Vera's Unpopular Opinions

Endangering my bohemian street cred, one blog post at a time.

2010-06-24T17:11:00.000-07:00

Earlier this month, I purchased a Prius. I compost. I use Tom's of Maine. I grow organic heirloom vegetables in my backyard. I donate to NPR. I'm wearing an ankle-length, tie-dye sundress purchased at a street fair as I'm sitting here writing this blog entry, no lie. Let's face it; there's a level at which I'm a gigantic hippie.

But before I am a hippie, I am, first and foremost, a nerd, and let me tell you something, internet; if I see one more person trying to live a "natural" life and looking for some kind of product or cleaning method or whatever that is "chemical free" to aid them in their quest, I'm going to club them like an endangered baby seal.

You cannot clean your oven "without chemicals," wash your hair "without chemicals," or find prepared foods "without chemicals."

WATER IS A FUCKING CHEMICAL.

OXYGEN - ALSO A CHEMICAL.

YOU KNOW WHAT'S TOTES A CHEMICAL? TABLE SALT.

HOLY SHIT, LOOK AT ALL THESE CHEMICALS UP IN HERE. WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE.

I suppose I'm being a little pedantic here, because I know what they mean. I understand their tree-hugger pidgin even if I prefer not to speak it. Somehow, though, this kind of thing works my nerve more than reading a restaurant menu that offers a dish "with au jus," or gas pumps that ask for my "PIN number." Maybe it's because I don't get the impression that the menu or gas pump takes part in some sort of smug self-satisfaction regarding the topic at hand.

Maybe I'm just a snob. An elitist, left-coast, chai-drinking, snob. Or maybe these people are a bunch of patchouli-stink dumb-dumbs.

I'd imagine that the truth is somewhere in between.

Who knew shoddy plastic toys were the hallmark of democracy?

2010-04-28T15:21:00.000-07:00

My local county supervisors voted today to ban the distribution of free toys with unhealthy kids' meals, and for all the rhetoric being tossed around, you'd think that millions of children and families were about to be rounded up into county sponsored fitness camps encircled with barbed wire and rabid personal trainers.

The ordinance will only affect about a dozen fast food joints (only restaurants in unincorporated areas of the county are compelled to follow it), and at every single one of these restaurants, it will still be possible to buy a child as much shitty, artery-clogging, nutrient deficient garbage as a parent desires. It will even be possible to do this and still get your kid a toy if they really want it. Just buy the marginally healthier kids meal, get the free toy, and get small fries and soda on the side.

For all of the hoopla about the government telling parents how to feed and raise their kids, the ordinance actually doesn't do that at all. It doesn't restrict any of the food choices available to children and their parents. It just restricts the ability of a billion dollar industry to offer children incentives for terrible eating habits. I almost had to laugh when callers to a local radio show complained about the ordinance because "the toy is the whole reason my kid wants the meal in the first place."

I mean... come on, now. Read that sentence again. "The toy is the whole reason my kid wants the meal in the first place." I'm not a wild proponent of this ordinance, but does that strike anyone else as "case closed" in favor of it? These parents are sitting here saying that their kids don't actually want to eat shitty food that is terrible for them, but they're doing it (and learning to like it) because they want a cheap piece of plastic garbage. And these parents not only condone this, they're willing to go to bat to keep the whole system going.

An occasional Happy Meal in moderation is obviously not going to kill anyone, and in the context of otherwise healthy living habits, it's also unlikely to make a child obese. But the issues of childhood and adult obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease affect absolutely everyone in our country, and restricting a business from offering a prize for bad eating is hardly some attack on our freedom and democracy.

Raise your kid on McDonald's. That's your business. Just know that when you ask "What ever happened to the land of the free and the home of the brave?" in reference to having to spend an extra dollar to get a miniature Fairy Princess Barbie to go with your kid's 700 calorie, 1000+ milligram lunch, both Thomas Jefferson and Francis Scott Key roll over in their respective graves.

An open letter to the male athletes of the world (but mostly America)..

2010-04-21T13:52:00.000-07:00

Dear Athletes,

I don't ever want to read a story about your genitals again. Where you're putting them, to whom you are texting pictures of them, whether or not they wore the proverbial "raincoat' when encountering sex workers who are notably not your wives, and, most importantly, how they're assaulting women against their will.

Mr. Bryant, Mr. Roethlisberger, Mr. Woods, Mr. Aardsma, et al, I'm going to put this advice into a simple, catchy little rhyme to make it easier to remember, since, according to your publicists, these are complicated lessons you're still trying to learn with the help of an understanding public; keep your junk in the goddamn trunk.

Those of you who are married or in a relationship may have certain arrangements with your wives and partners with regard to monogamy that are certainly your own business. I feel certain, though, that those arrangements don't cover publicly humiliating your wives, raping other women, or distributing graphic evidence of your extramarital activities to the public at large.

And then we have you, Mr. Roethlisberger, you gigantic sack of shit. You're not married, so at least there's no one at home that you have to answer to for getting a 20-year-old college student so drunk she can't see straight, having your entourage (two active Pennsylvania law enforcement officials, very classy) take her to a back room and forcibly prevent her friends from coming to her aid while you, in your words, "messed around" without "consummation" till she fell and hit her head, and in her words, raped her while answering her protests with "No, it's okay." And, lucky for you, your fame and wealth made it impossible for this woman to press charges without having her name and her private sex life before she ever met you dragged through the mud, so that she predictably opted not to do so.

And here's the kicker, Ben. Even if your version of events is true? That's still rape, you dumb fuck. If a woman is so drunk she can't stand up, she cannot legally consent, and the fact that you didn't finish doesn't somehow make everything okay. How is this hard for you to understand?

Because really, that's the most offensive part about all of your cases, guys. The part where you pretend that you're just imperfect people who are making mistakes and learning lessons. I mean, who could have known that if a woman consents to making out with you, she can still refuse to consent to sex, right Kobe? Who could have known, Tiger, that it was such a bad idea to send graphic text messages to the porn star you had frequent unprotected sex with while your wife was home with your kids? I mean, it's just so hard to keep all of these complicated rules straight, right? Right?

You can blame the media or our "celebrity culture" all you want for the fact that I know all of these things that I would rather not know. You can act all hurt and victimized while suffering no real consequences, not even for rape. But that conveniently ignores the fact that I wouldn't know about all of these things you did if you hadn't done them. How about that instead?

No love, but very, very sincerely,

Vera

I love Jesus. Deal with it.

2010-03-02T15:03:00.000-08:00

It seems these days that every time Pat Robertson or Fred Phelps open their mouths and some new batch of ignorant verbal diarrhea spills out, liberal atheists take it as free license to bash the entire Christian faith and/or tell liberal Christians that they're somehow responsible for their offending supposed co-religionists.

