OK, admissions first. While Republicans and Tea Partiers are gloating and slapping each other's backs with an odd and inexplicable sense of victory at Scott Brown upsetting the apple cart - and somehow winning Ted Kennedy's senate seat while promising to kill health care reform - there are also millions of us groaning in pain and disbelief. We should have seen it coming. Yet, the premises propping up this new wave of whooping and hollering are so short-sighted, befuddling, and shallow, that it's truly hard to believe that so many Americans are caught up in a chant that doesn't even seem to be grounded in reality. The rhetoric is old - down with the establishment, smaller government, hands-off business, etc. etc. - but the context and ramifications are new in these undeniably scary economic times when so many people are without - jobs, insurance, homes, security, and hope. I haven't yet read one article or editorial that fully explains the current phenomenon that has us again drawing a BIGger line in the sand, where a year ago the future was full of the hope of rolling up our sleeves and tackling major change TOGETHER.
Massacusetts is of course a New England state (though marginally to those of living north of Boston...:) New England thrives on town hall, town meetings, and voicing our political opinions - largely and loudly. So loud 'new' opinons are nothing new here. The rise of a third - or fourth or fifth, party makes sense, has for a long time. Would that it would desolve the predilections for people to see things in black or white - depending on which side of the fence they wag their flags. But it seems to me that this new uprising is so amazingly full of empty rhetoric about what is wrong with so little to offer of what is supposedly a right course of action out of the mess we're in. I hear a lot of me, me, me, me. Don't tax me. Keep your government out of my buisness. Throw the politicians out until it's all new and 'Us' ( and then what?????)
Here are a few realities I see in the current mess.
The problem is not big government. It is greed. Big business, as well as individuals and small businesses ran themselves and consequently all of us amok through greed unparalelled in the last decade. Banks and big business were the worst offenders because they had the most power and money. And sadly the most potential to bring the whole house of cards tumbling down. Which smart economists on the right and left affirm would have happened without the bailouts and stimulus package. A lot of us with less astute grasps on macro-economics thought that maybe they should just jave been left to fail. Problem is that if we had, we all would have tumbled with them. It's just really hard to swallow now with markets and banks recovering, and the people still reeling. We are angry. Angry at the attitudes of business as usual by big businesses that are back to giving huge CEO bonuses -now that they are no longer beholden to government. There is no sign of responsibility, humility, or shame in business as usual. Big business could give a shit that the 'fix' was not big enough to include real people who are still out of work, and losing their homes, jobs, and health insurance. Hands off business, say the Rebublicans and Tea Partiers. Don't tax us on our way to the top. It's not their/our fault, or our responsibility. REALLY??????
The big businesses that control our health care system are HUGELY responsible for the mess our health care system is in. Do we really think that it is not OUR - that is our as in our country, our government, our rules and regulations about how we are allowed to conduct business in this country - responsibility to rein in such reckless and irresponsible GREEDY for profit motives that exclude millions of people from basic healthcare? There is no self-regulation of insurance compaines or pharmaceutical companies that drive medical practices in this country, and drive up cost. They are PROFIT driven, not morally following the best health interests of those to whom they sell their products!!!! In fact, we are the only country in the developed world that allows a profit driven system. It is widely known that we spend more for less health in this country than any other developed nation in the world. And in the process, we have a system that excludes millions of people all together. It is simply unconscionable that we do not do something to reform our health care system now. This is not just an economic issue, but a humanitarian issue. But apparently being human is not a priority of those who feel we should keep OUR government out of OUR business.
Fortunately, I hope, there are a lot of educated people who understand the perils our health care system is in. And among the most knowledgeable are doctors and health care providers, who are and must become increasingly more vocal about the need to reform NOW. While the AMA, which has come out in support of universal health care, has provided mostly lip service and their own contingencies for true reform. There are increasingly more doctors who are rallying behind real need for reform. Of course there are some doctors who went to med school for promise of finanical gain, and who enjoy their partnerships with high profit pharmaceutical and medical device companies. But I have to believe that the vast majority who took their oaths to do no harm are strongly in favor of both major health care reform and universal health coverage. It's not like they relish having or denying patients who vitally need hospitals and treatments and are denied access because they have no insurance - and this happens routinely EVERY DAY. I truly hope that they are the next loud voice that enters this insanely gridlocked fight for much needed health care reform.
