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"Who Would Jesus Insure?"
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I attended my local Tea Party yesterday, and it clarified for me, well, nothing I didn't already know, or at least assume, or at least fear.
It was an unusually hot day in downtown San Francisco, and Justin Herman Plaza was swarming with hundreds of mad-as-hell-and-not-going-to-accept-the-results-of-last-fall's-election-anymore wingnut faithful -- not the thousands that KSFO radio host and marquee speaker Brian Sussman would claim on the air a few hours later, but a robust gathering just the same, pumped up on rabble-rousing rhetoric, pimped out in coordinated red shirts and witty placards, and above all pissed off; their very palpable anger, lacking a living, breathing, stammering, backpedaling town hall-cornered Democratic legislator to focus on, floating instead amorphously around the open plaza, looking for an animating principle and finding it in the inevitable Republican focus here in these first days of the Obama Age: the word "NO."
NO to health care reform. NO to "big government." NO to "creeping socialism." NO to this President. NO to gay marriage. NO to new taxes. NO to cap and trade legislation. NO to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. NO to modernity...
Well, okay, maybe only half the crowd would still subscribe to those last two, but as one speaker after another traipsed on-stage and barked their frothing way through the faux-Gipper stations of the faux-libertarian cross, I wandered bewildered around the crowd's periphery, trying numbly to decipher just what exactly it is that everyone was so heated up about. The experience was, let us say, disheartening. You know this already, but it bears repeating: a lot of Americans simply perceive reality much differently than, um, other Americans do. Did you know, for instance, that:
Everyone who joins national health care will be issued a national I.D. card!
or that:
Federal bureaucrats will have perpetual access to our bank accounts!
not to mention that:
Obama's going to herd us all out of our private insurance plans!
Oh, 'herd us,' will he? you mutter under your breath, because by then you've lost your patina of reportorial detachment (which, to be honest, was pretty freaking fragile to begin with) and just start blatantly arguing back: Obama has said plain as day on numerous occasions that anyone who likes their current plan can stay in it as long as they want!
(Incredulous stare.) "You actually believe that?"
Seniors will all have to appear every five years before "death panels" who'll decide whether they live or die!
Come on, that's just a willfully conspiratorial misreading of that one Medicare provision for voluntary end of life counseling --
"Yes, you see?"
-- which they've already removed from the Senate bill anyway!
"Ha! Exactly! Thank you, Governor Palin!"
It's ex-Governaaarrrrggghh...
Because by then you're literally gasping for air and desperate to bolt out onto the Embarcadero, where you imagine a soul-cleansing fog might drift in off the Bay and erase your pained knowledge of the fact that so many sentient human beings actually believe that
Our health care will be rationed, like in England and Canada!
Yeah, great, except that both England and Canada spend less per capita on health care than we do and their citizens have higher life expectancy.
"No they don't."
Oh, yes they do.
"According to whom?"
The World Health Organization.
(Brief pause, then, with absolutist, pre-civil-war finality:) "You have your facts, I have mine."
Sigh.
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"Who Would Jesus Insure?"
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I mean, come on, buddy -- nobody really "has" facts, do they? Facts exist in their own right, and we just tout them or shout them or flout them, in accordance with the dictates of our personal knowledge base and perceived ideological imperatives. "There was this guy with a sign that said 'No Government-Run Health Care,' and he had to be 75 years old," marveled one corporate type who'd wandered over on his lunch break. "I asked him if he was on Medicare and he said yes." Did you point out the contradiction? "Sure." And? "He just walked away."
Which was so not a surprise, the Medicare recipients who want nothing to do with government-run health care being one of the more amusing right-wing cliches of this long hot August. There were no doubt plenty of them yesterday among a crowd that was predominantly older, overwhelmingly white and, I'd wager, heavily evangelical, a combustive demographic that didn't exactly cotton to the gutsy girl who kept pacing around trying to yell "Health care for everyone!" loudly enough to drown out the repeated death threats and off-topic anti-abortion catcalls that greeted her homemade "Who Would Jesus Insure?" sign. Her question, in fact, was quite a bit more piquant than the ones I was asking. So I switched over.
