If one were dropped from one's home in space and onto Earth and into the United States at any point over the last three months, one would have very little notion from the media of a far-away war in Afghanistan or of flaring tensions in both Pakistan and Iraq. One would have a sense that there may have been a recession in the recent past and that perhaps it's bottomed out. One may not know that Paula Abdul left American Idol out to dry or that Tom Brady tore his ACL — but one would be convinced that the United States was engaged in all-out civil war over the idea of universal health care.
Politicians' town hall meetings escalated into the equivalent of human cockfighting rings, with normally reasonable people yelling, pushing and creating havoc — to the point where a man's finger was bitten off at a California health care rally (luckily the poor guy had Medicare). Never before have we seen such a complete and total loss in decorum on not only the part of the average citizen, but also on the part of career bureaucrats — quite a big statement when you consider Rep. Preston Brooks set the record for lack of bureaucratic decorum in 1856 when he caned Sen. Charles Sumner into unconsciousness.
Something unprecedented about this health care issue has been eating away at the fabric of civil society. Consider the night of President Obama's health care speech before a joint session of Congress: Obama was in the middle of dismissing the notion that his plan would allot federally provided health care to illegal immigrants, arguing, "It is a lie, plain and simple." South Carolina Republican Rep. Joe Wilson then screamed out, "You lie!" — sparking a chorus of booing and noise-making reminiscent of a middle-school classroom after one student had called another a dirty name. Wilson later issued an apology, and Obama has apparently accepted it. Rahm Emanuel is still fuming.
If you haven't watched footage of Obama's health care speech, do yourself a favor and find it online. Spotting the Democrats jump up and clap after Obama's every conjunction is equally as ridiculous as seeing the Republicans hold pieces of paper high in the air with the words "Our Bill" written on them as an act of intended defiance. Everyone agrees on the need to "engage the other side's arguments," as Sarah Palin wrote recently, as well as the fact that "the time for bickering is over," as declared by Obama during his speech. And yet Palin continues to highlight the inevitable creation of health care death panels that "establishment voices dismissed," while President Obama assures that there will be no need to raise taxes to pay for his health care plan — that there does not need to be an increase in government revenue to keep new spending from increasing the deficit a penny. Both claims are hopelessly false.
Be it Obamacare, Baucuscare or any other permutation of proposed universal health care, politicians and the rest of the nation need to actually provide concrete details and numbers, rather than avoid reality. Republicans have yet to propose a viable alternative to the Democrats' public option, which is disappointing to see — just because the Democrats have a plan doesn't make it a good one. In short, both politicians and citizens need to ask themselves two very simple questions: First, is universal health care a right of every American, and second, how do we as a nation finance that operation if it is, in fact, a right? Answering those questions doesn't require name-calling, finger-pointing, partisan-bickering or punch-throwing. Rather, it mandates that Americans grow up from the nation of unhappy seven-year-olds they seem to have become over the last three months, listen to one another and deal with reality. There can be dissonance without dissidents, if we choose to have it so.
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Teddy Minch is a senior majoring in political science. He hosts "The Rundown," a talk show from 3 to 5 p.m. every Friday on WMFO. He can be reached at Theodore.Minch@tufts.edu.
