The Public Education Analogy for Healthcare

In the raging healthcare debate that currently dominates the American news cycle, it seems like everybody has an analogy that they claim proves or disproves the future viability of the as yet unformed healthcare reform legislation. Republican/conservative fearmongers compare it to socialism (Soviet, not Swedish). Over on the left, Democrats, scrambling to find some type of purchase in the painfully thin topsoil that is America's collective attention span, can't really compare it to anything substantive because they haven't yet decided how much they're going to give up in the face of Republican obstinance, although they have made weak efforts to point out that their various plans are similar in various ways to various existing programs like Medicare and the VA.

In all fairness to the American public, you can't really blame them for buying the Republican bullshit, because at least it's something to buy. The Democrats talked a big game about single-payer universal coverage (without explaining it to people) before the election, but quickly jettisoned that idea as soon as Max Baucus and Kent Conrad got their campaign checks from the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries. Then they babbled about the public option (again, without clearly explaining it to Ma and Pa Kettle), half-heartedly flung co-ops against the wall to see if they would stick (what is a co-op you ask? Exactly!), and now are mumbling stuff about pasting a few legislative band-aids on the suppurating wound of American healthcare.

The frustrating thing is, the Republicans couldn't care less about the plight of the "mythical little people." The Democrats are the ones who push legislation and policy that benefits society rather than the individual or the corporation, and in a country of 300 million people, logic clearly dictates that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Or the one. In the words of George Costanza, "we're living in a society here!"

The Dems are responsible for some of the most important social legislation in history, from the Social Security Act to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to the Americans with Disabilities Act to Title IX, but these days, they seem unable to make the case for healthcare reform or anything else to the American people.

Republicans are great at coming up with neat little Goebbels-like slogans that reduce complex, subtle, critically important policy debates down to bumper-sticker slogans. From "the Moral Majority" to "Contract with America" to "entitlement programs" to "the death tax" to "socialized medicine" to "death panels" and now "the death book," Frank Luntz, Karl Rove, and the rest of the sinister Republican brain trust have got distracting abstraction down to a science.

It works for them because Americans don't want to "read the bill," they want the Cliff's Notes version. The shorter the better, and bonus points if it has a touch of snark to it, too. Democrats, weak-kneed and conviction-challenged as they are, hem and haw about the fine details of policy, nibbling off arcane portions of legislation and then trying to sell them to the American people as legitimate game-changers. Most of the time, most Americans don't know what the Democrats are trying to argue, what their positions are, how the proposed legislation would affect them, or why something needs to change. It's much simpler for the public to absorb a bold, confident, 30-second Republican sound bite than it is to try to figure out what the hell John Kerry just spent seven minutes and 15 appositive clauses trying to say.

This is one reason why the public doesn't buy the Democratic spiel, and frankly, Page A-26 can't blame them. To help the Democrats find their way out of the rhetorical paper bag in which they're currently lost in the healthcare debate, Page A-26 offers two helping hands.

First, a five-word bumper sticker slogan. "Universal healthcare -- for everybody's future"

Second, a simple analogy for single-payer universal health care or the public option. The public education system.

Republicans/conservatives and their town holler proxies are all bent out of shape about universal healthcare and/or the public option for a variety of disingenuous reasons. Oh sure, some of the more undereducated town hollers might actually believe that universal healthcare or the public option would result in rationed care or whacking grandma for the fun of it or socialized medicine (uh, you mean like the VA, hoss? Yes, my little mental midget, just like the VA), but the puppetmasters pulling the strings know that these reasons are just distracting flak thrown into the public discourse to confuse and mislead.

One of the favorite warhorses that Republican leaders trot out in opposition of universal healthcare or even a public option is that such a plan will drive private health insurance companies out of business because they won't be able to compete with the government's economy of scale. (Let's just suspend for the time being the counterargument these same Republican leaders spew out of the other side of their mouths: that a government-managed system would be horribly inefficient and ineffective.) Because the government would be able to offer better coverage at a lower price, reasonable Americans would abandon their overpriced, undercovering private health insurance for the public option. Alas, the poor private health insurance companies, how will they ever survive?

If only there was an example of an existing system in which a critical service was provided to the American public concurrently by the government and the private sector. If only.

Ah, but wait, there is. It's called the American educational system. First sketched out in the Northwest Ordinances of 1785 and 1787, the public education system in the United States is one of the most beneficial and successful systems in the history of the world. Using tax revenue, the federal government, in conjunction with local governments and municipalities provides free education to anybody who wants to attend. And right alongside the universal single-payer government-run, socialized public education system hums a vast network of highly successful and profitable private education institutions.

