Tuesday, March 23, 2010

How Long Before Americans "Get It"?

Trolling through American media web pages it quickly becomes apparent how the American people are divided into two utterly different realities over Obama's healthcare reform. Some truly support it, others act as though Joe Stalin himself was marching down Pennsylvania Avenue.

Oh the tyranny of it all!

John Kenneth Galbraith would find the anguish hilarious. The Canadian-born economic advisor who served Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy and Johnson, long ago noted that the only socialism Americans could accept was socialism for the rich. From the Wall Street bailouts to tobacco and energy industry subsidies to the endless grants, subsidies and massive overruns of the defense industry, America is the ultimate corporate welfare state. Socialism for the rich and powerful indeed.

Yet bringing the health insurance industry to heel and extending coverage to millions of formerly uninsured Americans is more than those taxpaying teabaggers can stand. It doesn't matter that, in the short and long-term, it will save their government money. These are the idiots, 19 out of 20 of whom don't realize that Obama has lowered their taxes. These are people who have disconnected themselves from reality which, I suppose, qualifies them as mentally disturbed at best, deranged at worst.

Obama got his healthcare bill. Maybe not the legislation he sought at the outset but a toehold bill in any case. He's signed it into law. But he's not out of the weeds yet. The Republicans, well and truly deep in the healthcare industry's pocket, will fight furiously to kill this off. They think they still have a chance to rescind this law but even they know they have to act fast before the public come to understand what healthcare reform really means. Once the American people "get it", the Republican resistance is finished.

No comments: