You would think the wingnuts in my family would know better by now than to mince into my political kitchen with half-baked nonsense, but apparently not.
Last night over dinner, my father-in-law and new wife (a Dobsonite churchie who has dragged her new husband sharply rightward in the past two years) decided their opinion on S-CHIP simply must be heard.
As you might imagine, the conversation ended poorly for them.
S-CHIP, they huffed, was a prime example of entitlement run amok. The Republican talking points came one after the other, a sloppy, ungainly patchwork of myth and distortion:
- Medical and Medicaid already serve the unfortunate and uninsured
- "Socialized medicine" blah blah blah
- You can be wealthy and suck off the S-CHIP teat
Now, I believe it is people's right to be misinformed if they so choose. But I believe it is also my right to confront the misinformed in a blunt manner, especially when I wasn't the one who raised the topic in the first place. And so I asked, "Doesn't it bother you in the least that the United States of America -- the wealthiest nation on the planet -- has over 30 million children with no health insurance and a president who tells them to go to the emergency room when they need 'health care?'"
Oh, yes, they answered, it's a problem worth solving. The children, the children, we must think of the children always -- "but what's it going to cost???"
Here, if I remember correctly, is when my fork clanged to my plate and I lost my proverbial shit.
"What's it going to cost? Do you have the slightest idea what the Federal government is spending in Iraq every single day to fight this illegal war, this war that is opposed by 70 percent of the citizens in this country? When anyone dares to question the sanity of pouring billions of dollars a week down the drain in Iraq, they're called unpatriotic. They're called traitors. Then when the same person has the temerity to suggest we should insure children so they can see a doctor, it's 'swell thought, bleeding heart, but how in Heaven's name will we ever pay for it?' Don't you see the inherent obscenity in that?"
There was sputtering and stammering, and my father in law offered the bromide that, well, this is a democracy, and people can vote on it. I reminded him that children weren't able to vote, and he suddenly remembered his manners. "Well, we probably shouldn't talk about politics at dinner."
I hoped my point had been made, and finished my meal in relative silence. But let's be realistic. This is a generational battle in which truth is often too dull a blade to draw blood. Vested interests will never stop spending money hand over fist to shape the narrative -- in this case, vested interests who spend billions of dollars a year creatively finding ways to deny claims from the lucky insured among us -- and the narrative they shape is an opiate for the privileged.
Sometime today, if it hasn't happened already, my father-in-law and his wife will re-subscribe to the Big Lie, and return to their comfortable existence, already in progress.