Paper or Plastic

Presented for your viewing pleasure. The healthcare debate, illustrated by the brilliant but cancelled, Clone High. Staring young Abe Lincoln as President Obama, young JFK as the GOP, and Fox News as young Joan of Arc.



While Americans hate being told what to do, we seem to relish being told what to think. And who can blame us really. Thinking for ourselves is so…difficult. Boring even. It’s so much easier and more entertaining to simply recite the talking points of people who claim to have already done the thinking for us. Yes, we love to be told what to think, and we are being told that we are angry. Angry and afraid. Afraid that “the America we grew up in, the America we know and love,” is being ripped from our terrified, aging fingers by the scary black man in the White House who isn’t even an American anyway – let alone a “real” American.

Americans are easily frightened. Old people even more so. And let’s be honest. There is a substantial portion of the population that likes it that way. The whiter the knuckles, the paler the faces, the colder the chills running up and down the spine, the more excited they are. Fear is what gets them up in the morning and keeps them going all day long. And they aren’t content to keep their fear to themselves. No, fear is more fun if it can be shared – a communal fear experience if you will, which is odd considering these same people’s disdain for any other type of community. And to make matters worse, the fear-mongers are represented by 40% of the U.S. Senate.

What are these people so terrified of? It’s hard to say. There are so many things to fear. Death, taxes, Muslims, immigrants, the government, little green men, the greeter at Walmart. Who knows. There’s nothing inherently wrong with fear. Fear of fire keeps most people from locking themselves in their bedroom, lighting a match and dropping it on the carpet. But most fear results from ignorance. And Americans love their ignorance almost as much as they love their fear.

Don’t get me wrong, Americans aren’t dumb. We know a lot of things. It’s just that most of what many of us know isn’t all that important. For example, 50% of Americans can name two Simpsons characters, yet only 25% can name two Supreme Court Justices. And when it comes to knowledge of anything outside the borders of the United States, that intelligence quotient drops even further. Therefore, it becomes very easy for them to believe that countries providing universal “government-run” healthcare for their citizens, like Canada and Sweden and Japan and Australia, are backward, third-world nations killing children and sending grandpa before a “death panel” to determine whether or not he is too expensive to live. They believe bold-faced lies because they have no idea of what the truth is. They’ve never experienced anything outside the lower forty-eight. Some of them have never left their own state. Ask 100 Canadians if they believe the Canadian healthcare system is flawed, and 85 will say yes, of course it is. But if you ask 100 Canadians if they would trade their healthcare system for the American private insurance system, 85 will respond with an emphatic “HELL NO!”

Fear causes otherwise rational people to make irrational arguments. Town hall meetings across the country have drawn protesters and signs stating that proposed reforms amount to socialized medicine, and government-run healthcare/health insurance is evil and has no place in this country. Many of those signs are carried by people in their forties, fifties and sixties. People who are currently, are about to be, or have children covered by Medicare and/or Medicaid. Government-run health insurance. When asked by Senator Claire McCaskill at a recent town hall meeting how many would like to give up their Medicare and switch to private insurance, not one person responded in the affirmative. Apparently, government-run healthcare is only evil if it’s not your government-run healthcare.

Opponents of reform repeat ad nauseam that the government is incapable of doing anything right, of administering any program correctly. In the next sentence, the same people claim that private insurance companies would simply never be able to compete with a public insurance plan, administered by the afore-mentioned incompetent, ill-equipped, mess of a federal government. So, complete the syllogism. No government program is any good. Private insurance can’t compete with a government program. Therefore, private insurance is worse than government-run insurance.

