Our Cowering Government (repost from December)

by D. Ray Morton

While what follows might be spurred on from my childlike sense of idealism brought on by my joining in on Lauren’s second marathon viewing of the whole series of “West Wing” , I still feel like I’ve been thinking about this for awhile and need to get it out. The latest I guess is that Senate Democrats are soon to be dropping the plan they had put forth to lower the Medicare age requirement from 65 to 55. This was of course after they decided a pussy version of the public option was too hard to pass, which of course was after they decided a REAL public option was too hard to pass. I swear to god I’m running out of metaphors to illustrate how toothless the Democrats are. They are caving on everything, and it’s beginning to look alot like the plot of a bad movie where everyone leaves the theater muttering “There is no way people actually act like that.” To put it another way- Sometimes I see a colorful sunset and muse that it looks like a painting. Then there are some sunsets that look so strange, so odd in color and structure, that they look like they are a BAD painting, like if someone painted that exact sunset I’d say it looked completely unrealistic. But there that sunset is in front of me, struggling to reach a consensus on health care reform.

When I was younger, I didn’t think about politics. When I was a little older, I thought about politics in the abstract, but I scoffed at those that would, in my eyes, paint politics with a broad brush. I didn’t like labels, people claiming to be Republican or Democrat, and I thought anyone who paraded around with a serious opinion, whatever that may be, must just be an asshole. I figured the whole political process was so complicated that anyone who felt they knew enough to have a real opinion must have just found a point where they wanted to stop learning and debating and decided to settle down in a comfort zone. I saw that as lazy. But of course, all that did was save me the trouble of actually LEARNING about the political process myself. I didn’t understand that politics wasn’t something to solve like a Rubix Cube, but was something to observe like a slinky.

But I really wish I could go back to that bubble of mine. I wish I could step back from all this bullshit and just expect my government to work for me again. It was so much fun not to see the gears struggling to turn. At the very heart of my anger with the government is a very simple fact... No one wants to convince me of anything. No one really tries. The best we get are spokesmen, pundits, lobbyists, and the occasional senator on a news show squeezing in the bullet points of the ever evolving Republican or Democratic manifesto, whatever it happens to be that week, in the two and a half minutes on said show allotted to be filler while we wait for the newest information on how many women Tiger Woods fucks who aren’t his wife.

We get the same 15 people, over and over again, preaching to their own choirs instead of trying to convince the rest of us that they have a better idea, which would be fine except we don't live on FACTS anymore. What am I supposed to think when a dickhead with a red tie tells me “Polls say the public option is fiercely unpopular”, and then I can literally flip to another station and just get there in time to hear a dickhead in a blue tie tell me “Polls say the public option is heavily favored by the public”? Lewis Black is right, we live in a world where everyone has different sets of facts, and no one takes the time to check up on it all, because the only number that really counts is... yep, you guessed it, how many women Tiger Woods fucks who aren’t his wife. CNN right now has a news story headline “Chris Brown deletes his Twitter account”, and yet I can’t get one drop of solid information on things that really make the world go round. It’s always unchecked, unsourced, and belied by ulterior motives. It gets to a point where I can’t and don't trust ANYTHING I hear anywhere. Life is a god damn Wikipedia entry. It’s like when Michael Moore comes out with a new documentary. Watch it, marvel at the statistics, and then Google it and find the multitude of websites set out to debunk the statistics, then find the multitude of websites set out to debunk the sites that debunk the statistics... and so on... Till eventually you just want to lie down and never get up.

But that’s fine! I’m fine with not being able to trust polls and statistics as long as you CONVINCE ME on a moral and intellectual level that you’ve got the right idea with how to move this country forward. President Obama during the campaign scratched the surface when he bought time on all major networks and ran a special in which he very simply, very directly, told us about who he is and what he wants to do for the country. It doesn’t matter as much what his batting average is right now as it was to hear a man tell me WHY he believes what he believes. It was exactly what I needed. Conservatives blasted it because McCain didn’t have enough money to put up a counter program, to which I say I think the problem isn’t that Obama went on TV and spoke to us, but that it costs so much money to DO THAT.

THAT’S THE POINT- I want to be bombarded with television and radio programming coming right from the people that write and pass the laws we live by. I would love nothing more than a television program where the only thing between Joe Lieberman and the TV camera is the teleprompter scrolling a brilliant argument against the Democratic health care agenda that he wrote his god damned self. Because that’s what I want. That’s what I need. Then put Harry Reid up there and have him to the same damn thing. Why can’t half my newspaper JUST be op-ed pieces by each member of the Senate and House saying SPECIFICALLY what they want to do and why they want to do it. We live in a world where information is so fucking easy to get, so why aren’t our leaders really FIGHTING for our eyes and ears? Convince me. CONVINCE ME. I’m a practical guy, and I and most of my friends would agree that our opinions are our own until someone convinces me otherwise. Stand up there and show me why we elected you to lead, and believe that you can change some minds while you do it.