Here's the thing about anti-Christian bias, though; I get it. I really do. When someone is living in a country where Christianity is the dominant faith and where a twisting of Christian beliefs is used to deny them civil rights, or put them out of a job, or make them feel uncomfortable or unsafe in their own community, I can't find it in myself to get my panties all that twisted when that person expresses an anti-Christian prejudice.

And while on that note, you know what, angsty Christians? That prejudice is NOT just like racism, and it's NOT just like homophobia or transphobia, and it's NOT just like anti-semitism. We are not a put-upon minority in this country, and as a collective body, we have never suffered any sort of institutional prejudice. Quite the opposite. To compare being on the receiving end of occasional unsavory comments to the experience of those other groups is insensitive in the extreme.

But while I understand anti-Christian bias, empathize with it, and keep it in realistic context, I don't accept it. It's not okay to malign me because of my faith, and it's certainly not okay to make me Fred Phelps' keeper. My individual religious beliefs probably have more in common with the Zoroastrians than they do with his. The idea that I have to make some kind of official apology and public dissociation every time a hyper-conservative Christian says something hateful implies that I'm responsible for ignorant assumptions that link us together. If I choose to dignify those ignorant assumptions by officially distancing myself from them, that's my business, but it's not my job.

I donate, volunteer, write letters, and make phone calls for social justice issues because it's right and because it's important to me, not because I have to make up for Pat Robertson. I don't do it to earn some kind of cred for my church or improve the public image of Christianity. I do it for the same reasons we all should; because we're human beings capable of human compassion.

My favorite Christian-bashing tactic? When a liberal atheist decides to agree with the Southern Baptists about what god and Christianity are in order to tell me why I'm wrong, as a pro-LGBT, pro-choice, pro-immigrant, pro-feminism American, to identify as Christian. Suddenly, people who don't believe in god decide to tell me that god hates gays, subverts women, and damns non-believers to hell for all eternity. But I'm the one who has too much in common with the Christian Right.

I believe in LGBT equality. I believe in dignity and fairness for immigrants. I believe that the phrase "under God" has no place in the Pledge of Allegiance. I believe that abortion should be legal, even if I personally don't like abortion. I believe in evolution. I believe in the teachings of Jesus. I believe in god.

None of those things are remotely incompatible.

Where's my black t-shirt, AIG?

2010-01-28T09:34:00.000-08:00

This one's going out to all of the companies who took bail-out and stimulus money and then gave their executives substantial bonuses while they still have a balance owing.

Five facts that every American should know.

2010-01-27T13:25:00.000-08:00

Straight-identifying men are statistically far more likely to molest a child, boy or girl, than gay-identifying men. In fact, straight-identifying women are statistically more likely to commit a sex act with a child than out gay men. 1

Americans who identify as Republicans/Conservatives give far more to charity than Democrats/Liberals, despite the fact that liberal households tend to earn 6% more. Conservatives also donate more time and blood. 2

According to the Social Security Administration, there is a $50 billion (that’s billion with a b) tax surplus every year from false or invalid Social Security numbers, the vast majority of which is generated by undocumented immigrant workers. $6-7 billion of this money is keeping Social Security afloat, constituting 10% of its income. This doesn’t count the potential tax revenue from the 25-50% of undocumented workers who work “under the table” (exact numbers are, for obvious reasons, unknowable), nor what immigrants contribute via sales tax and other sources of tax revenue. 3

As of 2006, 8.7 million American children had no health insurance. That was before our current economic meltdown. 4

Many of the most conservative states in the country survive on federal “welfare,” i.e. they receive more in federal spending than they pay in federal taxes. The top ten recipient states include Mississippi, Alabama, New Mexico, Kentucky, and Louisiana. Which states are paying this federal welfare, i.e. paying out the most in federal taxes compared to what they receive in federal spending? The top ten contributing states include Colorado, New Jersey, California, Connecticut, and Massachusetts. The only 2008 “red state” that pays more than they bring in is Texas, which is near the middle mark with 94 cents coming back on every dollar. All others receive more than they contribute, up to double. 5

1. http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/rainbow/HTML/facts_molestation.html

2. http://article.nationalreview.com/299466/who-really-cares/thomas-sowell

3. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/05/business/05immigration.html

4. http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/income_wealth/010583.html

5. http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/show/266.html

Now taking bets on how long until Starbucks Ballot Punchers show up in voting booths.

2010-01-25T10:30:00.000-08:00

I'm generally a fan of capitalism as an economic system. I don't much care for it as an all-encompassing form of societal regulation and management, which is how it is applied, in my opinion, far too often, but I think that it's pretty sound as a system of commerce. The very basic, simplified thesis of capitalism is, of course, that people within a market or fiscal system operate in their own self-interest. Sounds about right. The goal within any fiscal system is profit, and profit, of course, is always preferable to the alternative.

The difference between a person acting within a market system and a corporation within that same system, though, is that the person also exists and has a full life outside that system. There is more to a human being than a desire for financial profit, whereas, by their very nature, there typically isn't much more to a business corporation. Their sole reason for existing is profit, which is fine by me. That has it's place.

For this reason, among others, though, the case for corporate personhood under the U.S Constitution baffles me. It's not a new concept, and the recent Supreme Court decision is far from the first to apply the rights of personhood to corporations. It is, however, on the cutting edge in that it confers rights for actions outside of corporations' business operations, a limitation held relatively firm over the two hundred or so years since the issue first reached the Court.

I, like many people over the centuries, believe that these decisions may have reached reasonable conclusions and maintained a reasonable scope, but also set a terrible precedent, one that I believe is currently beginning to be realized. It's a matter of doing the right thing (awarding reasonable protections to corporations to allow them to conduct business) for the wrong reasons (the Constitutional rights of citizens), reasons that allow corporations to blur the line between legal personhood and natural personhood.

This recent decision crosses a newer line in stating that corporations aren't only entitled to personhood in the realm of business. It states that they have constitutional rights to participate as people in the civic political arena, and why that would fail to terrify anyone, whatever their position on the political spectrum, is beyond me.

Corporations are not people. They do not have minds and are incapable of thought, morality, emotion, or reason. All of the individual members of a corporation are people with minds who are capable of thought, morality, emotion, and reason, and all of those individuals already have constitutional rights (hence the argument, with which I agree, that corporate personhood essentially amounts to double representation).

There are a lot of people who want to look at the fundamental outcome of this recent decision, allowing corporations to purchase political advertising, and leave the discussion there. This is not only impractical but impossible. Sure, corporations were already essentially doing this by funneling money through POACs, etc., and as far as political advertising goes, this may change very little.