If Jesus Christ returned to Earth, would he advocate free medical care for the poorest and sickest among us? "Yes, he would," said a pleasant, Jesus-placard-toting man named Dave Ward.
Wouldn't He have endorsed the public option if He'd seen fit to address health care issues specifically in the Sermon on the Mount? "Yes, I agree with that," said the lady with the 'Meet the New Face of Community Organizers' sign.
And, finally, "I think he would be for it," said Bay Area Patriot volunteer Gina White, making it three straight 'Yesses' in my survey of whether Tea Partiers are willing to acknowledge the philosophical contradiction that has marked their movement ever since Reagan seduced both Wall Street and the Bible Belt. "But let me just" -- she tried to continue, and when I rudely cut her off in order to launch into a lengthy condemnation of her conservative perfidy (yes, by then I'd completely lost it), she politely but firmly asked me to listen.
Which I did, and wound up talking at length with a smart, compassionate opponent of (come on, let's own the name already) Obamacare who was willing to embrace progressives' core moral argument for universal coverage while also questioning our specific strategy for achieving it and offering alternative insurance-reform suggestions that would probably require a few hours of diligent net-surfing in order to counter. All of which made me like Gina White in particular quite a lot and Bay Area Patriots in general maybe a teensy tiny little bit, but only further grayed out an essay that I'd imagined would be painted in stark black and white.
Which clarity is, still, for my money, clearly what's called for at this scary historical moment. Every night for the past few weeks I've been sacrificing a half hour of sleep to gulp down another few dozen pages of Rick Perlstein's brilliant Nixonland. There's nothing like a meticulous accounting of the brutal Vietnam-era cracking of our nation's Red/Blue fault line to put our present cultural circumstance in perspective. You think tempers are high in 2009? Try '68, dude. People were setting off bombs, burning down cities, riding around with shotguns looking for fellow citizens to murder. Forty years ago America really must have felt like it was coming apart at the seams. Instead we stitched ourselves up and moved on. As we will again. As we are already.
So, bottom line, let's pass a damn health care bill already. A real one, with a public option, or at least as close as Senators Baucus and Conrad will deign to permit the other three hundred million of us to to enjoy. No, the recalcitrant side of the aisle won't vote for it, and no, we shouldn't care. We should pass the best possible bill via reconciliation and ignore both Republicans' crocodile sobbing about Democratic unilateralism and tee-bagger invective about socialism this, Communism that, and whatever other detritus emerges from those poor bastards' collective post-President-Moron minority-party psychosis. We need to pass the bill and take our lumps if need be, let the fair-and-balanced pundits blather about liberal overreaching and the conservative comeback, even let the GOP pick up a few House seats in fall 2010 if it comes to that. Just please, please, let's pass the damn bill.
Then we'll sit back and watch. "We are being lied to!" yesterday's speakers yelled repeatedly. They're right, of course, but by whom and about what? Let's pass a good bill, pull up an easy chair, pop a cold one and enjoy the spectacle over the next few years as millions of fence-sitting independents suddenly realize that they and their kids have health insurance which they can't lose because of a job change or preexisting condition. How do you figure those politics will play out among swing voters in, say, Ohio and Florida in November 2012?
Yeah, that's what I think, too, which is why so many Republican leaders are calling the emerging bill, mangled by compromise though it will almost certainly be, the end of the world. They're right about that, too -- it's the end of their world, anyway. As for our world, it just turns. The times change, sometimes epochally and swiftly. FDR '32. Reagan '80. Obama Now. The birth pangs of a new age are often painful and bloody, but this latest American evolution, whose genesis we're collectively creating, will live and thrive. And over time, most of us, anyway, will see that it is good.
Michael Krantz is a writer and editor at Google. The views expressed on these pages are his alone and not those of his employer.
https://www.madashelldoctorstour.com/Mad_as_Hell_Video.html
These Oregon physicians are in the process of organizing a caravan designed to inform the public about the benefits of the single-payer option. At last count they will be stopping in approximately 23 states, on their way to demonstrate in Washington. They need volunteers and our support. Please spread the word.
And since we are talking about what Jesus would do, let's read the other text that the Teabaggers and Nobamas apparently only skim and cherry-pick. For all the Glen Becks, morons carrying guns and town hall Astroturfers,
"These six things does the Lord hate; yea, seven are an abomination unto Him.
