While it's good to think that bringing us all together here in America would be a great and wonderful enterprise, it wouldn't make any sense to bring us together in an undifferentiated horde. By undifferentiated, I mean that we do have differences to overcome and those differences are as wide as the Grand Canyon at times. Yet, there has to be something, some reason or a situation that could part the great divide and allow us to see eye to eye on a particular subject or state of affairs.
What might that look like in 2009?
We know there are many psychological and sociocultural factors acting on as as individuals and groups that drive condition behavioral patterns today. There are also a myriad of political and governmental ideology divides that somehow seem to keep us from forming a consensus on issues as simple as health care. That, my friends is where I'm confounded and confused. Let me explain why.
Few of us wants to to surrender our individuality or our individual responsibilities. Yet to a growing number of American citizens, the idea that we are becoming a "socialist" country is scaring the hell out of them. Why? Because if we become socialists, we are somehow embracing the Communist manifesto or something. As Jim Juback of MSNBC muses, what the hell does that mean anyway?
Listen to congressional speeches calling for the Federal Reserve and the Treasury to exit the "free market" before it's too late to save even the bones of US-style capitalism and before the Obama administration sells us into, gasp, socialism.
(I just wish someone, sometime, making this charge would be specific about what kind of socialism he or she is talking about. Are we afraid that this administration wants this country to be Sweden or that it has a hankering for Stalin-era gulags and collective farms, where we all start the day singing to the glory of our tractors? There's a big difference. Maybe the speakers could wear hats or talk in funny accents to make their definitions clear.)
Exactly! What is the issue again? Oh, there isn't one really. It just sounds so 1960's when you put it that way. Or something.
Why aren't we coming together as Americans when it comes to the obvious need to reform health care? Seriously? Why?
Because we are getting mixed signals from different input sources, of course.
Let's face it. 47 million Americans without health care insurance must be interested in being insured. The majority of Americans with junk health care insurance must be interested in getting insured with a policy that actually allows for them to walk away, hopefully, from an extened health care episode that does not bankrupt their family or cause them to DIE over the fact that they have chosen death over banktrupcy.
If explained as such, most Americans would understand the need for a Public Option that might someday lead to Universal Health Care for their families and themselves.
Progressives? It is up to us to make this case. Our elected Democrats will not in numbers enough to educate the American people. Our elected Republicans will not at all.
We could easily come together in a time of need like never before. IF we enlightened make sure to pass on our knowledge on a daily basis, to as many people that we come in contact with that will allow us the time to tell them.
You are an American. The person sitting next to you, listening to Rush every day at lunch is an American. Get to know them better. Tell them you have something for them.
Then tell them the truth.