That discussion, however, fails to address not only the continuing application of the First Amendment to commercial speech, a new and disturbing development, but also the fact that this decision has just opened the door to civic personhood to impersonal organizations that exist purely for the purposes of profit. I'm not much of a conspiracy theorist or prophet of impending catastrophe or anything, but really, at this point, what is to stop corporations from having the right to donate freely to politicians? What's to stop them from voting? What's to stop them from the right to assemble and bear arms? What's to stop the members (and this is really scary) from invoking the right to refuse to incriminate the corporation in a court of law? If they have the right to civic participation and full constitutional rights of personhood, by what precedent could any of that really be prevented?

This isn't (or shouldn't be) a partisan issue, it's not (or shouldn't be) an issue of free speech, and it's not even simply an issue of campaign finance. It is so, so much bigger than that, and I don't know how much longer we can continue to ignore that the pursuit of profit is impinging further and further on the integrity of our civic process before there is a terrible price to pay. One would think that the recent collapse of our economy would show why placing the well-being of our society in the hands of de-regulated corporations is complete and utter folly, but apparently we have the collective attention span of goldfish.

Justice Stevens, in his recent dissenting opinion, quoted a previous Supreme Court decision written by Justice Marshall in 1819. This decision in the the famous Dartmouth College case solidified the power of the contract and actually paved the way for the modern corporation. The decision could be characterized as the first step toward conferring corporate personhood, and yet, in his public decision, Justice Marshall says

A corporation is an artificial being, invisible, intangible, and existing only in contemplation of law. Being the mere creature of law, it possesses only those properties which the charter of its creation confers upon it.

I think that we, the American people, in our love of prosperity and idolization of wealth, have forgotten that.

The truly true story of Thanksgiving.

2009-11-25T14:03:00.000-08:00

Growing up, I spent several Thanksgivings on my great-grandmother's farm in Western Colorado, near the Black Canyon. The road she lived on wasn't named until around the time of her death at 88. Before that it was only numbered, bespeaking not only the small population of the outskirts of Montrose, but its relative isolation from the outside world.

In the autumn, there was no asparagus growing wild in the irrigation ditches for us kids to go out and collect, cheerfully armed with sharp knives and grocery bags that my Grandma Bullard stored and reused at least 97 times (she weathered the depression in rural Colorado and never threw anything away, and at the time of her death there were preserves and pickled beans in her cellar labeled with dates from the Roosevelt administration).

At Thanksgiving time, it was also too cold outside for my brother's and my thin-blooded Southern California tastes. So, we would play in the kitchen until my grandma went off on us for being constantly underfoot, calling us "goddamn city kids," which never ceased to amuse us, and then we'd sit down in the pantry where grandma's deep freezer was kept and play with the brightly colored plastic magnets that graced its front cover.

Aside from a once-complete alphabet, this collection included the silhouettes of a tree, a few household pets and farm animals, and a collection of assorted "Pilgrims and Indians." Grandma Bullard didn't switch the magnets out seasonally, so even during spring break or summer vacation, it was always harvest time on Plymouth Rock on Grandma's freezer. That was okay by us, because every American schoolchild was well versed in the Heart-Warming True Story of Thanksgiving by first grade at the latest, if not earlier.

As we all know, the Righteous and Good Pilgrims came to America seeking Freedom, and the Primitive but Wise Indians welcomed them to their new home with a Bountiful Feast, and the Righteous and Good Pilgrims gave Thanks that they had come to such a Good Land. The End.

Of course, most of us now know just how much more there was to this story, and it can be hard to know exactly how to feel about celebrating the anniversary of what was, in many ways, the beginning of a centuries-long genocide. It can be hard to sit down to a table filled with distinctly North American staples while knowing that, thanks to European Americans, the people who originally subsisted on this food for millennia have now mostly disappeared from the face of the earth. I think it's fair to ask ourselves what there really is to celebrate about this holiday.

My answer is this; the true roots of Thanksgiving are deeper than we often acknowledge them to be. Long before white people set foot on this continent, human beings around the world had been celebrating the harvest since the invention of agriculture. And what's not to celebrate? We live in a time now, particularly in North America, when food comes from a store. You walk in, you pick out whatever you want, often without the restriction of season, climate, or distance, you take it home and eat it, and it's just that simple. I think that in a time like that, it's more important than ever to be reminded of the miracle of food.

Every seed, bulb, and root carries within itself the perfect knowledge of what it needs, where it belongs, and what it's time is. If I put a seed into some dirt and give it some water, it will synthesize something completely new that will grow up and out of the ground and sustain my life. Even in world of dramatic technological advancement and an Age of Information, there can never be anything more miraculous than that.

You won't hear me talking much about Pilgrims on Thanksgiving these days, and I don't have any real use anymore for that rather self-serving and incomplete feel-good story. But I continue to love Thanksgiving because it is an opportunity to celebrate the seasonal foods of my adopted homeland. I can give thanks that another year has gone by and whatever damage we've done, there are still pumpkins and squash and turkeys and cranberries and corn and greens here in North America. Another year has gone by, and I am still blessed by the presence of food on my table and the people I love. We, the human race, in all our goodness and folly, have made it another year, and the harvest is still good and worthy of celebration.

It's not you, it's everything you stand for.

2009-11-18T22:34:00.000-08:00

I really wish Sarah Palin would go away, and mostly for her sake. Okay, well... mostly for my sake and the sake of our mutual country, but at least partly for her sake.

She presents so many levels of clusterfuck that I hardly know where to begin, but if I had to pick just one facet of her presence on the public stage that causes me the most chagrin, it would probably be the way she makes so many people at every point on the American political spectrum diverge sharply from their core ideals to either denigrate or celebrate her.

It could be argued that this phenomenon isn't her fault and that I'm blaming the victim. I don't think it's that simple, though. I think the reason so many people take leave of their senses and let emotion take the wheel when it comes to Sarah Palin is because that's a prevalent facet of what she herself brings to the national table. She never seems to be terribly invested in actual facts or in depth knowledge, and yet I don't think that all of her untruths are intentional or malicious. She gives the impression of crafting a certain "Sarah Palin" image to herself as much as anyone else. I don't think she's stupid. I have no reason to believe she's Mensa material, either, but she could be for all I know. What I do know is that she always wants to have it both ways.

Sarah Palin wants to offer cutesy oversimplifications to the public to appeal to them with her down-to-earth folksiness but then accuses the media of abusing her when they point out her lack of apparent depth. She wants to offer her parenting expertise as applicable experience preparing her for public office, but plays the victim when people question her parenting choices. She wants to talk about all kinds of political accomplishments that prove what a straight-shooter she is, but then accuses people of bias for pointing out that many of these claims are partially or entirely false. She wants to pose and simper like a pageant contestant and answer pointed policy questions with a saucy wink and a smile, but then labels those who ridicule her self-sexualization as sexists. For someone who so vocally champions the virtue of personal responsibility, she spends a lot of time painting herself as the helpless victim of the relatively reasonable consequences of her own actions.