A proud look, a lying tongue and hands that shed innocent blood,
An heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief,
A false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren."
Proverbs 6, 16-19
This is more about divide and conquer, keep the money at the top, continue to propagate paranoia, hate and fear in simple minded targets, and bring out well mobs of these people.
HE WOULDN'T LIKE THE IDEA OF GAY MARRIAGE OR ABORTION OR EMBRYONIC STEM CELL RESEARCH...
OR FOR THAT MATTER,HIS CHURCH BEING AGAINST DEMOCRATS JUST BECAUSE THEY ARE NOT REPUBLICANS.
HE WOULD BE FOR EDUCATION AND AGAINST OUTSORCING.
Jesus wept is the shortest verse in the Bible. To-day he would weep again at the deliberate opposition of help for the poor in the richest nation on earth.
1. They are laid off due to lack of work due to economic decline;
2. They are denied unemployment when their ex-boss makes false accusations and claims they were fired for misconduct;
3. They are ineligible for COBRA because their place of employment is too small to offer it or because of accusations of their former employer;
4. They find they cannot afford to pay for health care on their own due to pre-existing conditions and lack of income.
insurance-- so many Christians are asking:
WHAT would Jesus do?
Jesus would THROW those hypocritical CORPORATE INSURANCE/MED INDUSTRY PROFITEERS,
their PAID LIARS, and traitorous LOBBYIST-kissing Republicans OUT of the temple!
Jesus would KICK THEIR GREEDY ASSES to kingdom come.
I DON'T...
YOU HELPED TO OUTSOURCE MY JOB TO MANILA...
I JUST BET IF YOU WERE IN MY POSITION YOU WOULD BE SCREAMING....
Nothing more Christian than accusing the sick and the needy of being mooches while defending the rich and the powerful from scrutiny.
Separation of Church and State - a very wise decision of the founding fathers. You keep your God out of my government and I will bet the devil will stay out too.
I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.
Taken from a letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush, September 23, 1800.
God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that his justice cannot sleep forever. Commerce between master and slave is despotism. Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than these people are to be free. Establish the law for educating the common people. This it is the business of the state to effect and on a general plan.
Taken from:
A Summary View of the Rights of British America: "God...liberty."
"Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear. " - Thomas Jefferson
Doesn't sound like he was much of a Bible-thumper, does it?
And, by their own writing, at least half the Founding Fathers did not believe in the divinity of Christ.
SORRY BUDDY BUT GET WITH THE PROGRAM NOW....
I DON'T PERSONALLY CARE IF YOU DON'T ACCEPT CHRIST BUT I THINK YOU
DO YOURSELF A DISERVICE WHEN YOU DENY HISTORY..
WE ARE HERE AND YOU BETTER DARN WELL REALIZE THAT WE WILL NEVER GO. AWAY.
NOT EVERY CHRISTIAN IS A FUNDAMENTALIST
There's no evidence for the existence of Jeebus or any sort of deity. I don't care whether you think there's a deity or an invisible pink unicorn; I prefer reason and only believing things based on proof.
What happens to one/all of the millions if a public plan doesn't pass? Could die a slow and painful death that would have been avoidable if only the rest of america hadn't been so cheap and/or afraid of their government.
Oh, and to those who fear death robots for grannie (read Bob Sesca), I say this...
"Run for F-ING office." Don't complain. Don't come up with elaborate stories as to why you're being "kept down." This president isn't a fascist (that nightmare is over)... so GET INVOLVED!
B) Maybe counterintuitive, but it seems the irony is that we've been trying to get "conservatives" to stand up with us against the government for a long while now, and if you listen to these people, they feel the same way about "liberals." We all have the country's/peoples' best interests at heart (except for the nihilists- - who... believe ... you know.... in nothing... ), we just have different visions for how to get there, and where there is.
We all seem to agree at one point or another about who does NOT have our best interests in mind, and that's politicians and corporations. It only seems logical that we should just cut out the derisive back and forth, AND the labels ("liberal" and "conservative" are so outdated and overused anyway- - I mean "liberal" doesn't even mean "unpatriotic" anymore... and "conservatives" are tax and spenders, minus the tax part).