Opponents of the public option claim that the government simply will not compete on a level playing field with private insurance, that because of its size, the government will be able to provide service and insurance at such a low cost that private insurance will be unable to compete, and be forced out of business. The fact that their vision of a government that operates efficiently and effectively is completely contrary to every single word they have espoused about government since the formation of the Republican Party aside, what they are saying is that the government would essentially become some version of a Walmart Supercenter, competing with “mom and pop” insurance companies for business. While liberals have long been concerned with the impact of Walmart on local businesses and the surrounding urban fabric, it’s not something conservatives and free market capitalists have ever cared about. To them, Walmart is the greatest thing since Twinkies-On-A-Stick. It is the very model of capitalism, using its size, and therefore influence, to provide consumers with products they want at prices they can afford. If the “mom and pop” neighborhood shops can’t compete, then maybe they were charging too much to begin with and deserve to go out of business. If conservatives believe that to be a good idea in the case of Walmart, why not healthcare? Seriously, why not?

There are legitimate concerns in this healthcare debate. But instead of discussing them, we’re spending time fabricating stories of “death panels,” rationing and Soviet-style socialism. And on top of all that, we now have protesters bringing assault weapons to anti-Obama rallies outside town hall meetings while toting signs quoting Thomas Jefferson that the tree of liberty must from time to time be watered with the blood of patriots and tyrants. While it may be perfectly legal for these idiots to take their AR-15 rifles to these rallies, just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should. Make no mistake, these people are no different from the men with sticks and dogs and guns and sheets that used to show up at polling places in the South to intimidate people attempting to vote. Their goal is the same. They aren’t there to assault the President. They show up with their weapons to intimidate the opposition into silence, under implicit threat of violence. Legal, silent intimidation. Clever tactic. Until someone actually gets hurt.

This past Monday, the Supreme Court ordered a federal court in the state of Georgia (that should have been a clue right off the top) to “receive testimony and make findings of fact” in order to establish whether or not the new evidence in a death penalty case will establish the innocence of the accused. Upset with the court’s decision, Justice Scalia (and by proxy Justice Thomas) issued a dissent in which he stated the following; “This court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is ‘actually’ innocent.” This is the problem with Constitutional originalism. It leads otherwise intelligent people to say incredibly stupid things. According to Scalia, this country’s primary legal document actually condones the state-sanctioned murder of innocent people. While it is true that the Constitution does not explicitly forbid capital murder of innocent people, it should be obvious to anyone with at least half a brain that executing an innocent person directly and absolutely violates the spirit of a document ensuring life, liberty, due process and the pursuit of happiness.

In lighter news, it’s football season again! (Sorry Gail.) And what would football season be without yet another round of Brett Favre drama. It seems that I – and millions of others – called this one right. When Favre told the Minnesota Vikings three weeks ago that he would not be returning to football after all, he didn’t really mean it. Today, Number 4 showed up at Vikings practice ready to start in next week’s pre-season game, with a contract to follow in the coming days. All things considered, Minnesota is a pretty good fit for Favre. A solid offensive line means he is less likely to be forced into making stupid throws, and having the best running back in the game in the back field with him greatly reduces the number of passing attempts he’ll be making. Even at his age, if Brett Favre is limited to 20 or 25 passes per game, he’s as good as nearly anyone out there.

Former Atlanta Falcon and convicted felon Michael Vick is now a Philadelphia Eagle. Bad idea. Of all the places he could have signed, this is probably the worse one he could have chosen. Philly sports fans are the worst sports fans in all of sports. These are the fans that pelted Santa Claus with snowballs. If a fat man bearing gifts can’t get any love, a dog-fight sponsoring K-9 killer doesn’t stand a chance.

Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt shattered his own world record time posting a blazing 9.58 second 100-meter-dash at the World Championships last weekend. His closest competitor finished in 9.71 seconds, a full .13 seconds behind and barely even in the same camera shot as Bolt. Absolutely unbelievable. Never in my lifetime did I think I would see anyone break 9.5 seconds. At the rate Bolt is going, We'll probably hit that mark long before the 2012 games roll around.

Finally, by a fairly wide margin, the city of Seattle voted not to impose a 20 cent fee on paper and plastic bags at retail stores within the city limits. You heard that correctly. Residents of Seattle, Washington voted against an environmental clean-up measure. That crackling sound you hear? That’s hell freezing over.