Setting aside the fact that a complaint of gender inequality will always seem a bit rich coming from a woman who doesn't seem to believe it's a particular problem that women still earn 76 cents to a man's dollar and thinks women should have to carry their rapists' babies to term and birth them, I do think that Sarah Palin has been treated with both overt and subversive sexism since she joined the GOP ticket just over a year ago. Whatever your feelings about her, photoshopping her head onto a bikini model body or editing video of her so that she appears to be making lewd remarks about her own genitals just aren't appropriate actions. In fact, those sorts of tactics are pretty much the epitome of sullying the national conversation.

While there's a degree to which she's made her parenting choices fair game, all of her kids really should be off-limits as well...except Bristol. In a similar self-imposed conundrum to that created by her mother, if you want to make yourself a public, sex negative champion of celibacy and abstinence education, it's more than appropriate for people to ask where you got the baby on your underage hip. But the bottom line is that, without a doubt, a lot of liberal bloggers, comedians, and even journalists have behaved in an appallingly sexist manner toward Palin and pressed unconscionable scrutiny onto her children.

Nothing that she has done or said excuses that, and if we're talking about hypocrisy (and with Sarah Palin, one usually is), it has to be mentioned that a great many of the people behaving this way are self-professed liberals who allegedly support the cause of feminism. Maybe this is the new feminism - "Feminism: It's Just For Women You Like." There's a degree to which Palin herself promotes a national discussion of sentiment and simplistic archetypes over one of reason, but that's really not much of an excuse. Principles of equality aren't disposable or even evaluable on a case by case basis.

However, do I think the much-discussed recent Newsweek cover is an example of this sexist media behavior? I don't. Is the photo itself sexist? I think so. Who participated in it's creation and approved it for public media use? Sarah Palin. Is the photo an appropriate choice for an article about the way Palin handles herself poorly in the public eye and makes it difficult for people to take her seriously as a politician? Absolutely. Would an analogous photo of Barack Obama striking some he-man bodybuilder or male model pose make it difficult to take him seriously, and would the media have a field day with that shot? Without a doubt. As Exhibit A in support of this statement, I give you Vladamir Putin:

Case closed.

Of course, I imagine that photos like the one on the Newsweek cover wouldn't pose such a tremendous problem for Palin if she had the appropriate professional credentials to justify her place in the public spotlight, and here's where we get to conservative Palin hypocrisy. You know, the part of the story where the same people denigrating the qualifications of a U.S. Senator with 12 years of legislative experience, world-class Constitutional expertise, and a Harvard Law Review presidency under his belt suddenly defending the seasoned resume of a novice governor who has presided over the least populated state in the nation for less than two years and a tiny rural town before that, exposing and often admitting her limited knowledge of local and statewide government procedures and regulations every step of the way. The part of the story where the same people who vilify pork barrel spending fall all over themselves to praise the fiscal responsibility of a woman who passed her state's largest ever budget, depending heavily on federal earmarks that far out-measured her state's federal tax contributions. The part of the story where the same people who publicly insult and degrade teenage, unwed mothers and their obviously incompetent and morally bankrupt parents instead praise Bristol and her mother as courageous heroes, shining examples of the good, American, Christian family.

Sarah Palin has essentially made herself a partly complicit catalyst of nearly everything I hate about American political culture. Sentiment over logic, easy hypocrisy over complex problem-solving, cute over quality, conceit over hard work, self-victimization over personal responsibility, and scheming over actual accomplishment. All of this aside from any of the actual political levels on which anyone might agree or disagree with her, which is almost the most disappointing part; the idea that someone can inadvertently do this much damage to the integrity of our discourse before actual issues even come into the equation.

Despite this, there's a big part of me that feels bad for her. Her naivete or hubris or idealism or some combination of all three (which is my guess) lead her to accept the media spotlight she was offered, but no politically savvy operative had any business offering it to her. It was hard to watch her ten week stint in the 2008 election, not to mention the ongoing and very public resulting career and public image implosion, and not have the words "political road kill" come to mind. It's not some personal failing of hers that she wasn't ready for all of this, and she was invited in by a flailing campaign that I doubt had any real concern for her career or future.

Maybe Sarah Palin is a lovely, intelligent, principled person who had the potential to prove herself a good governor had sinister liberal agents not subversively forced her out of office. In all sincerity, I have no reason to believe that any or all of those things are untrue. However, all of it is, to a great degree, irrelevant. Not all lovely, intelligent, principled people are qualified to be effective or proficient political officials, particularly high level, federal officials, and potential doesn't count for a lot on the world until it's paired with results.

Sarah Palin is not an accomplished politician. She has never shown herself to be particularly politically knowledgeable or informed by the standards of the circles into which she has inserted herself. She has shown herself to be willing to play exceptionally fast and loose with the truth when it makes for a good self-promotion, even by American political standards. When she faces uncomfortable public criticism, she trades in her Belipsticked Pitbull image for her Simple Country Girl in Big Bad Washington image as it suits her.

I believe that she is a charismatic figure who has often been treated unfairly, prejudicially, and downright inappropriately by the public over the course of the past fourteen months. I also believe that she is a wholly unqualified candidate for anything beyond local politics in her own home city, county, or statewide community. The first statement has no bearing or mitigating influence on the second, and the idea that it should is dangerous to say the least.

Your rights end where my lungs begin.

2009-11-09T07:53:00.000-08:00

Today marks the first complete week of my return to American life. Considering what a short time Keith and I were gone (two weeks), it's been a surprisingly jarring period of adjustment. This is possibly because it's one thing to transition between two vastly different geographic locals, nine hours of time difference, and vacation versus reality, and it's quite another to transition back from an entire way of life that one posits, deep down, might just be inherently superior to that to which one now returns.

There still exists, however, a considerable list of things that I unequivocally missed about my life in the United States, including-but-not-limited-to my friends and loved ones, my cats, cooking, and sleeping in my own bed. These, however, are things to be missed whenever you travel, and things that can be transported or recreated pretty much anywhere (not the exact same friends and loved ones, of course, but I have heard that they have such things in places other than the United States). This leaves the question; was there anything I specifically missed or preferred about my life in America?

Said question produces a much, much smaller list of answers, but one of them is so massively significant that it absolutely cannot be overlooked.

THEY LET PEOPLE SMOKE IN RESTAURANTS IN SPAIN.