Greed and self-righteousness are not the sole property of big business. There are plenty of individuals who truly believe that they/we don't need governing, and that freedom to exclude themselves from the public good is their right. Good is just something that's supposed to happen if they're just allowed to get rich, or something like that. They tend to be people who work personally for the American dream of getting ahead - that is richer - and even that their access to wealth and success is God-given. While some work in helping professions, they are more likely to work for the corporate system, or the sale of goods and services for profit rather than the providing of human services. Which is why workers in education, health care, services for the disabled and disadvantaged, community organizers, etc. tend to be more 'liberal' They are rooted in a broader cross-section of America, and fully understand that the down and out in this country are not necessarily there by their own doing, and that their numbers are growing rapidly. If the work of your hands and lives is geared primarily toward personal gain, maybe even including over borrowing and spending on your own pleasure and stockpiling of things, than perhaps you too are part of the problem rather than part of the solution.
This high road to personal gain and profit driven economy has not left us in a very pretty place at the beginning of this 21st century. We don't seem to have very long memories, or to learn from our mistakes. Nor do we seem to have much compassion for the real victims of these hard times. Ted Kennedy never lost sight of his fight for the dignity of those less fortunate or for our basic responsibility to protect those who are crushed by the mad scramble to the top. He dedicated his life work to economic and social reform. For those of us who believe strongly in the right of every American to basic health care, it was painful to see his seat filled with a rookie who would auction off his own daughters while claiming his victory of crushing health care reform. In the end, he's just a junior senator with a lot to learn. The line in the sand shifted what some feel is a critical inch. Maybe that was a good thing, and the line itself will become more blurry. There are still veterans of the political system who are hopefully more inclined to TRY to work together to solve the immense problems that face us today as a nation. Including two female Republican senators from Maine. Obama perhaps unerestimated the depth of the division, and overestimated the potential of Congress to move past political gridlock to see and solve the immense problems that we face. Would that he will find the strength of an FDR or John Kennedy when he stood up to the steel industry, in his upcoming state of the union.
I truly hope that we are not headed toward the double dip recession - and the next truly Great Depression - which is predicted by many. The Conservtive Coalition is already galvanizing to turn a blind eye to the realities that a system of greed has created, and to celebrate the mantras of laissez faire, smaller government, and to shirk the public responsibility for the casualties along the way. Confusion is rampant, which is I suppose not all that surprising when there are millions of Americans who tune in to only Fox news for their guidance, and actually believe that they find balanced and unbiased reporting there.
Undoubtedly the future will be written. The current state of the union is not the product of one year of this administration, but the cumulative devil takes all run of unprecedented greed in the last decade. Hopefully we can find the words and wisdom of cooperative solution seeking in this undeniable mess we're in. Erasing the lines in the sand would be a good start. Putting down our finger points, and rolling up our collective sleeves would be a good second. But stemming the flow of rampant greed and profit, while lending a hand to the trampled in its wake, is a public responsibility that we must undertake.
I am just one midlife woman playing my harp here. I also think, vote, and work hard to minimize the effects of bad shakes on our most vulnerable little children who will inherit the world we hand them. In 2008, as this economic crisis was just starting to unfold, approximately 20 % of our young children lived in official poverty, and another 20% in low income families. Imagine where those numbers are now - or where they are headed. And the ramifications as we simultaenously are faced with major cuts to human services. I look for strength and guidance in a collective human decency, which I hope exists, and leaders that are not only intelligent but have strong hearts and constitutions, and the humble wisdom, yet strength, to serve a higher public good. I think that we have elected a president who has the potential to lead us through the maze of these very troubled times. I hope that we will listen carefully, and join in the hard work of getting US out of the mess that WE created.
