Health Care Reform is the New Gay Marriage

I'm going to go out on a limb here. The Tea Baggers are not just a whole bunch of white racists, comments by Janeane Garofalo to the contrary.

I don't at all disagree that racism is a huge factor in all the outrage.  Garofalo's point, that if these people were really just concerned about spending they would have been protesting George W. Bush's tax cuts and spending, has merit. Just look at this photo over at Politico.

But I think there's a broader, existential fear here and that racism is but one element of it.  There are particularly American elements of this and others related to globalization.

Americans have long had an ambivalent relationship with government, going back to 1787 or even before.  We have always contested its very makeup and responsibilities. Not all the colonists wanted independence, then we had the Articles of Confederation. Our Constitution is as much the product of compromise as consensus. The Supreme Court arguably invented its capacity to exercise judicial review. The Civil War pitted South and North against each other and set a fault line that has yet to disappear. Desegregation pitted the Feds against States. The governor of Texas now openly speaks of secession. Today's battle over health care reform and "government takeover" clearly relates -- the Governor's remarks came at one of the now infamous Tea Parties.

Today, the Tea Bagger movement displays new specific fears laid over a pastiche of classic American preoccupations. The race issue in the health care reform debate is, I think, more than just a signal of the unfinished business of racial reconciliation and justice. It is more than a battle over the proper role of government. It's a signal about the broader challenge of preparing an entire country to live in a modern world that departs in significant ways from real and percieved traditions and forms of the status quo.

Our quintessential American troubles regarding race and government meet a world that now easily penetrates the comfort of our local communities.  Ironically, this permitted and incited conservative Christians, in reaction to the baudy 1960s, to organize via televangelists and direct-mail campaigns in the 1970s to launch Reagan into office, followed up by the two Bushes.  Barack Obama used tools that did the same thing -- using our Facebook pages, our email accounts, our Blackberries and iPhones his campaign got people together in peoples' homes all around the country, gave conference calls to supporters. 

Social issues seem to have functioned in much the same way. Gay marriage and our increasingly obvious interconnectedness present threats to traditions and ways of doing things that many of us, though not all of us, think should change. Who could have predicted the existential angst of those whose world seems so threatened by people of the same sex getting married? How could we explain that without recognizing some kind of fear finding its manifestation in an appeal to tradition? In that regard, health reform is the new gay marriage.

The Tea Baggers aren't just a rowdy mob of racists.  Their behavior, like that of Joe Wilson, can't simply be explained as racism, even though that's clearly a factor.

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Comments

[LauriSchow]

“President Obama’s speech last week really moved me. Despite what my colleagues think of me. If what he says is what will EXACTLY happen, how can I not hope and work towards that cause”? Mike Oliphant runs a small Utah health insurance website www.benefitsmanager.net/SelectHealth.html and www.dentalinsuranceutah.net whom deals with hundreds of people on a day to day struggle to be approved for health insurance. “I get hopeful that I can finally tell people they can qualify for coverage REGARDLESS of their pre-existing medical condition”. Mike’s concern is that Obama’s people won’t deliver what he urges on areas within his speech. “I really have been moved by this guy and wish we could just talk so he could understand the frustration of a health insurance agent. I have been involved on a political level within the state of Utah and their struggle for health care reform. I have seen and regrettably been part of politics at work. I have learned lessons through baptism of fire with politics. For instance, I struggled against House Speaker Clark and H.B. 188 because that was what I was urged to do from our industry (that was all I knew). But after awhile and countless meetings with state and private carriers in Utah, I began asking myself if I was doing the right thing. I realized over time that House Speaker Clark really means what he says and is hard nose about getting reform done in Utah.

[skatoolaki]

Very well put.

On a comment I posted a few days ago here at HuffPo, i remarked that America needs progression to remain viable in an ever-changing world. One commenter rebuked me, saying that "we" (i.e. the American people) did not want change but tradition. That progression was bad and icky, essentially.

But what is tradition? Most intelligent people realize that the idealized 1950s Cleaver-type families were a televised myth, yet that doesn't stop thousands from wistfully pining for "the good 'ole days". The "good ole' days" usually referring to the rule of the white man and when every neighbor was a Christian you saw in church every Sunday.

In today's changing times, America has become ever more the melting pot, and that change scares some people. It is natural progression, and nothing more, that our President is of mixed race. While some of us herald his election as positive change in the direction of equality for all humanity, others see it as a beacon of change they do not want, thank you very much. They want "their country" back, often seeing a trumped vision of the past that never fully & actually existed.

Again, it goes back to that ominous "they" - the others who are "different" than us. Until people let go of that ignorant and bigoted fear, moving forward will always be like trudging through a thick morass.

[evenso]

If America is to truly be a modern nation, it must seek policies for the common good (promote the general welfare). And racism is a barrier for many that obstructs such policies.