I don't think I'd realized how much I take smoke-free restaurants for granted until we reached Toledo. In Madrid, it wasn't a big issue. In fairness, the only place we ran into problems was at a bar where we did see, upon exit, a very small, hand-lettered sign on a side window stating that smoking was allowed inside. One of our lovely hosts in Madrid informed us that such places aren't permitted to have children inside, and considering how routinely we saw young children integrated into daily life in Spain (strolling the paseos with their parents at 11pm, dining out at fine restaurants at 10pm), we could imagine how that sort of decision would hurt business.

I don't know if that policy isn't in place throughout most of the rest of Spain or if it just isn't enforced, but until we reached Barcelona at the end of our trip, nearly every restaurant, cafe, taverna, bar, and tapas joint allowed indoor and outdoor smoking. More than once, I sat down to a very expensive, painstakingly prepared meal at a high-end restaurant only to end the evening smelling like an ashtray. In Granada, we went to a hippy-dippy vegetarian joint with only two other patrons, a long-haired, unshaven couple in shapeless hemp clothing. We thought for sure we were safe, but as soon as the remnants of their tofu curry over couscous were cleared from their table, not one but both of them immediately lit up.

It never ceased to floor us that in a country where the food was so uniformly excellent, and where many of the people we met or overheard talked of little else, that dining patrons were freely permitted to mix gazpacho and nicotine, or paella and tar. They take their food very seriously in Spain, particularly their ham. And yet, a culture that pays the closest possible attention to how a pig was bred, what species of acorn it was fed, what climate it was raised in, how old it was when it was killed, what region that curing ingredients same from, how long the meat was aged, which body part it was sliced from and how (and I am not for a moment exaggerating) can sit idly by and allow people to chain smoke not five feet from you while you consume it.

For the record, I hate smoking. Actually, hate isn't strong enough. I loathe smoking. Throughout my life, I have loved and continue to love some habitual smokers, but I've been lucky to love mostly considerate smokers who were respectful enough to keep their habit separate from the non-smokers in their lives. I wish all of those people didn't smoke, mind you, and most of them share that wish, but as long as it doesn't affect me, I take no issue with it. My laziness about applying sunscreen is just as likely to give me cancer, and my incurable addiction to pastry and red meat certainly isn't doing my cardiovascular health any favors, so I really have no high horse to climb up on.

However, I fully support banning smoking not only in restaurants but in all public places. Some of my libertarian friends balk at this, but I want to clarify that I have no desire to ban smoking. I don't care if people smoke. It's none of my business. But the big difference between my bad habits and smoking is that I could sit completely unprotected in the equatorial sun for hours eating boeuf bourguignon and chocolate eclairs all day, every day, and it would expedite no one's demise but my own.

I am all for personal freedom, and while I don't think any government should work actively to harm the health of it's citizens (I'm looking at you, corn syrup subsidies), I also don't think the government has any business criminalizing unhealthy private behaviors. Public smoking shouldn't be banned because it's unhealthy. It should be banned because it's not private. Smokers have every right to smoke, but they have no right to force me to smoke, and that's essentially what public smoking entails.

That's not okay over a plate of $100 per pound ham and a glass of world-class rioja, and it's not okay in a crowded public park or polluted city street. I am completely willing to respect the rights of the general smoking community, but I do wonder when they will be willing to respect mine.

A rare case.

2009-11-05T12:51:00.000-08:00

Hello, all! I've been away in Europe (and a smidge of Africa), having experiences and very deep, profound, traveling-abroad type thoughts that I'm sure will be the grist of many Unpopular Opinions to come (does everything that's broken in American culture stem from our great love of convenience? Is it completely hypocritical for a culture that prides itself on superior cuisine to allow smoking inside restaurants? Stay tuned to find out).

And of course, the day after I returned the lovely residents of the beautiful state of Maine had the opportunity to stay a land of equality, fairness, and constitutional adherence, but instead let it slip through their collective fingers.

Now, this may come as a shock, but I tend to have very strong feelings about things.

I will give you a moment to retrieve your smelling salts.

And we're back. However, I don't believe that people who disagree with me or aren't sure they agree with me are necessarily "wrong." Even then, in some cases where I do believe they're wrong, I think it's entirely possible for people to come to wrong opinions that I can at least respect and see valid basis in. I don't think there's a single person in my life who agrees with me about every social and political issues, and yet I feel very lucky to be surrounded by intelligent, caring, thoughtful, and informed people. It is incredibly rare for me to feel so strongly about an issue so as to not only believe that those who disagree with me are wrong, but, furthermore, that their opinion is not worthy of respect.

Opposition to the legalization of gay marriage is one of those issues.

It's not that I inherently lack respect those people. I think there are many wonderful people in the world who oppose gay marriage. But I really do believe that their reasoning on that issue is inherently so deeply flawed, so deeply harmful, and so deeply damaging to the very basic fiber of our country that I cannot find it in me to validate any portion of it, however tiny and innocuous, with even tacit approval.

I have done extensive research into what the bible really says about homosexuality and how it really doesn't contain the clear-cut condemnation of same-sex relationships that many people believe, and I could take this opportunity to bore you with all of that information, but I won't bother for three very important reasons: what the bible says about this doesn't matter, religious people don't have to like or accept homosexuality, and I really don't believe that people's religious beliefs have a single damn thing to do with why they won't legalize gay marriage.

Even if we take for granted that the Abrahamic faiths conclusively reject homosexuality (and we shouldn't), we don't live in a country where that information is legally permitted to make any sort of difference in how we govern. I suppose it's alright for people to be secondarily motivated by their religion as long as there is some very solid, empirical, secular evidence that corroborates it. That very markedly not being the case with gay marriage, no piece of arbitrary religious dogma has any place in this decision making process. We are not a theocracy, thank god, and as long as our church and state are mutually exclusive and the constitution guarantees equal treatment under the law to all citizens, no groups' sacred texts have any authority to create civic inequity.

I'm not out to force everyone in America to be comfortable with homosexuality. I'm not out to force any church to condone it, and I'm not out to force any private citizen to welcome LGBT people into their homes or their lives. No one needs to say that they think homosexuality is okay. That's not what this is about, and the more people make it about that, the further we get from a solution. How people feel about homosexuality is irrelevant. You can dislike something, hate it, think it's morally wrong, but you still have to acknowledge that this does not give you the right to make it illegal.

And let's face facts; that dislike, hatred, and in many cases a healthy dose of fear and discomfort are what this whole issue is really about. People don't want to ban homosexuality because they believe the bible says it's wrong. If that were the case, these same people would be working at least as hard to criminalize divorce, almost as hard to end the distribution and purchase of shellfish and cotton-poly blends, and twice as hard to reinstate a ban on work on the sabbath and adultery. Instead, you have legions of people who not only don't pursue legislation about these sins but have committed them hiding behind the bible to justify their bias.

