Reality Check

Britain’s House of Commons, still revered for its gladiatorial enmity despite its crooked association with dishonourable members, gives its politicians a rough ride. It’s intense, a loud wall of sound booms from both sides of the chamber, and gut instinct is normally more relevant than rehearsed rhetoric. But even this grubby, frigid, weak, asinine, unjust parliament has its standards. The US Congress isn’t a playground. It has its fair share of heated debates, yes, but it, and its members made up of senators and congressmen, seem comfortably sober. This is why one specific intervention – “you lie” – left me feeling shocked. No British Member of Parliament would dare snide such a controversial utterance – to do so would risk a strict warning, heated pleas for an apology, and, failing all of these things, an expulsion.

The imputation, a supercilious sneer by Republican Joe Wilson, was a stinging rebuttal to healthcare reform. It was unparliamentary, but not un-American. Wilson’s direct outburst intoxicated the air with vitriolic anger and most, including those with hierarchical power within his own party, seemed incensed by the inherent insolence. There is a strong opposition, led by the people and not some political clan who sacrificed their convictions a long time ago, to healthcare reform. These folks aren’t simply against healthcare, or other fundamentals being pursued by the administration. They are against the president – his view of the country does not fit with theirs, and the leadership is alien to them. No one is being unpatriotic though. The Obama Administration is not a regressive undemocratic regime, neither are snarky insinuations the product of intolerance to race.

That’s what the gullible president, a former failed foolish president, Jimmy Carter had to say. Carter’s words, not a single one of them, should be believed for a second, however, his intervention does highlight a profound reality that holds the nation hostage. And racism hasn’t gone away. This is nasty and scary, yet it’s also a pointless pile of piffle when juxtaposed with healthcare. Slavery and America are inextricably linked. Barack Obama’s accession was historic, but it doesn’t change history. It inspires hope, symbolically fulfils political change, as well as endorsing social progress, and continues the long march down a road whereby the improbable is continually being surpassed by the inevitable. President Carter gave some admirable advice to Hillary Clinton, a disgraceful politician who still won’t plead guilty to indulging in racism during her failed presidential bid, that he should grant to himself – “give it up.”

The President’s euphoria worked in the beginning, but the indelible dust that he sprinkled himself with – and anything else that made him seemingly immortal – has worn away. This is politics – legislation is about marathons, not sprints. It’s about making tough decisions, fighting hard battles, always forcing painful compromise so one can leave the battlefield with something, and providing firm command when defining moments have to be dealt with. Speeches are good, but policies are the actions that speak louder than words. This explains problems for the president. But race isn’t one of them. The healthcare dissent is made up of a potent coalition: conservatives against big government, libertarians with a love affair for small government, fiscal conservatives who believe any reformist package comes without an affordable price tag, pro-gun and anti-abortion patriots, anti-communists with staunch resistance to overt liberalism or progressive politics, and, of course, a minority of gung-ho racialists. Don’t tell me they’ve popped up from nowhere. Obama, himself, sums it up better than anyone else: “I was black before the election.”

Barack Obama is President. His mission is building – it’s being refined to the adjusted world that challenges him. He is renovating America, reconfiguring mistakes of the past, and offering daring for an austere future. He is commanding an unpopular war, and one that is totally justified in my view, no one feels safe in their job, and his jostle for universal healthcare has been bulldozed by the levity of establishment threats, conservative gurgling, and mindless town hall radicalism comparing a democracy with fascism. Yet such provocations have welcomed the president into reality.

Healthcare is the big talking point. It causes horrible attention, attracts all kinds of risible assertions, and has been victimised as a permanent magnet that attracts rage. The skirmish, it’s less of a civilised debate and more of a heavy contact quarrel, isn’t about medical care – it is all about power. This debate – a fundamental discourse which harkens back to the revolutionary founding of a nation – is about the role of government within a changing society. The issue combines ethics and equity, rights and responsibilities, citizens and the state. An individual’s right in mass society is the catalyst steering both crusades – the important right to stop an intrusion from government, but also surely, surely, a right to universal healthcare. All the divisions it has inflicted in its wake are cavernous. The discord isn’t clichéd. This is not a feud between Democrats and Republicans, or liberals and conservatives. Nor is it a rift between progressive youngsters or elderly reactionists, or the rich demarcating the poor. Estrangement between the two sides defies the logical flow of a political stream. It’s always been a fiery issue, and every president brave enough to fight has been left bearing nothing. This time it’s brutal, and rapidly getting worse – violent, crass, insulting. And power, in its shadowy impulses, is pulling all the strings.

The United States has taken vicious knocks and made cheap pops. Global events have been unsavoury in recent years, and the national psyche has been ambushed by paranoia. Their economic security is at risk as unemployment continues its historically heavy elevation, and fair retirement prospects seem crude. Folks are anxious about Washington’s incursion on Wall Street, bailing out needy car companies, and the outright nationalisation of banks in their own streets. The Chinese economy is growing rapidly, and everyone knows its communist regime is destined for superiority one day – it will make it as a superpower in my lifetime. This haunts citizens of the world’s only superpower period. Then there’s terrorism, dissolution and distress in two precarious wars, the federal deficit which is swiftly spinning out of control, and the national debt – which is dangerously high.

