In the Wake of Brown v Coakley

I say, "In the Wake of Brown v Coakley," but I'm not going to talk about the Massachusetts senatorial race, it's strategies and importance, mostly because I don't give a crap. What I really want to write about are other issues that occur to me as a result of all the hoopla.

The first thing that strikes me comes from all the dire predictions about the fate of health care reform as a result of the Democrats' loss of their vaunted filibuster-proof majority. Actually several little sparks fly off that sparkler for me, so let me attack each one in turn.

It occurs to me that the Republicans never would have found themselves in this position because they would have rammed some sort of bill through Congress months ago relying on a party discipline that is, at its core, frightening. The lack of free will displayed by Republicans in Congress, the Stepford-like willingness to follow party lines, is an affront to the democratic experiment, and a confirmation of the predisposition for conformity to individuality in the American character.

Which brings me to my next point: Neither of these parties is fit to govern. The Democrats can't do anything as a group and the Republicans have to do everything as a group. For a democracy to actually function in a way that will benefit the People--which is why government exists in the first place--there has to be a conversation. You can't just get by with thesis and antithesis. The two need to be compared and worked through so that a productive synthesis can be developed. Instead, we get the Democrats, who offer a cacophony and the Republicans who offer a chorus. And neither listens to the other. And outrage is not a substitute for reason.

It is only in a system that is fundamentally broken that work cannot be accomplished without a filibuster-proof majority. The whole notion is absurd. Any legislative body that is so pinioned by mindless factionalism is nearly dead. And worthless.

I'm not really a fan of the filibuster anyway and haven't been for a long time. Despite the Frank Capra inspired myth of the little guy fighting the evil majority, the filibuster--as with the ones brought by Southern Democrats in the '60s to fight civil rights legislation--is typically used to protect evil and to impede the general welfare. It is antidemocratic and a wonderful tool for the few to deny the rights of the many.

Of course, there is no real need for the filibuster. It could be done away with through a procedural vote, and I believe those work on the basis of simple majorities. Remember the Republican threat of using "the nuclear option" back a few years ago? Well, that's funny, because no one in the media does.

The media is addicted to melodrama. Every event is presented as being epochal and historic until the next shiny thing passes by and all the media outlets run after it with eyes glassed over and mouths contorted in a demented grin. And while Fox News most consciously and energetically piles up the manure, no major media outlets are immune to it. Instead of presenting facts, they present melodramatic fantasies. This is called getting an angle on a story. When in doubt, remember that news is really entertainment.

And so all the headlines spin this particular melodrama as "Health Care Reform Imperiled," which may or may not be true. I think that, were a rigorous study made, it would turn out that the prognosticative power of headlines is almost nonexistent. The health care bill currently blocking the bowels of the Congress may pass or it may not. I don't claim to know. Or care, really. But the thing to remember is that the media doesn't know either.

Now, I don't really care how this bill goes simply because I have no confidence that it will actually accomplish anything even if it becomes law. In my opinion, our health care system needs to be taken apart and reassembled, not tinkered with. To be blunt, you can mold a pile of shit into the likeness of the Venus de Milo, but it is still a pile of shit. I'm not a fan of mandates. I'm not a fan of providing health care through the medium of insurance companies. I don't think that there are any provisions in this bill that will make health care more accessible to rural communities. I don't think it cures the illness, but merely masks the symptoms.

But it is difficult to get a good bill out of the kind of idiot system that we have currently in place. Party and faction outweigh the needs of the People again and again. I say fuck the two-party system. I'm more in favor of a no-party system. Let it be a free-for-all. I suspect that we might get some better laws that way.