If you think that marriage is a religious institution, then work to keep the government from issuing marriage licenses. I won't stop you. If you think that civil marriage isn't a right, take it away from everyone. I won't argue with you. But as long as the government does issue marriage licenses, and as long a civil marriage is an institution available to citizens, then those licenses and that institution must be equally available to all citizens. This really is an issue where it's just that simple.

The wages aren't great, but the benefits are excellent.

2009-10-09T11:15:00.000-07:00

I voted for Obama. If I had it to do over, I would vote for him again in a heartbeat. I would vote for him again in the primary over Clinton. If, in some highly unlikely turn of events, the Republican candidate had been Olympia Snow, I would have thought twice, long and hard, but even then I'm pretty sure I would have voted for Obama.

But you know what? That doesn't mean I have to support everything he does. It doesn't even mean that I'm not allowed to oppose him as vocally and aggressively as I like whenever I see fit.

I am allowed to say that his subjugation of LGBT issues is appalling, that his health care plan is badly flawed, and that his net positive contributions to world peace aren't yet particularly noteworthy. This doesn't make me a bad Obama supporter or a bad social liberal or a bad American.

I criticize my president and my government because it is my right, because it is my privilege, but, most importantly, because it is my job. It is my job to hold my president and my government to the promises they've made to their constituents. It is my job to demand that my president and my government live up to the high standards of representing and leading a free and democratic nation. It is my job to make my voice heard loud and clear when the choices of my president and my government are not what I would have them be.

This is still my job when I support a president. It is still my job when the president is facing difficult public opposition. It is still my job when he or she is being criticized or unfairly maligned by others with whom I do not agree. It is still my job in times of national crisis. As an American, it will always be my job.

The day I cease to do this job is the day I have failed to hold up my end of the bargain of democracy, and the day you discourage me from doing this job is the day you have done the same.

What is it that we must never forget?

2009-09-12T18:32:00.000-07:00

The events of September 11th were unbearably tragic.

It's tragic that 2,819 people died in terrorist attacks on American soil.

It's tragic that 403 police officers, fire fighters, and other rescue workers bravely ran headfirst into the World Trade Center to save those in danger, only to be killed themselves.

It's tragic that thousands of families lost parents, children, cousins, friends, aunts, uncles, lovers, and spouses, leaving their own lives changed forever.

It's tragic that the events of that day were twisted and warped to justify a war on a country that wasn't involved.

It's tragic that the Muslim faith, a faith of peace, was so distorted by a handful of it's followers that it became misunderstood by 19 men to be a faith of hatred and violence.

It's tragic that somewhere in the vicinity of 100,000 civilians in Iraq and 30,000 civilians in Afghanistan have lost their lives due to American military action.

It's tragic that this number continues to grow.

It's tragic that in 1988, the United States abandoned all promises of allegiance to the Afghani people after Afghani forces, with U.S. instigation and arms, defeated their common foe, the U.S.S.R., leaving the Afghani people to a life of desolation and poverty.

It's tragic that in the years following through present day, one in every four Afghani children die before reaching the age of five, one of the highest child mortality rates in the world.

It's tragic that we washed our hands of our no-longer-useful former allies and that religious extremists exploited this situation to create a culture of blame for the West and oppression and violence against women, children, LGBT people, progressives, and non-believers.

Please remember all of these people when you promise to never forget. America is not to blame for the 9/11 attacks. Only those 19 men and their associates who planned and instigated the attacks are responsible for the actual events of that day. The lives of our civilians, however, are worth no more than anyone else's. Our grief isn't deeper or more profound. The events of that day do not reflect just the deaths of an innocent 3,000. They reflect the deaths of innocent hundreds of thousands. They reflect the deaths of innocent millions. When we behave, even indirectly, as though our suffering is unique or independent, we contribute to a global culture of xenophobia, ignorance, and continued tragedy.

For serious, Joe?

2009-09-09T22:03:00.000-07:00

I'll get to a more comprehensive post about my thoughts on the President's speech very soon, because, luckily, my thoughts on the content of the speech weren't quite overshadowed by Joe Wilson's behavior, but for the time being-

WHAT. THE FUCK.

I haven't checked the annals of history yet, but I think there's a very good reason no one, including members of congress who've been in office since Wilson himself was a boy, has yet been able to name a situation where a member of Congress behaved this way toward a sitting President, i.e. shouting at him in the middle of a formal address, let alone shouting at him that he's a liar. I think the reason no one has yet named such a time is because it's quite likely, at least in remotely recent history, that such a thing hasn't occurred.

Hell, even in a regular session of the House (which can get pretty rowdy), a Representative would be formally reprimanded for that kind of behavior. But as an audience member at a formal presidential address? They're not perfect angels, and even in my relatively short memory there has been snickering and grumbling and mugging, particularly with a divisive president discussing a divisive issue (Bill Clinton proposing health care reform, for example, or George W. Bush proposing...all kinds of things). But nothing like this.

Why not? Again, we've had presidents far less popular with the opposing party, and we've had presidents promoting far less popular legislation. Why is this the first time anyone can name off the top of their head where a member of congress has behaved in such an overtly disrespectful way?

You know why I think it is?

I think it's because we've never had a black president before.

Now I'm sure that, faced with this hypothesis, Joe Wilson would summon every ounce of righteous indignation available to him and condemn these hateful accusations. He'd probably say something about having lots of black friends, and he might even say something about this being the kind of "reverse discrimination" that victimized white men are subject to these days, when any criticism of a black person gets them labeled a bigot.

And I think he might believe he was telling the truth. He might not really, truly, fully understand why he instinctively felt it was appropriate to behave that way, and he might actually be offended by allegations that it was caused by his lack of respect for black people. I think a lot of racists really do believe that about themselves. Racism is universally acknowledged to be such an egregious evil that it's not a charge that pretty much anyone would feel comfortable to have leveled at them. It's this same shame that causes people to cleanse themselves of their overt, surface racism while still avoiding having to deal with their deep, subversive racism.

If he did say all those things, though? If he did make all those disclaimers? I truly believe that he'd be utterly full of crap.

Am I a dirty commie or a heartless ogre? Or maybe a dirty, heartless, communist ogre?

2009-09-07T13:56:00.000-07:00

I'm very, very rarely undecided about political issues, so the currently proposed health care legislation leaves me in something of a quandary. Apparently, it also leaves President Obama in a quandary, so at last I'm in good company.

I'll state up front that I have no philosophical issue with the concept of socialized health care, but I must also state up front that if an issue is important enough to be addressed by my government, then it's equally important to figure out how to fund it. I will never understand the rallying cry of "This issue is so imperative that the plan for fixing it shouldn't have to seem like it would actually work!"