Just like it would be for universal single-payer healthcare, Americans right now, today! have the right and the opportunity to send their kids to whatever school they want. Parents can choose to send their kids to tuition-free public school or they can choose to send them to private schools for a fee. It's entirely their choice. The government doesn't force them into either option, but it does make an option available for those who cannot afford the high cost of private schools or for those who simply choose to participate in the shared experience that is American society.

So there it is Democratic leaders, your ready-made, easy-to-understand analogy for universal single-payer healthcare, or at least the public option.

One last thing about the public education-universal healthcare analogy. Republicans have been trying for years to get rid of America's public education system. From attempts to dissolve the Department of Education to private school vouchers to unnecessary tax cuts that intentionally leave no money remaining for public services like education, the Republicans/conservatives are hell-bent on privatizing one of the shining lights of American history and American government.

This is an important point, because the Republicans would like to privatize everything, including Social Security, the armed forces, and even the Post Office. Why? Because corporations don't profit from government services, unless they're the ones providing them. So with regard to Republicans/conservatives, the healthcare debate is really about profit and greed, not what's best for individual Americans or America as a whole.

That's one more simple message the Democrats should be trying to make clear to the American public.

Fear Groupthink

Today's topic is the moronic town hollers and the misinterpretation of them by America's beloved media types.

Yes, of course the Republicans/Conservatives/Neocons/Birthers/Deathers/Teabaggers/Minutemen/Swift Boaters/town hollers/et al are driving us crazy here at Page A-26, but as usual we're almost more distressed by the media coverage than we are with their actual antics. That's because, the flaccid "reporting" on the town hollers, instead of being a spotlight of truth that shames these dead-enders and their big-money enablers into something resembling reality and morality, only serves to mislead and distract by sending those still paying attention down the wrong path like sheep into a loading dock.

Like rattlesnakes, the disingenuous Republicans/conservatives can't really be expected not to do what they do. Just as one wouldn't expect a rattlesnake to suddenly turn into a snuggly pet, one doesn't expect Republicans/Conservatives/Neocons/Birthers/Deathers/Teabaggers/Minutemen/Swift Boaters/et al to suddenly turn into rational, thoughtful, caring beings capable of reasonable discussion on any topic. Like it or not, it's who they are and what they do. Apparently, in modern American society, there is always going to be 25-35% of the population who refuse to accept reality and will ceaselessly continue bleating on and on about Obama's birth certificate or God's views on homosexuality and abortion, guns, or the evil incarnate that is taxes and, gasp, government.

So screw 'em. Those people are unreachable. However, that still leaves 65-75% of this country who theoretically might listen to reason. Except. Except the media proves itself on a daily basis to be either a megaphone for intentional disinformation and propaganda (yes, Fox News, we're looking at you) or an echo chamber of babbling sycophants.

Exhibit one in today's media lambast is the industry-accepted reason for the town hall disruptions: fear.

Sometime in the past few weeks, it was decided by the media types that fear was going to the be the universal descriptor to describe the mind-bogglingly stupid antics of the town hall disruptees. Everybody from Brian Williams to Jon Stewart to Keith Olberman to Rachel Maddow to Bill Maher has been beating the fear horse to death ever since. So much so that the fear explanation has become firmly entrenched in the media's conventional wisdom on the topic and nobody even questions it any more, just simply repeats over and over again that these idiot town hollers are driven by fear, fear, fear! All town hall news stories and commentaries are now built on this thematic foundation.

For Page A-26, it has become useless groupthink, very similar to the "Saddam Hussein is a butcher with WMDs that gassed his own people, is a threat to the very existence of the world, and must be taken down immediately" groupthink that every public commentator and politician (with some exceptions: Bill Maher, Barbara Lee, Dennis Kucinich, Howard Dean) was mindlessly parroting in the months preceding the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003. This groupthink is why nobody in the media really questioned Bush's bullshit "evidence" and why Bush and his thugs were able to use the media to convince the American public that the Iraq war was necessary.

After reading and considering Joe Bageant's excellent book, "Deer Hunting with Jesus," a piercing explanation of why poor, rural Americans act against their own self-interests by supporting Republican candidates and policies, Page A-26 has developed a different theory about why these town hollers are acting the way they are.

It's not fear that is motivating them to act out, it's empowerment.

These morons are not scared, they are emboldened. The pundits are asserting that the town hollers are afraid of coming changes to their lives that will leave them on the outside looking in. That's totally bass-ackwards thinking. As Bageant points out, these people are already on the outside looking in. They are forgotten nobodies in the age of celebrity worship, their lives just dreary, empty shells of the American dream and they know it.

