I keep hoping that the health care "debate" we're having this summer will turn out to be just a plot point in the 2009 version of The Truman Show, the movie where Jim Carrey's character, Truman Burbank, discovers that what he thought was reality is actually a reality television show.
I want my character in The Marty Show to discover that Rush Limbaugh calling Obama a Nazi, and Glenn Beck calling the president a racist, turn out to be harmless taunts in a fictional storyline, not actual invitations to nutballs with weapons to do something truly terrible.
I keep waiting for that Candid Camera reveal when members of Congress realize that the constituents accusing them of wanting to euthanize their grannies turn out to be actors playing their parts, not voters too dumb or too scared to resist being manipulated by political demagogues and industry propagandists.
I keep praying that the execrable job the news media is doing turns out to be an intervention by extraterrestrials in an episode of The Twilight Zone. The elevation of combat over content; the false equivalence of lies and facts in service of a bizarre notion of "balance"; the imperative to captivate instead of the obligation to inform: I want the camera to pull back and disclose the alien mind-control experiment that has forced human journalists to become entertainers.
When Sarah Palin declares that Obama's evil death panel intends to condemn her Down's syndrome baby to die, I keep waiting for the twist. This isn't really the news; it's a headline in the Onion. This isn't really the opening salvo of the GOP frontrunner in the 2012 presidential campaign; it's a South Park parody of Harry Potter.
When I see how a handful of Senate Republicans and a kennel of Blue Dogs can demonize the public health insurance option as a tyrannical government takeover; when I see seniors demand that government keep its mitts off Medicare; when I see Obama trade billions of savings achievable by price-bargaining with drug companies for millions of administration-friendly Big Pharma ads -- that's when I pine for a shocker like the one in The Matrix when Neo learns that reality is just an illusion.
The election of Barack Obama offered reason to believe that the fear-mongering on the campaign trail, the lying in the ads and the inadequacies of the media were no match for the enduring common sense of the American people. Wow -- the system works.
Not so fast.
If the health care fracas has demonstrated anything so far, it's how porous the membrane is between self-government and self-deception. Other than the Hollywood tradition that the darkest hour is just before dawn, what evidence is there to believe that the country -- as Obama said at his inaugural -- has put away childish things? Other than the president's faith in bipartisanship and compromise, what reason is there to feel that Republicans won't do everything they can to destroy him?
This summer is shaping up to be as ugly as anything served up by Newt Gingrich and Tom Delay. Karl Rove and Dick Cheney may no longer call the shots, but their disciples in lobbyist front groups like Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks share the same DNA as the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and the folks who impeached Bill Clinton.
When I hear Republican congressmen and cable gasbags cast doubt on Obama's natural-born citizenship, I know that they don't really believe the "birther" argument, just as they don't really believe the euthanasia argument. They're just playing to the base.
The problem is that the base doesn't know it's just being played.
To the demagogues in Congress, it's all a game, an act. They've already got health insurance. It doesn't matter whether 46 million uninsured Americans get it; what matters is whether they get re-elected.
To the media bloviators, it's a play, a piece of political theater. Their job isn't to cry foul, or to explain really complicated things; their job is to review the politicos' performances, and to hold the audience's attention so they stick around through the commercials.
Of course it's not at all a sport or a spectacle to the drug industry, the insurance industry, the hospital industry or any of the other stakeholders with hundreds of billions of dollars at risk. For them, it's a fight to the death.
Unfortunately, it's also a fight to the death for many of the Americans who can't afford premiums, can't afford drugs, and can't get insured. For them, it's not The Truman Show; it's a horror show.
This is my column from The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles. You can read more of my columns here, and e-mail me there if you'd like.
Follow Marty Kaplan on Twitter: www.twitter.com/martykaplan
I too wish I could wake up from this awful nightmare.
This is not how things were supposed to be.
I keep hoping that they will all get together and announce that this was a big joke of some kind.
It seems so surreal that our business leaders and government representatives have sold out America.
Now they are devolving into a wild pack of back stabbing wolves.
We the People of America deserve better, and we should be demanding better.
We need to evolve to a higher consciousness as quickly as possible.
Life in America is currently unacceptable.
We have the power, lets fix it.
It's very rare for government to do anything either well or efficiently. Disregard the arguments about death boards or diminished care for the elderly or rationed care. Do you really want the same people who've given you higher education costs for lower graduation and literacy rates providing for your health care? I do not.
As a final note to this admittedly long and slightly rambling post, I'd ask that you be careful how you classify the people with whom you disagree. When you call people with dissenting opinions morons, hate-mongers, or, "too dumb or too scared to resist being manipulated by political demagogues and industry propagandists," you cheapen the whole process, yourself included. If you've made it this far, thank you for your time.
Just like after the election, gun sales in the south went through the roof and the KKK membership grew 50 PERCENT! If anything crazy happens to ANY of our politicians it's this insanity that is to blame.
Take the higher ground and speak out for true conservative values then. Step up against the crazy name calling and insinuating that Barack Obama is the reincarnation of Hitler. Do it!
What concerns me, as a new member here, is the view many posters here seem to have that people who are conservative and disagree with the president are only out for themselves, are flat-out evil, are sorely uninformed, or are too stupid to think for themselves and are dupes of the ever-popular enemy, the "military-industrial complex." Are there cases where that's true? Of course. Most conservatives are pretty much like you, but with differences in opinion on what's best for the country. (see part 2)
My Dad has inadequate insurance and is struggling to pay for hospital coverage for life-threatening bladder infections caused by a prostate condition. Once he is almost done paying for the last visit, he has another infection and more bills.
My wonderful parents are having to live day to day with little extra in which to enjoy their retirement years. If they'd only accept some help from us kids, ....too proud, I guess.
Bush's tactic, as I recall.
There's your conservative position right there. "Too bad."
Those that aren't corporate shi||s just don't care about their fellow man.
We are going to change things soon,.... no matter what he thinks.
We are all in this together. We are destined to fail as a nation otherwise.
Liberals and conservatives have become so polarized that I can't even stand to watch Keith Olberman any more and I used to think he was a moderate, thinking person who could smell stink from either side. No longer. CNN? Yeah, right...two words: Lou Dobbs. Anyone on Fox news or the radio wingnuts? Hilarity and horror combined in a startling Orwellian mixed bag of pure dung.
I'm sticking with the most trusted news man in television, and it is because he can smell stink from wherever the stink is emanating: John Stewart.
Meanwhile, my insurance premium for three months of $10,000 deductible catastrophic "coverage" from the wondrously profitable United Healthcare sits in the stack of bills to be paid: $1,042.00 for absolutely NOTHING except profit to United Healthcare. This is my newly "revised" premium (read: increased 105% over the previous quarterly premium) I know very well if I were to have a catastrophic claim for which they "promised" to pay, it could easily and handily be denied. Just because. That isn't a death panel? That's the system we want to keep?
Even for those Americans who like their health care, wouldn't you like to pay less money for what you're getting? Those repubs are so quick to say that the individual can spend his own money better thatn somebody else can spend it. Well, why isn't that true of keeping out health care $$$ in our own pockets so we can better spend that money more wisely?
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By the time we get the bill finished, there won't be anything at all resembling health care reform.
I am so ashamed of people in this country. Can you just imagine how we look to other countries in the world?
It's the United States of Me First!
problems facing our nation.
Anything else is just a distraction.