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Are Americans 'fat and razy?' Hai.
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Those of a certain age will remember how Mike Myers used to skewer the Japanese, stereotypes about the Japanese, and Americans all at once in his Japanese businessmen sketch on "SNL" ("We would rike to apologize for saying all Americans are fat and razy. Some are fat... and some are razy!"). This was back when fear of Japanese competition consumed the American imagination ("Gung Ho," anyone?) and seemed like an actual threat to U.S. domination.
Fast-forward to now, and the threats are much more splintered. The Japanese were kind enough to fall into an economic black hole in the '90s, providing many lessons for the American eggheads who are trying to steer us out of our current woes. As a people, though, we don't always get A's for lessons learned. Example No. 1 being health care, and our inability to reform the status quo.
President Obama knows institutional lethargy, an inability or unwillingness to focus on details and make hard decisions have brought us here. He has all but said so in the many town halls, TV interviews and news conferences he's held trying to get a plan through. And that suggestion, that we are all somehow complicit if health insurance reform does not happen this year, is part of what's ticking people off so much. Americans don't like to be scolded, even when they deserve it. We don't like to be schooled, even when we need it. And we certainly don't like to sacrifice, even when we'll all eventually benefit from it.
There's something deeply and disgustingly disingenuous about congressional critics' protest that this is all happening too fast, that they need more time to study the issue. Everyone on the Hill, from the interns to Mitch McConnell and Harry Reid, were put on notice the day after the 2006 midterm elections. It wouldn't happen under President Bush's lame-duck tenure, but it would most certainly happen in the next administration. John McCain confirmed during the 2008 contest that it would happen no matter which party ruled the White House. Don't tell the American public about time. Most of them don't get whole months of vacation or whole years (the last one of every departing president) in which to just futz around.
So yeah, we're all complicit here. For not studying the issues enough, for allowing Rachel Maddow or Rush Limbaugh to tell us how to feel about this bill, and for not rioting in the streets, either for not having health insurance at all or for knowing our tax dollars are burning a hole in a system that just does not work. There are so many reason to be angry here -- at our leaders, at each other, at ourselves.
And then there are things like the above, which if you're someone who consumes rage as if it were a fuel would make your head explode.
For whatever reason, Obama has failed to effectively communicate his health care message. A great shock, to those who believed him to be infallible like the Pope. Nate Silver has a good pre-postmortem (?) here. And lest you believe that conservatives alone are to blame for this mess, this podcast with the New Yorker's Hendrick Hertzberg and Dr. Jerome Groopman illustrates that liberals are also a little out of step with the reality of our current system.
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