The Republican/conservative puppetmasters know it too, and they have tapped into the empty lives of these people and offered them a raison d'etre. They get them all riled up on talk radio and Fox News with a lot of lies and misinformation about Obama, Nancy Pelosi, the Democrats, and policy issues like healthcare reform, then offer them an opportunity to turn their anger into action through abortion clinic demonstrations, town hall disruptions, and the like.

For the poor dopes who buy into the Republican/conservative crap, they feel like this is their chance to be part of something, to make a difference, to be heard -- to feel powerful.

This is evident in the vehemence and total lack of introspection with which the town hollers proffer their ignorance in public. They feel they are part of something that wants and needs them. This is the same principle that drives people to join gangs -- and churches. The Republican party represents something that loves them, has a place for them, and has a mission for them -- or so they think.

Of course, they are being cynically manipulated by Republican/conservative idealogues who prey on these desperate lost souls and hire PR and marketing firms to shape and sell their messages to the very people who will be most hurt by them: Joe the Plumbers, hockey moms, and the town hollers themselves. In the cruelest of ironies, the town hollers are like ants who take poisoned bait from an ant trap back to the nest and end up killing off their entire colony, themselves included.

So it's not about fear, it's about empowerment. And these town hall fools have been empowered and enabled by the attention they are receiving for their public antics. You can see them growing in confidence, vehemence, and righteousness every second they're in front of a camera or a microphone. Their expressions similar to those of an eight-year-old who looks to his older brother for approval before doing something he knows to be wrong but wants to do anyway to impress the brother and his friends. Seeing that their buffoonery generates the right reaction -- attention -- they forge ahead, louder and dumber and wronger.

This is the kind of artificially invested self-importance wielded by security guards and vice principals, as if somehow their rumpled uniforms or polyester ties give them the right to exert social control well beyond their wisdom, intellect, and morality. Of course, it's the power of the superorganism standing behind them that gives them their arrogant righteousness.

So the town hollers are willing to suspend disbelief and logic to be a part of the Republican/conservative superorganism because it gives them a voice and a role in an American society in which they would otherwise be nameless, faceless drones. The Republican/conservative puppetmasters feed them lies and validate their misconceptions and ignorance, then give them a mission as God's warriors on the front line of patriotism and rugged individualism and point them towards the issue of the moment (abortion, Terry Schiavo, gay marriage, gun control, elective war, healthcare reform).

The town hollers are basically social/political/moral suicide bombers outfitted with explosive ideological vests by the Republican/conservative puppetmasters and loosed into the crowded open-air markets of American public discourse. And the town hollers carry out their missions with the same unthinking certainty and misguided prestige as the manipulated martyrs in Iraq.

But American media thrives on fear and so fear is the reason they have chosen to explain why these town hollers are acting out. Fear of change, fear of black people, fear of losing their place in society, which is something they don't even have to lose because it's already gone.

Too bad it misses the mark. Nope, these town hollers are fueled by the sense of purpose that comes from years of being told by the Republican/conservative puppetmasters that their ignorance is truth and that they can make a difference if only they will force the rest of society to see things as they do.

The vociferousness of voice and action of these town hollers and their ilk, at the behest of the Republican/conservative puppetmasters, has gotten steadily more aggressive in the last 25 years and will continue to do so until two things happen:

1) The Democratic/liberal/progressive leaders understand the disenfranchisement of the town hollers and find a way to reinspire their lives. Page A-26 doesn't have that answer yet, but we can sure as hell tell you it won't happen through condescension, derision, complicated philosophical Senate speak, or the inability to stake out a clear position and then stand behind it with the courage of conviction. Something more akin to rolling up their figurative sleeves and getting into these communities and showing how government programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the VA, public education, and so on directly and positively benefit the lives of the town hollers. It will only work if it's as simple as A + B = C. The Democrats/liberals/progressives must find a way to make the town hollers feel just as important and empowered as the Republican/conservative puppetmasters make them feel.

2) Somehow the American media has to be reclaimed from the MBA and Chamber of Commerce crowds. There is no way that Americans can hope to understand what is going on behind the scenes in Congress and the corporate boardrooms when the media is controlled by the very corporate boardrooms that are carving up this country for their own gain. So long as editorial decisions are made based on spreadsheets, political ideology, and ego, there is no hope to pass meaningful healthcare reform or any other publicly beneficial legislation. The media is the only spotlight the American public has, and without it, the roaches will multiply in the dark and end up eating us out of house and home.