What It All Means

One of the most fundamental tactics of teaching is the use of examples and non-examples. If you want someone to understand something, give them an example and a non-example that relates to their own experience.

For example, if you were trying to explain an orange to someone, you might being by explaining that an orange is a fruit. Another example of a fruit is an apple. A non-example of a fruit is a cheeseburger.

So what is this new health care reform? Here's what it is: it's a government regulation of private industry. Here's what it's not: it's not a government takeover of a private industry.

Health care reform is like when the government tells private bottling plants that they may not sell drinking water that contains arsenic or pig shit.

Health care reform is not like the government taking over all the private bottling plants and sending people to death camps if they are caught buying and drinking non-government water, which would surely be called H2Obama.

Again, this law tells companies that they may not abuse and/or kill consumers. And, to listen to most people, you'd think it was a law that infringes on our liberties. The "liberty" we've lost, presumably, is the "liberty" to be uninsured, or the "liberty" to be deprived of health care from our insurance companies in the event that we become....unhealthy.

This law does not tell individuals what they can or cannot do with their money; rather, it tells huge conglomerates of faceless capital (corporations) what they can not do to individuals. It tells the corporations that if they continue to abuse individuals then the only corporation owned by the American people (the federal government) will lay the smack down.

It's like the Bill of Rights: it doesn't tell the powerless what they can do; it tells the powerful when they can't do. "Congress shall pass no law abridging the freedom of speech". Now we have "Blue Cross shall not take away a person's insurance if they get sick".

Let's be clear: we don't have a health care system in this country. We have a health insurance system. Unfortunately, that has not changed even with this reform. Health insurance is NOT health care. Health insurers only make money when they DON'T provide health care.

If health insurance companies had it their way, they would 1) only insure very healthy people and 2) do everything possible to avoiding paying for someone's care when they get sick. And, lo and behold, that is exactly how those companies have acted. Until now.

There is something fundamental that "free market" worshipers can never adequately account for. "Free markets" can only exist if the actors are equal.

So while I, Conor Clinker, may be equal to any other individual competing with me for a certain job, for example, only an intellectual infant could maintain that I, Conor Clinker, am equal to Blue Cross when we are "negotiating" the terms of my health insurance.

When individuals work for, or buy necessities from, massive corporations, as Americans have done for at least 100 years, those individuals can never hope to be treated fairly by those huge corporations unless those individuals form huge groups of their own.

That's what labor unions are for. And that's what government is for.

It is a profoundly distressing spectacle to see masses of poor and nearly-poor people getting so angry about this. Of all things. This. And it is with no small amount of disgust that I have born witness to "the loyal opposition" offered by Republicans.

Throughout this process, the republicans have insisted that they want people to have health care too, but that they have principled objections to Obama's plan which are rooted in rational differences rather than hatred, envy, greed, take your pick, there are 4 left.

Their main argument is twofold: it's too much money, and it infringes upon the liberty of individuals. They're full of shit. Here's how.

Firstly, here's how we know Republicans have no interest in passing their own version of health care reform: They controlled every lever of government for the majority of the last decade and did absolutely nothing to further the cause they supposedly care so much about.

Now, the for the cost argument. The Budget Office projected that Obama's health care bill will reduce the deficit by 130 billion in its first decade. The Republicans say this costs too much. It decreases the deficit, but it still costs too much. Let's examine how deeply the Republicans cling to that principle.

In 2001, George Bush's first tax cut was projected by the same Budget Office to increase the deficit by 1 trillion dollars in ten years. Every Republican voted for it. So health care saves us 130 billion? Too expensive. Tax cuts for the rich costs 10 times as much as health care saves, but that's just fine.

The Iraq War has cost 2 trillion dollars. Another Republican favorite. Bush's second round of tax cuts for the rich costs another trillion. That's 4 trillion in Republican debt so far for wars of aggression and tax cuts for millionaires. But health care is too expensive. Even though it decreases the deficit. An interesting calculus, no?

The Republicans, who supposedly are conservative with the people's money, more than doubled entire debt of this nation under 1 president. Well over half of the entire debt that this nation has incurred in 230 years was under Reagan and Bush. So when you hear them talk about health care reform being too expensive, ask them for your 4 trillion dollars back. That'll buy alot of penicillin.

As for liberty, the Republicans will put a man in jail for smoking pot, they'll execute a retarded teenager, they'll spy on American citizens, they'll set up secret prisons around the world, but this is where they take their stand? They now claim to protect my "liberty" to either buy Blue Cross or to....not buy Blue Cross and keep my fingers Crossed.

So what does this all mean? Put simply, this is the most radical legislation passed in this nation in my lifetime. That is at once both inspiring and depressing.

It is inspiring because Barack Obama, in the face of an unprecedented torrent of ignorant, venom-filled bile and hatred, was able to do something for real people.

It is depressing because it is still so limited compared to what we deserve, and to what citizens of all other "free" or "advanced" nations can claim as a birthright. We still don't have truly universal care, and we still insist on being the only nation where health is for sale. But at least there's a leash on the tiger now.

But mostly it is depressing to witness the hatred that this man, and his actions, have engendered from Americans. This man aims to protect and defend the weakest among us and he is earnestly and repeatedly compared to Hitler, to Stalin, to Mao.

And that is what is so very sad. Poor people attacking a man for helping them, having been convinced by more venal men that this man aims to take away their freedom by ensuring their dignity.

People who have lost their homes, their jobs, their savings, their dignity, because of decades of governmental neglect have been convinced that the government is the enemy, rather than the corporations that Republican governments have allowed to run wild.

For all those people who yearn to return to a time before "progressivism", a time when "liberty" and the "free market" were exalted above all....well, I ain't mad at cha....I just hope you don't mind a little pig shit in your drinking water.

And if that water makes you sick, I pray that no government program infringes on your freedom by helping you pay for your doctor's bills.