The manufactured 'debate' over the 'public option' in health care and it's black crepe adornments announcing its intended purpose of handing America over to those millions of socialists who are just waiting behind the scenes to 'destroy the American way of life and free enterprise' has brought many discouraging challenges to liberals and progressives who favor nationalized health care. The most obvious point of dismay for the reform minded left has been the ease that traditionalist supporters of the status quo have gained been winning the public debate amongst the public by simply incessantly repeating that the public option would lead our nation into the irreversible grip of socialism.
Washington, despite the recent upswing of Democratic party control has been unable to throw of the yoke of Cons marching to the ideology of Reaganomics that accuses government activity in the marketplace as the problem and Reagan's 'ideological' belief in letting the private sector find it's own way as the solution.
What is most confounding to liberals and progressives is that Reagan's ideological reign should be over.
The most obvious reason being that the Cons use of Reaganomics never delivered what it promised. Their mantra that by lowering taxes on the highest incomes and by ending government checks and balances through deregulation would allow the 'magic of the marketplace to act as 'a rising tide of economic opportunity that would lift all boats' benefiting all Americans; no matter what their current financial situation might have been was a bald faced lie that only created greater and wider income disparities. Under the stewardship of the Cons, Reaganomics allowed the real incomes of the top .01 percent of Americans to rise by a factor of seven times over the course of almost forty years, 1980 and 2007. However, during the same period of time, actual income levels of middle class family's gained only about 22 percent which represented a real decrease in household income when compared to the previous nearly four decades, failing to keep pace with their upper income tax bracket fellow Americans.
It was only during the Clinton years that average Americans achieved any gain in income levels. Once Clinton left office after eight years of relative economic opportunity for all which had left a surplus for future generations to benefit from; George W. Bush, perhaps the greatest adherent to the Con adherence to Reaganism became president and immediately gave the federal government's surplus away in the form of grossly unnecessary tax cuts and and an unprovoked war against Iraq, and became the first American president since since Herbert Hoover to deprive the rapidly dwindling middle class of any economic advancement. And as an extra added bonus, Bush's laissez-faire brand of Reaganomics brought about the worse recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s
Bush 43 placed our nation in this precarious economic and financial position by a 'bold' backward looking adherence to Reagan-inspired Con ideology that systematically dismantled the New Deal financial regulations and economic checks and balances because the Cons fervently believed that Wall Street and the financial markets would be self-regulating through the magic of the 'invisible hand.' which guru Alan Greenspan preached.
The astonishing aspect of the Cons having succeeded in pushing the nation to the edge of an economic abyss is that Cons are still given a credible voice in being included as a part of fixing the mess caused by their by their own combination of inaction and neglect by the mainstream media. But this should really not hold any surprise; for the Cons are a part of the same controlling structure of American politics that the corporate media also finds itself a part of; as do many Democrats.
So the course of the 'debate' over the public option that has really only been an extended part of the campaign against government-run health care should be of no surprise to any clear minded liberals and progressives. The Senate's so-called gang of six consists of Democrats that are no different from their Republican 'opponents.' The Democratic Senators acknowledge in foreboding terms that given their druthers; most Americans would support the public option over private insurance which he casts as wrong-headed thinking, instead of stating the obvious and pushing the government plan because it is better than what the private insurance industry offers it's customers.
So why does such a publicly-needed quest for reform dying a slow and thought-numbing death? The answer is really quite simple, and it has little more to do than with the tremendously powerful control that money has over American politics. And to paraphrase Franklin Delano Roosevelt: It has never been a great secret that the thoughtlessness of greed leads to a total corruption of morals. We can also add to Roosevelt's summarized dictum to include the relevance of ill-conceived economics to Roosevelt's analysis, based on the Cons economic debacle of last fall.
The debate over the most momentous legislation proposed sice the 1960's civil rights legislation is being torn apart by such dim-witted fear-mongering tactics such as the assertion that one of the "hidden truths' of health care reform is the absolute lie that the American government will use health care reform to create 'death panels' that will arbitrarily condemn old people and the infirm to government sanctioned euthanasia.
The obvious question is how is this Con game being foisted upon the American people can be defeated and allow debate on health care reform to regain a more reasoned approach? The first thing liberals and progressives must understand is that the lies and disinformation being used by the Cons is the only line of attack that they have at their disposal, and correspondingly any hope to convince Cons to give up their irrational beliefs and instead meet the left on a battlefield governed by rational behavior and ideas is nothing short of a pipe dream.
It is also time for the left to give up their fear that a crucial opportunity to pass health care reform is being missed and instead just toughen up and use their superior numbers to push meaningful health care through Congress and get it signed into law. If their are no Republican supporters gained, then that is solely the problem of the GOP.
This is power politics, plain and simple, and the Democrats must recognize that all they need is a simple majority to pass health care, and pass it they must because the public demands it and because the idea has become so centrally attached to the future of both parties. Passage means the Democrats can declare themselves as the winners and the Republicans will have lost a key element that gives them party solidarity; so a loss severly damages the GOP for a very long time, and in addition, may finally push the GOP away from it's extremeist Con roots of Reaganism and more toward a more center-leaning party. And such an occurance will have political reprecusions for decades to come and change the face of American politics.
I would like to publically acknowledge the ideas and thought of Paul Krugman for this posting.
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