An election is like a mountain climbing expedition. Funding comes from people who will never see the peak. Equipment is carried and messages are relayed by climbers who know they will never go high enough to be spotted with a telescope, let alone photographed in a triumphant pose beside a flag.
Many porters will labor just for a paycheck to ease their poverty, their lives barely improved by the success of the summit team.
On some of these expeditions, the team members don't even like each other that much. They do what they do so that their team will win. They lift their designated winner as high as they can and hope it's close enough for strength and skill to bridge the last gap. And then they all celebrate.
Most of politics takes place in the lowlands. The summits are metaphorical. The swamp is never far away. Whoever is king of the hill becomes a target for mudballs slung from the weeds where the losers dwell.
The opponents of health care reform have already succeeded in turning it into health insurance reform. The insurance companies know they can't provide quality care to a significant majority of citizens, let alone all of them, and still make a profit. Administrative costs alone must account for a large portion of the double-digit annual inflation of premiums. The paltry few percentage points of profit hardly seem worth it. So reforming that is like trying to wash a turd.
The saddest part is that the losing team in the last presidential election doesn't care one way or the other about health care. They only care about making Barack Obama lose at something. It might as well be this, because the issue is complicated enough to provide lots of entry points for scare tactics. If they can turn a constructive search for the best options into a contentious debate over ridiculous assertions they can befuddle and bore the American public into giving up the pursuit entirely. And then they can claim a Great Victory for their party against that young whippersnapper who managed to get elected strictly on the basis of grand-sounding, empty oratory.
Even if the effort to construct usable legislation continues, the partisans who play politics for points will need to gut it so the resulting product satisfies nearly no one. We've seen it before. We're seeing it now.
Before you get all wound up over this sort of thing, remember that opportunity only comes at a price. A lot of people have to lose for one person to win. If you want a chance to be that winner, you have to accept the possibility of losing. You have to extend that acceptance to your own health and life. Get rich or die trying.
In order for the American culture of opportunity to be truly fair, no one should get a hereditary advantage. Inherited assets not only should be taxed, they should be illegal. Everyone should start at square one. But then how would we maintain any great institutions? If we give a corporate entity a measure of immortality, how do we give it continuity of leadership without making it or another institution more powerful than any accomplished citizen? Whether anyone wanted to tackle that question or not, we have chosen instead to let fortunes pass and an elite tier of society wield power. Parents who bear children in the lower tiers must tell them that they have to take their chances. Get rich or die trying.
Because humans seem to have trouble grasping any value except monetary value, everything gets measured by that standard. Even something aesthetically or spiritually beautiful gets linked to money eventually. A starving artist's works may command far more in the years after the artist's death than their creator ever saw in life. Preachers of various spiritual disciplines receive financial contributions. Some of those preachers spawn institutions that outlive them. These institutions have a financial life. Great musicians hope to pull down a ton of money for gigs. Every thing of beauty or power has a price tag that can be manipulated.
Money can't keep you alive forever, but it can certainly help you put up a good fight. The struggle for money can destroy nature, love and whole societies, but we've made it the fundamental aim of our species.
Get rich or die trying. Give lip service to the value of the common folk, but what you're really grateful for is the fact that they're down there and not you. So the political fight for a victory on points doesn't really matter when we had no intention of doing anything benevolent in the first place. It's not a matter of nuance and detail. It's a fundamental acknowledgment that losers have to suffer. If you happen to be sick and you happen to fall short of a fairly high financial hurdle, something is so basically wrong with you that you will not be missed. Any one of you cheap dirt bags can be easily replaced. So suck it up.
I say this as a cheap dirt bag who has so far been fortunate enough to wiggle through any of the perils presented to me. I don't look forward to the one that does get me, but there's nothing I can do about it. Maybe I'll figure out how to get rich. Then I can live in my hilltop castle and empty my chamberpots down on the filthy dregs crawling up to seek my mercy.
E Pluribus Unum: out of all you dirt bags, ME. I got mine. Go get your own. If I feel nice I can give a little something to charity. Either way, you have to kiss my ass.
Isn't it about time we admitted that?
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