to give those who don't know yet, a little bearing on this story, the other day during president obama's speech on healthcare reform, the republicans trumped their own low (which was saying that the president urging kids to stay in school crosses some sort of boundary of political decorum). republican representative joe wilson of south carolina (which i think is now only allowed to remain a state out of sheer pity) stood up during obama's speech, precisely at the moment when obama was pointing out that universal healthcare doesn't mean that the US will pay for the entire universe's healthcare, and yelled, "YOU LIE!!". good one, wilson. with that kind of witty repartee, how could south carolina resist electing him? what a silver tongued charmer.
our political debate, once held to some degree (i said some) of dignity, and decorum, and the maniacal ranting left to pundits, and the loud mouth q publics who listen to them, has degenerated into shouting absurdities at one another in the forum of the very debate.
at first one figures, 1,000 page healthcare bill, the average citizen won't read it, but certainly they might get an accurate clifs notes from some media outlet. then it gets a little more grim, when we come to find that the media has not read the bill either, but still reports and opines to the citizenry as though they have. but the whole shebang really falls off the rails when it becomes quite clear that the politicians who get paid to read this stuff, either haven't done so, would rather act as though they didn't to serve their own ends, or simply don't have the reading comprehension skills to digest what they have read.
to steer away from the joe wilson comment for a moment, i recall hearing a lot of bitching and moaning about the length of the healthcare bill, as well as some questioning as to whether politicians can even be expected to read such a leviathan.
to respond to both of those concerns: there are 300,000,000 people in this country, each with a very different health and wellness situation, let us consider ourselves lucky that the bill wasn't 300,000,000 pages long. this is healthcare reform, after all, and it is a complicated issue to begin with, let alone when we begin to discuss reforming not just the system, but the coverage for every single person in the country.
as to whether politicians can be expected to read a bill of such girth, short answer: yes.
long answer: that is literally the job of a politician. what exactly are you doing in your office all day if not reading, writing, and analyzing political documents? that's exactly what we voted you into office to do. so somehow these fucks have time to sneak in a few tweets during the state of the union, and a long weekend at martha's vineyard once a month, but don't have time to knock out a few pages during their lunch break? as i said before, it is literally their job to do so. don't tell me it's too long, you owe the american public, at the very least, 8 hours a day, 5 days a week on the job, so shut your office door, and get reading. the fact that politicians get to take vacation time to begin with simply blows my mind. the world does not stop, if it did, don't you think it would be a lot easier to negotiate a state of world peace (hey, everybody, can we just call a time out for like, the rest of eternity? i want to go on vacation)? it's all well and good that people like ted kennedy can be in office long enough to recall that time that a dinosaur got loose on the floor of the senate, but i think that we must consider term parameters as not just a good way to kick out the bad apples before they do too much damage, but as a way to let the politicians, even the good ones, get out of office for a while, since, as far as i'm concerned, they should be working with the people and for the people 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year, until such time as they are not re-elected, or they decide not to put themselves up for re-election. instead our government is peopled with slackers who are in the office usually between the hours of 10am and 2:30pm on monday, tuesday, and wednesday, approximately 30-35 weeks a year, and complain that the healthcare reform bill is too long, that's real hard readin'.
then we get into the halls of debate, and it's much much worse. grown men, i mean god fearing, adult, wealthy, white men, debating(?) by flipping novelty sized presentation cards covered with comical caricatures, and punny sloganeering, rather than facts and well thought out arguments. we allow as reasoned debate, stories about how little jane doe with the toeheaded child, was struck with lupus and had to miss work, and won't you contribute to my campaign? anecdotes about how when they were a child they used to love playing with their pet turtle, skippy, and why do you hate jesus and want america to die? complaints about how this 1,000 page bill full of words and numbers and bullet points, and lord, the legal mumbo jumbo, is not exciting enough to read through, but here's our team's bill, it's a one page accordion style pamphlet (3 flaps, mind you, so you know we're serious), full of nothing more than 2 or 3 word catch phrases, and some clip art that the cute new intern cut and pasted between lunchtime handjobs. she's real good at that photoshop, you should see the cans she pasted on that picture of pelosi from last nights address, big as her head, man, big as her head.
just when you think it can't get any worse, the whole ordeal dissolves into people standing up in the middle of speeches, speeches, mind you, not even debates, and blurting out obvious misinformation, like, "you lie!". so articulate these politicians, these days. and what serves as an apology is a poorly written, mechanically read,1 minute and 35 second teleprompter session in which wilson tries real hard to pretend he knows how to read, and ends in the offender asking for money?
well, i'm not planning on asking you for money, but i think it's safe to say that we can wrap this up right here. it has been proven once again that anything we do as a species is driving by one singular motive... money. and it has reached the point that we don't even hide this from each other any more. like wild invalids, we struggle to grasp what it means to even be alive, and attempt to create some semblance of the human condition through a series of violent, frightened or territorial outbursts, in between which we cower in mortal fear or out of shame.
so what really separates us from the wild invalids? technology? religion? politics? sure, but at the heart of all those ideas is but one simple thing: money.
and if you think different, allow me to assemble a well thought out rebuttal...
YOU LIE!!
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