This great article -h/t to Alan Webber – explains to the mystified many why we really cannot have a debate. We are not even speaking about the same issues – Healthcare paranoia is part of America’s culture war
Their issues are diverse. But their sentiment is common: America’s constitution is being trashed by un-American values. Which brings us to another important strain in US politics that Mr Obama, along with other educated liberals, shares with the Clintons: the belief that the fight is won or lost over the quality of reason.
No amount of contrary evidence will puncture the view that Mr Obama plans to establish “death panels” that will decide which grannies get to live or die. Nor will reason counter the view that countries such as Canada and the UK push their weakest to the back of the queue. “Who will suffer the most when they ration care?” asked Sarah Palin, the former governor of Alaska on Thursday. “The sick, the elderly and the disabled, of course.”
Mr Obama’s proposals have many flaws. Reasonable people can disagree on whether the reforms would bring down the cost of healthcare, an overriding priority, or sufficiently expand coverage to include the uninsured, a twin, but not always compatible, goal. For all their impact, reasonable people may as well be living on Venus.
The multi-generation battle to reform healthcare will be won or lost over faith rather than reason. The more nuanced Mr Obama appears, the more frenzy it will provoke in his critics. The more he mentions his mother, denied healthcare by the insurance companies when she was dying of cancer, the more progress he will make. What happened to her was un-American, Mr Obama should say. Forget the details of healthcare reform. The side that identifies with American values will get the upper hand.
So we have a debate similar to religion versus science. We have beliefs that no reasoned argument can address. We have an impasse in the debate, and thus we cannot reason our way to a solution. As a reasoning person I find this a shame. The Democrats should change their strategy, because they cannot win on logical debating points.
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How can one reason with ignorance?
“A man who wants something will find a way; a man who doesn’t will find an excuse.” – Stephan Dolley Jr
The way: RECONCILIATION
Shove it down their throats.
I agree the health care reform controversy hasn’t been a cerebral policy debate. While you admonish the Democrats to pivot, both sides use hype, misrepresentations, propaganda and fear to advance their positions. With the stakes so high for so many players in the medical arena, we should expect that all sides would use all means necessary to advance their objectives. To expect a different process is not realisitic. Isn’t this how politics always works even if we would prefer it wouldn’t be so harsh and partisan? Nevertheless, I think that most of us can see through the political fog and understand the issues quite well. http://www.MDWhistleblower.blogspot.com
Alex Kipp sent me this email:
I find this line of reasoning (pun intended) more than a little disturbing. I agree completely that the “debate” towards healthcare reform these days has very little to do with what is actually being proposed in the legislation; however, I worry that you and the author of the article are suggesting that we lower ourselves to the impassioned fear-mongering that those who oppose healthcare reform are practicing.
I am not a politician by any means, so perhaps I am a little idealistic, but I find myself horrified to watch just how low some individuals, particularly Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin, will go to incite their listening group. These people, and the media who feed their egos, represent much of what has gone wrong with politics in general in the US.
Obama and his administration have acted, for the most part, admirably in their actions and reactions. I find myself concerned about the amount of industry involvement there appears to have been within the Obama administration, but I think lambasting the current health care system as un-American (however true that statement might be) to stir the passion of citizens is exactly the kind of thing that got us into this predicament in the first place.
For the most part, “news” is not about the facts, it’s about the spin. Politics is not about working together to find a good compromise, it’s about making the other person (whoever that might be) look like an idiot or “un-American.” I applaud Obama and those like him who are trying to change the way we talk about these issues as a nation. By no means should Obama sink to the level of Fox News commentators. Instead, we should take it upon ourselves to be civil, calm, and keep an even keel. In the end, I believe that it still is possible to save politics and debate, particularly when it comes to healthcare reform.
Even if it would get us better healthcare if Obama changed his message and began speaking of how “un-American” healthcare is now, the ends would certainly not justify the means, and it would propagate a very broken system of debate and politics in this country.
Certainly agree with the above. As an Obama dissenter, I reject Palin’s distortions and Beck’s outrageous comments. Similarly, I presume responsible Obamaphiles will repudiate Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer’s ‘Un-American’ attack. I agree also that Obama has been occupying a higher road, but this doesn’t change his ideas, which most of us disapprove of. Indeed, if health care reform implodes, it will be as much a result of Democratic opposition as from the Town Hallers and talk radio.
The article is a regurgitation of very old chestnuts starting with the idea that the american right is more susceptible to conspiracy paranoia than the american left. After 8 years of Bush Derangement Syndrome (BDS) and accusations of two electoral coups, the mainstreaming of presidential assassination fantasies among many other loony memes, the idea that the right is more susceptible to this kind of thinking is just bizarre.
The plain truth is that if you believe that planners cannot successfully plan large chunks of the economy, full stop, there are lots of case studies to logically support your position. After over a century of attempts starting with the voluntary experiments of the utopian communists to today’s imploding Canadian healthcare system, planning has been shown to be an inferior solution time and time again.
For a time you can disguise the failure, robbing Peter to pay Paul and trumpeting successes while robbing from the future but you can’t do that forever. However, you can do it for decades, creating a tsunami of poor infrastructure, massive debt, and shortened lifespans to dump on our posterity when it all comes crashing down.
Pointing this out to advocates of new variations to the same tired solutions simply does not work. Small government advocates have been doing this since Ludwig von Mises magesterial debunking of this nonsense in the early 20th century entitled Socialism. It has never worked no matter how logically one proceeds.
What does work is tying the logical work to popular memes of freedom, autonomy, self-reliance, and an aversion to creeping tyranny. What does work is keeping the message short, simple, and understandable.
Market distortion through existing government intervention has worsened our present health system. The old game of cost shifting from the public portion to the private portion of the system is entering the end game. We can either layer a new round of government intrusion or fix it by counting the true cost and paying for our charity care honestly.
Right now, the GOP is doing its job by slowing down a series of bad plans and forcing improvements on them. When they get their majority, their job will be to propose better solutions and take a run at passing those.
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