The thing I like least about being on the fence is that it means you disagree with everyone. Well, almost everyone, because my one consolation amid the uproar on this particular issue is that my husband Keith and I agree almost entirely (this one issue, in fact is probably a pretty accurate summation of why neither of us is a registered member of a political party). And hey, if you're only going to agree with one person, it's nice for it to be the person that you live with and rely on for sex.

Really, though, that isn't the worst part, because if I'm being completely honest here (and I really am going to try to be), I'm an uncommonly contentious and argumentative person by nature, and it doesn't bother me all that much to disagree with pretty much anybody. I don't go looking for fights or create them where there aren't any, but I certainly don't hesitate to jump right into them whenever they present themselves.

No, what actually bothers me most is when I hear someone defend their position, whatever it may be, with information that is flagrantly inaccurate and/or well intended but logically unsound. There are plenty of perfectly valid reasons, both philosophical and pragmatic, to support or oppose the currently proposed legislation but, for my money, the following are not among them;

1. "This plan makes Obama just like Hitler/Stalin."
This one is so beyond-the-pale ridiculous that I'm not going to spend too much time on it, but suffice it to say that until Obama has engineered the systematic slaughter of millions to promote his political regime, this phrase should never escape your lips. It will only serve to negate any point you were trying to make and leave you looking like a moron. Hitler was a vegetarian. This does not mean that Paul McCartney is going to invade Poland.

2. "This plan will work because Canada/England/Sweden/France/etc. has socialized health care, and it totally works for them."
I think it's fabulous that many other countries have found ways to establish government funded and/or controlled health care, and I think that there are things, both positive and negative, that we can learn from each and every one of them. However, the fact that these countries make socialized medicine work is no indication of America's ability to do so, whether or not we should, or how we should go about doing it. We aren't Canada, we aren't the U.K., and we aren't by a long shot Sweden. We don't have the same attending social systems, the same cultural agreements, the same economic systems, etc., that these countries have, and because our medical system has continued largely unregulated so much longer into the modern era than theirs, we're facing a particular set of challenges in terms of costs. We also love to sue the crap out of each other, probably more so than any other country in the world, which is a particularly expensive national habit when it comes to health care (more about that later).

Don't get me wrong, I think these countries have all worked out far better solutions to their health care challenges than we have to ours, but the cultural context is so different that none of their situations are significantly analogous. For example, I'm fascinated by Swedish culture, and one of the things I love most about it is their culturally defining concept of lagom, which doesn't translate cleanly into English (imagine that), but essentially means, "enough" or "adequate." It means, "I don't need excess, and by not taking too much, I can make sure everyone gets what they need." My favorite thing about this concept is that it stems from the Vikings. That's right, the bloodthirsty, bearded guys in the horned helmets. They apparently believed in divvying everything up so that everyone got a fair share. That's my favorite way to imagine the ancestors of the modern Swedes (since, like most people, I take time to contemplate this daily); a bunch of enormous, scraggly marauders conferring beside the smoking ruins of a decimated village, assessing a pile of the spoils of their conquest and saying things like, "No, no, Erik, I already have two women and three sacks of plunder. To take more would be ostentatious. Please, help yourself."

But that's not America. I love my country, but let's face facts. We're not culturally descended from pillaging brutes who still managed to understand the value of sharing. We're culturally descended from a bunch of rebellious malcontents all pissed off about paying too much money in taxes. We're rabid individualists and prodigious consumerists who measure success in dollars and believe that more truly is more. We face challenges in establishing successful social programs that most Swedes can't begin to imagine. If we decide that we can and should enact some form of universal health care, we have to figure out if and how America can enact these programs, not countries with vastly different situations.

3. "I don't want my taxes going to pay for other people's health care."
They already do. Deal with it.

I don't just mean Medicare, either. Every time one of those 45 million or so uninsured Americans has to go to the emergency room and can't pay the exorbitant bill, your tax dollars go to pick up the tab. You see, as much as Americans love to talk about leaving others to suffer the consequences of their lack of personal responsibility, we're not truly heartless people. If you come into a hospital in need of urgent treatment, you will receive it regardless of ability to pay. This is as it should be. However, since we need our hospitals to keep functioning and there's no use in trying to wring money out of someone who doesn't have it, the consequence of this is that we often pick up the bill. And, since catastrophic care is so much more expensive than standard or preventative care, we're not only already paying for these people's medical care, we're paying for it in one of the least efficient ways possible.

But, that leads us to-

4. "If we get everyone preventative care, it will actually save us money by preventing ER visits."
We don't for a minute know that this is the case.

First of all, while many ER visits are due to the escalation of a preventable illness (I myself experienced just such an incident when I was uninsured), many are not. Having health care coverage will not prevent you from being in a car accident or slipping in the shower or setting yourself on fire while trying to get your barbecue going. Then you have that some of those unpaid tabs (though not nearly as many as some anti-immigration types would have you believe) are from undocumented immigrants, and none of those people will be eligible for the new public option. Also, not all preventable illnesses escalate because the patient couldn't afford health care. Many escalate because the patient thought they'd get better on their own, or didn't have time to go to the doctor, or had a medical phobia, or didn't know they were sick, and so on.

It's possible that a government funded public option will reduce costs overall by reducing unnecessary catastrophic care. It's equally (if not more) possible that it will instead increase costs overall because we're still paying for many of those ER visits and paying for the standard care of millions of citizens to boot.

5. "Your grandpa will lose his Medicare and end up in front of a Death Panel."
The Death Panel bit is simultaneously my favorite and least favorite argument opposing government-funded health care. It's one of the most disappointing in the area of sheer idiocy, but it gets tremendous points for macabre creativity and evocative style. Can't you just see your grandpa, your very own grandpa, shivering before the dreaded Death Panel, probably headed by Rahm Emanuel with his hair slicked back, his fingertips pressed together all Mr. Burns-style as he tells your grandpa that the cost of his blood pressure medication has come to outweigh his value to society. Then Hillary Clinton comes and escorts your grandpa to his ice floe and pushes him out to sea.

I like to think that no one who spouts off about the Death Panel actually believes what they're saying. Lord knows we all have our moments when we get so emotionally invested in something that our righteous indignation overthrows our common sense, but really, deep down inside, we know that the truth is not nearly so dramatic. To retain my faith in my fellow Americans, I like to believe that this is the case with the Death Panel folk.