Americans voted for change – now they have grave misgivings and wish to take it back. A Republican badge perfectly captured the mood in its deteriorating fragments: “Change? I’d like mine back.” I seem to remember it being pretty monotonous before. Worries do extend beyond the headache that is healthcare – government spending to stop recession from becoming depression, a policy that has a global consensus wrapped around its Keynesian nucleus, has depressed national debt and inflamed higher deficits for an entire lifetime. President Obama’s foreign policy is also in jeopardy – where is the strategy? Afghanistan – a deeply backward country, split by tribalism and consumed by hatred, controlled by warlords and minimally governed by a puppet president and his corrupt ministry – is deteriorating: coalition deaths are non-stop, civilian deaths from NATO bombs have seen a gradual ebbing away in hearts and minds, and election fraud disgraces claims this nation meets any respectable model of republican democracy. This depletes families who have lost a beloved one for the blood price. Fraud and distortion makes the heartfelt sacrifice, and the many horrific injuries ignored in media circles, of brave servicemen from all corners of the coalition seem in vain. No victory is in sight; the mission seems futile – and pointless. This doesn’t help those who, like me, defend democracy – and yearn to see women treated properly. That’s what we’re really doing there – championing a human rights movement. And the scum of the planet – extremist Islamist terrorism – is being calibrated from Pakistan. Wrong country. This nuclear neighbour is the decisive theatre – the battleground to decide civilisation or religious fundamentalism.

Washington is a corrosive symbol. Capitol Hill performed the ugly job of bailing out investment firms and financial institutions – a sceptical public fear the same lawmakers are now hungry to perform surgery on the flawed healthcare system. The bailouts started under the previous neoconservative administration, an administration who leaped from compassionate conservatism to causing crisis in conservatism as the free market surrendered to socialism, but that doesn’t matter. Washington was the prime mover – nothing else seems to count. Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the Federal Reserve, and Henry Paulson, the former treasury secretary who did for the free market what a tight rope does for the hanged man, were praised for averting economic catastrophe – a redux of the Great Depression was prevented because of their action, and the unison shown by all other world leaders. History will, as always, be the final judge, but the electorate, voters and consumers, have been shaken by this acquisition of state control – and easily annoyed by bombastic bonuses that still serve a striking function in banking culture. It’s an insult.

The bailouts were extortion. That’s how Americans still feel. Anger has reached its melting point – its roasting sensation has boiled injustice, simmered hurt, and sweltering blisters have become fiercely animated. Government was the lugubrious scoundrel one year ago – covering for the evil crooks who gambled everything, left us with excessive pain, and have got away. This renders government ineffective in assuaging the health crisis. The town halls erupted in the summer because of this brutal feeling. It is this disquiet, something that allures temper and provokes trepidation, that has pushed the establishment to the brink and sparked rebellion between power and people. Those town halls became tableaus which evolved into vociferous fights: plaques with horrid slogans, vicious chants, and brawling between an unrestricted public and touchy politicians sent the country back into its fervent sixties radicalism – a time when crucial battles were being waged over black rights and an unjustified imperialist war.

This healthcare commotion – and the outpouring of high drama justifies this point – is just as fundamental, and justly equal, to those great clashes of the past. Yet the choice has always been the same – power or the people. That’s where healthcare, and the great audacity for its universality, will find its resolution. The US has a horrible reputation. It spends more money on health than any other developed country, yet its rewards for this are ridiculous. A staggering 15.3 per cent of the population – that’s equivalent to 45.7 million people, and one in six citizens – have no health insurance. At all. I find it utterly extraordinary: America does not have national provision – of any kind. A hallmark of the original reformist plan found a role for government, but rival lobbying organisations killed this agenda by inviting warnings from nationalised systems – Great Britain’s NHS was wrongly demonised with feeble lies and pathetic untruths – that would abandon the people to dire straits if the president ever cloned these penultimate forms of socialised medicine. The National Health Service isn’t perfect, but it’s free at the point of use and it covers everyone. Can US healthcare do this? No. The US healthcare system combines the worst of capitalism and socialism: you need a credit card just to join the queue, yet the bloated bureaucracy involved is symmetrical to a banana republic. And it’s all for profit. Britain provides national treatment – it is fine. And the NHS is the one socialist invention – the immense socialist achievement indeed – that Mrs Thatcher did not goad to desecrate. It’s a success – don’t tell me anything different.

But power, and its perceived amplification, motivates the crux of the matter. The financial crisis invited a necessity for big government to make its mark, and reform has never been about healthcare – it can be divvied up between freedom and rights. The market, that despicable capitalist instrument which has betrayed ordinary folks the world over, has illustrated harrowing powerlessness. A public option – insurance offered by the federal government to compete against the demands of private insurers – still remains, albeit one gets the impression it’s sinking fast as the president, in his latest rally to doctors, failed to urge on an assimilation to the government-run insurance scheme that was once the pillar of his vision. Government has never been the solution. And, right now, it is a constant problem.

The Founding Fathers were stimulated by republicanism and enlightenment. Thomas Jefferson, the third president and principal author of the declaration, favoured rights of the individual and wanted a strictly limited federal government. Intrusive government, whether speculated on in civilisation or imposed through totalitarianism in theocracy, cannot work – history and psychology would banish it. People are more important than power. However, being the socialist that I proudly am, two questions remain: if some wealthy moneyman can have this care, why can’t some uninsured, and potentially unemployed, soul be entitled to the same? Surely everyone – and I mean EVERYONE – warrants this as human beings? The fight goes on, but an honest president now stands on the edge of a weakening precipice.

Robert King is a Contributing Editor to WDC.