Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9-11 and had weapons of mass destruction. None of these things are true, but are taken as gospel by too many people.

Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh are, of course, somewhat responsible. Glenn Beck, in particular, has done a lot to stoke the fires of hatred against Obama. And Limbaugh calling Obama a Nazi is not helping either. But let's face it, Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh are opportunists - if they didn't chase the lunatic fringe, someone else would. That's capitalism. As a moral matter, if anyone gets hurt, because of the hatred these douche nozzles spew, I hope they burn in hell.

Before someone says something about Move-On, and the Hitler ad, allow me to point out that the ad was submitted to Move-On, and they ultimately scrubbed the ad from their site. Oh, and Bush did invade a country for the purpose of spreading his ideology across the world (and was torturing people, and spied on Americans. . .but that's another post). There is a big, big difference between Rush Limbaugh and some random guy. Don't get me wrong, the left has its loonies (goddamn hippies), but our nutjobs don't have institutional support.

So, how do we walk back from this precipice? From this Democrat's perspective, walking back can't mean giving up the store. No, Democrats need to fight harder for what they believe in. And Republicans shouldn't stop fighting for what they believe in either. But we have to start reading from the same page.

On Bipartisanship Take 2

W.O.W. That didn't take too long. In less than 24 hrs after I wrote that the Democrats should abandon all bipartisanship, the right wing partisans went off the deep end. Thus far, we've seen nutjobs start riots in Tampa and St. Louis, threaten the SEIU, and everywhere equating health insurance reform with Nazism.

Quick history lesson - the National Socialist Party had basically two factions - the Fascists who were primarily Nationalists (Hitler) and the Facists who had socialist tendencies (Brohm). When the Nazis were on the precipice of power, Hitler had Brohm wacked specifically to prevent any kind of socialism. Oh, and the Nazis were avidly anti-communist. So, calling Obama a fascist makes absolutely no sense.

Now back to reality. . .actually, let's discuss reality for a second. It seems to me that a good portion of these nutjobs are living in an alternate universe. First off, nobody knows what's in the health insurance reform bill because it hasn't been written yet. Second, there's no way the bill forces anyone to do anything. There are few protections for the most egregious behavior by health insurance companies - like rescinding health insurance when someone gets cancer - and hopefully, there will be a public option (a public health care system that you can use when health insurers won't cover you), but that's about it.

Oh, and for those of you who don't know - like Arthur Laffer - MEDICARE IS A GOVERNMENT PROGRAM!!!!!!!!!! And the reforms to Medicare that are proposed in the bill will simply lower costs and were proposed by Republicans. So, please stop with the signs that say "Government Keep its Hands off My Medicare." Its like saying that the Federal Government should stop running the U.S. Marine Corps. Without the Government, there wouldn't be a Medicare. Got it? Oh, and its MY TAXPAYER DOLLARS THAT PAYS FOR YOUR HEALTH CARE YOU DAMN HYPOCRITES!!!!!

The latest is Sarah Palin saying that Obama wants to kill her son Trig because he has Down's syndrome. Really? Really? How ridiculous is that? All this does, quite naturally, is stoke anger to the point where someone is going to get shot.

In this evironment, there's no way the GOP is going to go along with health insurance reform. Not only will the base not vote for the GOP, but at this point, the base might just shoot its leaders. Bipartisanship is nice, but you can't bargain with crazy. And we're looking at a lot of crazy here.

Last point - if there wasn't this level of craziness, and the Republican Party was willing to discuss how to reform health insurance (instead of saying everything is hunky-doory), then we could have an interesting debate as to how to fix health care in this country.