Thursday, March 25, 2010

Outraged over the outrage

ARGH. I’ve been home sick for the past few days which has allowed me time to stew not only in my flu-like symptoms, but in my outrage over the outrage coming from (to borrow from M. Colbert) the Teaparty Foxpublicans.

Part of what makes this country great is that we do have a free and unfettered public forum for debate. It’s a big diverse country and we have principled ideological differences in how it should be run. All this is messy, but healthy and good. I’m a liberal, but I truly believe that real conservatives have a lot of good ideas about fiscal and personal responsibility and the importance of ensuring free markets to create growth.

However, these are not the loudest arguments coming from the right anymore. What’s coming from that camp is not reasoned debate, but fear mongering and hyperbole tinged with racism or fear of the “other.” And it’s increasingly being regurgitated and amplified by even the main stream media. I’m not an historian, but I can’t think of another time when such a vocal and sincerely angry political group has been so blatantly misinformed.

Let’s take some of their major fears/criticism:

1. We’re mortgaging our future to an unsustainable fiscal path. Here is their strongest point. In fact, I agree. We are on an unsustainable fiscal path – largely because of Social Security and Medicare. Fair enough. What I don’t understand is why there is such vehement outrage about this now? Bush started his tenure with the first surplus we’ve had in decades and then ran record deficit for most of his years in office. Where was the outcry from these supposed fiscal purists then?

True, we’ve increased spending during the current economic crisis, but that’s because the two levers you have at the federal level to spur economic growth is cutting interest rates and spending. We couldn’t cut rates any lower than zero, so were left with only the option of spending. Economics from the left to right agreed on this point. So, while concern over fiscal unsustainability is a fair point, the timing and vehemence from this group is suspicious to say the least.

2. Health care (“Obamacare”) entails a government takeover. Hardly. There are valid criticisms of the bill from all sides. It’s long, complicated and the result of a highly contentious parliamentary process. But a “government takeover” is far from the truth. Here’s a newsflash: This bill closely is pretty much what the Republicans proposed in 1994 as an alternative to Clinton’s attempt at health care. There is no public option, but a free market “exchange” of health insurance plans. These mischaracterizations and lies started with “death panels” and just kept spinning out of control until the whole conversation was poisoned and serious criticisms were lost in the shuffle.

3. Obama is a Socialist who wants big government and is soft on terrorism. This one really raises my hackles. Let’s just look at the facts. He increased our presence in Afghanistan. He has kept military commissions and extraordinary renditions to the ire of human rights activists on the left. Despite promises to close Guantanamo it remains open. He implemented a large tax targeted finally to the middle class. In fact, unlike his predecessor, he risked alienating his base in many of these decisions. He has taken unpopular but pragmatic decisions and sought consensus on a range of issues. Any reasoned analysis of the guy would find the “socialist” moniker laughably preposterous. But, still, there’s a broad swath of the population that seems to sincerely believe, despite all evidence to the contrary, that Obama has some secret plan for a Socialist takeover. The extent of this misinformation and the fury it inspires is plain dangerous for our democracy.

And these people are seriously spitting mad. Just this morning I heard that at least 10 Democrat Congressmen have received threats from people filled with rage over the passing of health care reform.

What did Congress do to inspire this venom? Did Congress decide to send your children to war? To take away your precious guns? To even raise your taxes? No. They passed a watered down health care bill that requires insurance companies to do what most have long wanted and to eventually require everyone to enter the risk pool to lower costs. There’s no public option. There’s even an effort to contain costs and control the deficit. So, yes. I can see why you’d want to shoot your Congressperson over such a thing.

This is serious insanity.

I hope you’re proud of yourself Roger Ailes.

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