Apparently, according to some friends of mine, the health care debate should be renamed to health care rant. True enough. Many people have good opinions in one direction or another, and many have explained and discussed these opinions with great intelligence. That could be called health care debate. However, most people who talk, write or rage about the reform are doing so with no logic, with no reason and with scary threats...
I listened to the Mormon General Conference (or at least a little part of it) and made especially note about the talk by one of the authorities, elder Cook. I could have sworn he spoke about politics, emphasizing how we should stay courteous even if we have strong opinions. "It is OK to disagree, but it's not OK to be disagreeable", he said. And he mentioned how violence and vandalism aren't the answer to anything.
So what has this to do with the health care "debate"? Elder Cook would most likely be on the opposite side from me politically (most Mormons are republican), but this "debate" has caused the FBI to have to take steps to protect seriously threatened congressmen - some of them not even very active with the whole reform.
I recently read an interesting op-ed column (NY Times) about the whole mess, "The Rage Is Not About Health Care". I tend to agree. The changes to current practice aren't all that radical... and they certainly shouldn't cause make "a congressman to shout “baby killer” at Bart Stupak, a staunch anti-abortion Democrat" or allow "a demonstrator to spit on Emanuel Cleaver, a black representative from Missouri." (Quotes from above article.)
The writer feels that the issue, since it's not the bill, is president Obama, or more widely, the changing face of the US. It's becoming more and more multi-cultural, or indeed, multi-colored and multilingual, and this feels like a threat to the average tea-partyist. I don't know if I agree. Yes, the issue certainly is Obama, but I'd like to think that it's the old fear of communism poking from the soul of the Americans. Obama isn't a communist - nobody knows this better than me - but he's been sold to the right-wing public as a socialist (he isn't a true socialist either!) which amounts to the same thing here in the Land of the Free. Just dig a bit and the old McCarthyism will spring out...
Apr 5, 2010
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Hälsoreformen... Jag betraktar och förundrar mig och fattar för det mesta ingenting.
ReplyDeleteHälsningar från en annan verklighet.
Still think you should rant about pregnancy and family. As well.
ReplyDelete:)
Yes, rant about pregnancy and family!! Please please!
ReplyDeleteYou definitely need to do this before the baby comes, so you can laugh at your old thoughts when the baby is actually here. And rant when the baby is a one-year-old and find yourself disagreeing on a lot of the things you wrote then, when the child hits toddlerhood etc.
I feel like I should have written so many thoughts down before... It would be so fun, and useful too, to read stuff I wrote when I still had it all together :D
listen to the ladies. pregnancy & family are excellent subjects to rant about.
ReplyDeleteHaa haa! I don't hear the tempting voices. I might rant about stuff sort of theoretically (like what to feed kids or how silly pregnancy advice books are), but I'll really fight against the tendency to write a family or baby blog in the manner of "this is what we did today". Not that that's bad, but I want to make a different sort of blog.
ReplyDeleteWhen you want to see pictures of pregnancy or baby, check out my facebook. And I certainly love both Pamela's and Heli's blogs - but since those already exist I don't have to make a similar one, right?
Definitely keep on writing about the things you have been writing about already! And everything that you feel like you want to write about in the future. This is good stuff! I'm just itching to read "baby stuff according to Tuittu" as well :)
ReplyDeletetuittu, that theoretical sort of rant is just what i want to hear! the other kind is often the "cute how you think someone cares" kind... :)
ReplyDeleteYou know, I was thinking about how Jesus used to position himself in his days on earth. Given the world at the time was no equal in many, many aspects (race, ethnicity, gender, and many many...), I was thinking how surprising and radical the Christ's teaching could look like to people at the time. For instance, He taught we should love even those who hate us. Well, it's sort of taken for granted in our times but back in his time weren't people supposed to pay back for whatever they got??? Didn't Romans used to so easily kill people even for fun? Then Christ would go talk to those who had been most severely neglected (the sick, women, children, Samaritans, etc). He spoke up for those weak and little ones, explicitly stood up for them. He must have looked way radical at the time. I only mean mildly political sense of conservatism/liberalism whatever here, but if being conservative means that you support status quo, then I don't think Christ was conservative at that time, either.
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