Mad as hell about most everything
by PeteGolis
Shades of the recent town hall meeting in Petaluma, the name-calling associated with the health care debate came to Congress on Wednesday night. “You lie,” Republican Rep. Joe Wilson of South Carolina shouted at the President of the United States.
Embarrassed and fearful of the political fallout, the House GOP leadership quickly instructed Wilson to apologize, and so he did, no doubt disappointing the folks who like to shout early and often.
Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona was among the first to condemn Wilson’s attack. McCain, a war hero and the Republican nominee for president in 2008, is wise enough to know that this is not just about politics and manners. It’s about the wellbeing of the country. If the people elected to represent a nation of so many different regions, backgrounds and ideologies can’t work together, all of us, blue states and red states, will be left with a nation less safe and less prosperous.
Politics has always been and always will be a contact sport. People disagree, sometimes loudly. Issues are complicated. Conflicting interests must be fought for and compromised.
But it isn’t mud wrestling – or at least it shouldn’t be.
In case you missed it, we have our share of problems. On the short list, count the threat from terrorists, the worst economic conditions in 75 years, a health care system that is collapsing under its own weight, mountains of debt and rampant cynicism toward government, business and everything in between.
Closer to home, state government is dancing around the functional equivalent of bankruptcy, local governments are in crisis, and the public schools are imploding.
Given all that, one would expect that Americans would want a political system that functions.
In 2009, successful governance doesn’t get easier when the barriers that separate us are more numerous. Consider what has changed in recent years:
-Population studies confirm that Americans are choosing to reside around people who think just like they do.
If you live in Sonoma County, chances are you are confounded by the fact that 46 percent of American voters thought Sarah Palin should be the next vice president of the United States. Sorry, it’s their country, too.
-For better and worse, newspapers and a handful of television networks once served as the primary sources of news, creating a kind of common language for civic debate. Today, the Internet and cable television offer an infinite number of opportunities to share information – but also an infinite number of ways to divide us into tribes.
No one should be surprised that conservatives who get their information from Fox News and liberals who get their information from MSNBC live in alternate realities.
-What passes for journalism has changed, caught up in the appetite for celebrity, scandal and conflict.
-In politics and in the media, interest groups, consultants and ideologues make a good living exploiting our differences. But what works for them also tears at the fabric of the values we share as Americans.
-We live in an anxious time in which people are left to fear the threat of another terrorist attack, the prospects for their families now that their jobs have moved overseas and the stresses associated with a pace of change unprecedented in human history.
It’s not a good use of our time to curse the fates and imagine that we could turn back these changes. But what we can do is acknowledge their existence and their contributions to the divisiveness of politics in Washington, Sacramento and in meeting halls right here in Sonoma County.
Whether the subject is health care, state budget deficits or an asphalt plant in Petaluma, when we give license to the demonization of people with a different point of view, we discourage smart people from running for office and we ask for a government that doesn’t work very well.
In their anger, some no doubt enjoyed the fact that someone shouted, “Heil, Hitler,” when Democratic Rep. Lynn Woolsey arrived at the recent town hall meeting in Petaluma.
But I’m guessing the same folks weren’t so entertained when angry Democrats compared President George W. Bush to Hitler.
This is how it goes. Name-calling begets name-calling. Anger begets anger.
It’s a truism that our health care system is coming unstuck. In comparison to other countries, we spend more and get less. Businesses, families and government are sinking under the weight of the costs. As the baby boomers age, the burden will only grow larger. For the first time in history, some experts speculate the next generation will have a shorter life expectancy than the generation that preceded it.
Having recognized the imperative for reform, what would it say about us as a nation if we were incapable of a calm and rational conversation about the future?
Pete Golis is a columnist for The Press Democrat and a longtime resident of Sonoma County.
“For better and worse, newspapers and a handful of television networks once served as the primary sources of news, creating a kind of common language for civic debate.”—Pete Golis, 2009. It was for “worse” and not “civic” in any manner in the sense that for past 30 years America’s main stream press became increasingly managed by 60s, radicals and progressives. Nothing is “civic” when only one side does the talking. Locally, before the Internet and cable news,Golis was one of the principal players in this one-sided debate on politics. Hypocrites whine for civilness once the other side starts talking back.
by michael koepf
Golis echoes the same idealouges he condemns. “Let’s all play nice and can’t we just all get along?” The reason we are in this current mess is because we didn’t start shouting soon enough. Our representatives in Washington have not been listening to the people for so long that they are now stunned by our reaction. It should not and will not stop until they demostrate by their actions that they hear us and if they don’t they should be gone the next time an election offers that opportunity.
by Richard Clark
Is Golis “mad as hell” about this? Breaking News: Yesterday nearly two million Americans(source: London Daily Mail) marched on Washington to peacefully protest Obamacare and out of control government spending. This event was not reported nor commented upon in this paper. See what I mean.
by michael koepf
Mr. Koepf, “Two million people” was the organizers’ estimates of yesterday’s gathering, most say it was in the low tens of thousands.
It was reported all over the place.
Whatever that number was, where were they when the Bush Administration was recklessly spending the Clinton Administration’s budget surplus on an unprovoked war in Iraq and on increasing the size of government? Bush was the poster child for “out of control government spending.”
These protesting were disingenuous to say the least. What they were really protesting was a black president, a middle-of-the-road president, or both.
by btinc
Dear btinc, he or she who hides behind their alphapet soup name. (Are you related to sneaky Pete Golis?) Your beloved leader Obama and the Democrat congress have tripled the Bush administration’s spending, and, frankly, to label those who are using their constitutional right of free speech and assembly as racist is as dishonest and base as it is desperate. Perhaps you did not hear this on NPR but this assembledge of diverse Americans were not protesting a black man, they were protesting a socialist. And, yes, my original quote of “two million” from the Daily Mail was high. However they have revised it to “nearly a million” this morning and I leave you with this quote from today’s liberal Washington Post: “Authorities in the District do not give official crowd estimates, but Saturday’s throng appeared to number in the many tens of thousands. A sea of people surrounded the Capitol reflecting pool, spilling across Third Street and along the Mall. The sound system did not reach far enough for people at the edges of the rally to hear the speakers onstage.” “Many tens of thousands” could be lib-speak for nearly a million. None-the-less, you will not read about any of this in this “news” paper.
by michael koepf
btinc said: “These protesting were disingenuous to say the least. What they were really protesting was a black president, a middle-of-the-road president, or both.”
So says YOU. I didn’t see any signs saying anything about race. People are becoming fed up *today*. Maybe they weren’t yesterday, so what! Bank bailouts, crumbling dollar, housing prices collapsing, unemployment on the rise, etc. Notice that nowhere in their is anything about race, interesting that all YOU see is race. Who is the racist here???
For some people it is always 50 years ago, and everywhere is Mississippi… If all YOU have left is to play the race card then you are probably on the wrong side of the argument.
by js