Saturday, February 25, 2017

The Fight For Obamacare And Obama's Fallacy

"I'm sorry I helped fuck Bernie."

First off, let's separate the reality of Obamacare from its symbolic representation. For purposes of this discussion I'm only going to talk about what it is in its proponents' minds: healthcare. This is a political argument and the first rule to remember in politics is that actual facts don't matter, only the facts of what people believe.

For many years we had to listen to the crowing of the conservative left of the "genius" of Barack Obama, that he was playing an endgame beyond the understanding of mere mortals, his rope-a-dope pragmatism superseded any principles, and nothing could be his fault due to evil Republicans and evil liberals preventing him from saving the world. With last year's election we see the fruit of this strategy and I hope everyone is enjoying watching Nero burn down the house as he fiddles (OK, golfs).

The only thing O-man pushed from the beginning and stood firm on was Obamacare. And even though it's incorrectly associated with healthcare, it's come to represent it as such and people are fighting mad about its possible repeal. Even Republicants are afraid of a backlash and a possible ouster in the midterms where angry leftists may show up to vote more than usual. It's funny to watch but the important thing to remember is that a large part of this - over a program that only polls at 50% favorability - is the fact it has been established and ingrained.

Every word or silence emboldens something

Just imagine if truly meaningful reform had been enacted and legislated in all areas! All the last minute regulations Obama enacted are easily thrown out the door by Nero because, why not? Obama's position on everything except Obamacare was one of fear: fear of conservative criticism because in reality he is a conservative. Had he championed liberal causes from the get-go (which he deemed political insanity that would lead to a complete Republican takeover in all three branches, *cough*) people would be seeing the benefits of those changes and demanding they not be reversed too.

Many of Obama's most egregious sins have yet to come to light. When he took office the country was begging for reform. Just imagine if he'd used the bully pulpit the same way Nero is now. Obama's biggest problem is that he never trusted wisdom to speak for itself (and thus mistrusted himself). Instead we got kowtowing to Republicans (Obama being an enabler of obstructionism in the worst sense of the word) and wholesale selling out to corporations. There's no audacity of hope in protecting greed, it's the exact fucking opposite! And thus the last chance for reform has gone now with the wind.


As we slip into the 21st century, the conservative left and right have coalesced into descending into the cult of personality. "My guy is Jesus so everything he does is fine." (e.g. "I'm against mass deportation now it's not my guy doing it.") There are real and brutal consequences to that willful blindness and when the bill comes due the people affected will bitch and moan and it will be mistaken for a "movement", but it will come all too late. Hope can only come from the truth and if no one demands the truth there can be no possible hope.

When the wreckage is finally over and done, each of us will have to account for our part in it. If you come home and find your house burned down with ten people standing around looking at the ashes and find one of those ten did not participate in the burning, that is the person you trust and to whom you are grateful. The other nine say there was no point to not helping burn it down because others were going to do it anyway and they wanted to go along with the crowd to be popular and get elected (to do the right thing!). But you don't really care why they did it, you just know that they did it -- and that they can go fuck themselves.


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