As far as Medicare, I can at least understand where this one comes from. One of the proposed methods of funding a public option is the weaning of about $500 billion from Medicare over the next ten years. At first glance, that sounds like people's benefits will be reduced. However, as stated over and over and over again, no one who currently has Medicare is going to be kicked off or lose any of their coverage. It's just that, because of the new plan, the increases over the years that would have been necessary to sustain Medicare may not be needed. Also, some people would opt off of Medicare in favor of the new plan, meaning their funding can be redirected immediately. This does, however, lead us to-

6. "We can cover the currently proposed plan debt-free because of redirecting Medicare funds."
Considering that we still don't know how much the plan is actually going to cost (and some estimates from supporters put it at over $500 billion), we can't possibly know this yet. How can we know that we can afford something for which we don't yet have a price tag? Also, since no one has a crystal ball, we don't actually know how much will be coming from Medicare over the years. We don't even know how many people would participate in the new plan since we're not just talking about the currently uninsured. Some people will surely leave jobs they were trapped in by employer-provided insurance once they have options, and their costs have to be factored in as well. Also (and this is big), it's not unlikely we would have had to go into additional, unanticipated debt to cover those future Medicare costs, meaning that even if we're able to siphon all of the anticipated money away from Medicare, and even if that is enough to cover the new plan, that still doesn't necessarily make it debt-free.

7. "People should have to work for what they get, and if they didn't earn enough for health care, oh well."
This one really burns me, mostly because of one looming statistic; there are currently somewhere in the vicinity of six million American children from low income families who do not have health coverage. The number is substantially higher if you factor in middle class families, many of whom can't afford coverage, either. I understand and, to a degree, share the typical American celebration of personal responsibility. If you think that applies to children, though, not to mention the mentally ill and the disabled, I honestly don't know what to say to you. Actually, I do, and it's "That's pretty appalling." Children aren't responsible for their financial situation. Nor are people who suffer from disabling circumstances that could affect any of us or that we were only spared by luck. Providing for the basic needs of those people is the hallmark of a humane nation, not socialism.

I agree that the situation is different when it comes to adults who are in some way accountable for their own situation, but I have to point out the oft-ignored fact that not everyone is in a bad financial place because they didn't work hard or weren't responsible enough. Things happen, and it is not as easy to be financially comfortable in this country as many people would like to believe. Now this next part goes into my personal values rather than just fact or logic, but here it is; while there will always be some abuse of the system in any social program, it's typically relatively minimal (actually, that bit is a fact), and I'd rather be scammed by a few people than ignore the exponentially larger number that are in legitimate need of aid. Also, by taking action to reduce health care costs, we can insure that fewer people are in need of government assistance. That, however, leads us to-

8. "A public option will reduce the cost of health care, making it more affordable for everyone."
There is little to no actual evidence of this and significant evidence to the contrary. The only two specifics I've heard to explain this claim are the catastrophic care factor, which I've already addressed, and the fact that a cheaper government option will provide competition for private insurance companies. That only holds water if you believe that it's insurance companies that have caused and continue to cause cost increases, and, despite the documented greed and manipulation of many private insurers, there is no definitive evidence of this. There is, instead, very compelling evidence that it's caused by for-profit doctors and hospitals.

Please read this article. If you can't, the essential summary is that when you factor out demographics, type of insurance, incidence of major illness, etc., it comes out that hospitals and doctors that function on a profit-motivated model run more tests, conduct more surgical procedures, book more appointments, and generally over-treat patients as compared to non-profit medical communities that work to offer the best and most cost efficient treatment possible (paying doctors a salary rather than paying per visit and test is a major factor). Communities dominated by the for-profit model pay up to twice the national per capita average for health care with below average treatment results. Communities dominated by especially efficient non-profit models pay well below average per capita for superior treatment results. In both models, secondarily, internal costs are driven up by litigation and ballooning malpractice insurance costs.

In the end, it's our cultural decision to allow our health care system to operate as a capitalistic industry, supplemented by our love of expensive litigation, that has created the crisis we're facing. Care that results in life or death will never function properly as a commodity in a free market model, so trying to fix it with a free market method will not work. Who pays for the care will make no difference. Unless proposed legislation offers some level of regulation over medical profit motive and addresses profit motivated over-treatment, our costs will continue to spiral out of control and bankrupt our nation, regardless of who is footing the bill.

9. "People who don't support Obama's plan don't care enough about people in need," and "People who support Obama's plan want to turn us into a socialist nation and destroy our country."

I personally hear more of the first statement since I'm friends with more liberal-leaning folks than conservatives, but they're both in the same vein. "My side is right and all-around superior, the other side is wrong and morally/intellectually deficient, and if you're not with me on this, you're the enemy of our nation."

Look. We all agree that our health care system is in crisis. We all agree that it needs reform. We all care about sick people, children, the poor, etc. We also all care about the prosperity of our nation. That's why we get so wound up about these issues. We just have vastly different ideas about the viability of this plan and what the government's role in health care should or shouldn't be. By placing the focus on inflammatory (and often insulting) differences that aren't there, we inhibit our ability to discuss the issues that are there, and those are difficult enough all on their own.

In the end, we're facing a two-fold issue as a nation. What can we do, and what should we do? I believe these questions are hopelessly tangled together. What we can do is tremendously affected by our cultural agreements about what we should do, and the options we weigh when determining what we should do have to be dictated by what we realistically can do if we are to be at all effective.

Is socialism a dirty word? I don't think so. Even if it is, do a few socialist leaning programs make us a socialist nation? If that's the case, we already became one long ago. But the essential concern expressed there actually boils down to a valid question, i.e., what is an appropriate government role in health care?

I personally believe that when it comes to something as critical as medical care, we should do what we can, and I do believe, with the right plan, the government can play an important role. When it comes to the current legislation, though, I'm still stuck on the "can" part. Can this work? I don't ask for it to be perfect. That won't ever happen, and waiting for it will only deter progress. I'm just asking for it to be reasonably functional. At the moment, I'm far from convinced. I'm also deeply disappointed by the President's methodology in enacting reform and disseminating information, but that's another post.

However, not everyone agrees with me on whether or not we should enact government focused reform, and any attempt to ignore those people and trample their concerns underfoot is not the answer. Aside from that method being contrary to our civic ideals, there are far too many of them for it to be effective. We won't ever get everyone on board (again, we can't wait for perfection), but we need far, far more of than we have now. 65% of Americans admit that they're confused about the current plan. That's a piss poor start.

Convincing people who reject government involvement (and people like me who actually want to support it if given half a chance) that we have a workable plan is paramount. We have to find a plan that makes sense and a plan that will work, even if it's goals are more modest than what we hope to ultimately achieve. But whichever side you're on, don't tell those who oppose you to "shut up and sit down." You may disagree with them, and I may disagree with them, but the value of their say in our democracy isn't determined by how inconvenient they are to you getting your way.