I just heard on the radio a recording of Joe Lieberman 3 months ago saying he proposed lowering the age of Medicare from 65 to 55. If it’s not blatant hypocrisy that he’s now blowing the horn in opposition to the idea, then I need him to get in front of a fucking camera and tell me what the difference was 3 months ago. I need him to step up and tell me what he meant when he said what he said then, and why it’s not the same now. I need him to convince me he didn’t just get caught in a bullshit storm. CONVINCE me. And while your at it, tell me why I should listen to you considering your wife is a spokeswoman for the health insurance industry, because that’s what I heard too. Did I hear wrong? Is she? Isn’t she? Do I have a skewed sense of accountability on the matter? Is she a lobbyist, but it’s more complicated and I shouldn’t just assume your word is bullshit because of it? Then CONVINCE ME. Tell me why you think what you think. Because right now the system I’m using to make my opinion is that I hear that you proposed the exact same plan that you are now trying to destroy, and that your wife works for the insurance companies. I hear these things that succinctly. If it’s more complicated than that, then give me a complicated answer. And don't worry if I don't catch all of it, because I don’t know anyone who doesn’t want their leaders to SOUND SMART. I WANT to feel inferior to those leading me, because it helps me sleep at night knowing I can’t possibly do your job better.

The Joe Lieberman example is what I want from EVERYONE. CONVINCE ME. I’ll believe you if you are good enough of a speaker, I promise you. Hell, I know three or four liberals who got a little misty eyed for Ron Paul during the primaries, because the guy had a really good way of convincing people of hitherto unpopular ideas. Granted I still don’t think we should be an isolationist nation, but I swear to god he got me thinking about it. It’s evidence that I could be a Republican tomorrow if someone only convinced me.

Up till now I’ve been bipartisan in my assessment of how fucked our government is, but I would like to take just a second to say I don’t understand how the Republicans don't think they need to take a stronger stance on healthcare reform. I treat the evolution of our government like a court trial. I think that the creation of laws is innocent until proven guilty. If legislation makes it to the Senate and House, then I assume enough people believe it’s important that it deserves honest debate. Enough time and energy went into it. The legislation in and of itself is innocent. If you however, disagree with it, then it is YOUR DUTY TO CON VICE ME IT IS DEBILITATING OR REDUNDANT OR UNNECESSARY. Prove it guilty. Republicans right now just sit back, as if all they need to do is “react” to what comes at them, instead of either coming up with their own plan or REALLY explaining why the Democrats are wrong. I firmly believe that if the Republicans were the majority, and they introduced legislation that I didn’t agree with, then I would EXPECT from the Democrats a valid exploration into why that legislation is wrong. I wouldn’t be content with just sitting back. Because guess what, the status quo in this country isn’t working. It just isn’t. So anyone who shoots down attempts at changing things without giving their own ideas on the subject gives me the impression that they are fine with how things are going. Which is a bad assumption to be made of our leaders

This is getting long. I just wish I lived with a media culture that could easily allocate time and manpower to letting our leaders REALLY talk to us, with no strings attached. Because right now I think a great many of us, most of us actually, are growing into cynical bags of discord. I hear these things about Joe Lieberman, for example, and then everyone fucking moves on and I don’t get to hear his side of it. So now I live with this assumption that Joe Lieberman is a hypocrite and asshole. Now that’s etched in stone, but only because no one convinced me otherwise. And it’s like that with a thousand and one points of interest for me and everyone I know. It’s what drives us apart. Everyone has their little talking points of why so and so cant be trusted, and why such and such doesn’t work, because they heard something controversial and then the news cycle rushed forward before they could get the real truth about it. So we live with constantly being 60% sure of what we think, because we never got the chance to REALLY sit down and see the other side. I don’t fear the other side, and It don’t think many smart people fear the other side. I’d be much happier being a Republican who was 90% of what he thought than a Democrat who is 60% sure.

And if we lived in that world where our leaders unabashedly spoke to us, burying us with opinion and policy until we can’t breathe, I can’t imagine anyone saying “Yea, can we dumb this down? I know it’s abortion, I know it’s gay rights, I know it’s healthcare, but can you talk LESS about it, please?” And even if it’s not completely about CONVINCING us to change our mind, at least we’d walk around with a better understanding of why the other side thinks what it thinks. That’s the other problem. Right now we hear so little of the argument, that liberals can’t understand how Republicans really think what they think, and vice versa. It makes us subconsciously, or consciously for the more angry of us, dehumanize those we disagree with, which sounds strikingly familiar to an argument I made about our foreign policy a few months ago. Not talking to the enemy, or not really listening to the enemy is the beginning of the end. I’d be so much happier if Joe Lieberman talked to me for hours and hours until there was NOTHING more he wanted say, because then I’d be so much happier with my opinion of him, whatever that would be. Right now I just think he looks like a muppet.