Midlife And Treachery

To those who wish Natoma hadn’t been ‘used’ by the President

March 16, 2010 at 6:45 AM (Uncategorized) (Countdown, HCR, Health Care Reform, Laurence O'Donnel, Michael Moore, Natoma)

the voices of the ill, speaking their own truth about their own situation are not to be heard in the debate on HCR…because…they wrote a letter to the President?

I was calm last night, but here I go wading in.

Pardon me.  I should have realized that the great and most important framing of  this health care debate was set  to be certain to take actual first hand accounts right out the door if they don’t support a particular ideological position.

No, health care debate was the spark that lit what’s really important?

It became important to stare at the Teabaggers in disbelief.

It became important to jeer at the fearfulness of Conservadems and Republicans (and that’s fun, but missing the point.)

It became important to distance oneself from people’s suffering, if staring at that too long made anyone second guess their positions.

I’ll respect any ‘kill the bill’ position that comes from a person without access to care that is dealing with a chronic condition or illness. That says, “I’d rather risk going without longer than passing this bill. I’ve seen some.  That argument, I get.  I disagree with it, but I get it.

If you’re waiting for the chemo, the surgery, the long term disease management that you really need, and you agree with Kucinich and Moore, and other folks that are adamant against anything this flawed becoming law.  You’re willing to risk the worsening of your impairment by kicking this beginning further down the road….I look across the divide and salute you. I disagree with that position, but I respect it.

However…I’d imagine there’s another subset out there.

Folks who want to kill the bill for progressive reasons… who are:

1. Healthy

and

1. Insured at the moment.

and

1. Have not yet experienced serious health issues in a loved one or friend.

When I hear those voices, I think…”They don’t have all the story.  They understand it intellectually, but not viscerally.”

It feels to me like men seeing no disconnect when they say they should have jurisdiction of women’s bodies. , or white people weighing in on people of color’s positions without much knowledge, or straights putting GLBT issues at the bottom of a stack. Or, my tribe, people with disabilities, being asked to wait for the most basic freedoms of all, because it was too hard to pass the Community Choice Act.

I’ll stop at the edge here, and not say what I wish that subset of people would do.

I’ll end this on a positive note.

Laurence O’Donnell, one of the inside the beltway experts on procedure that has been hammering away at why the system in Congress could make the present process disintegrate…up till now his own experiences with the last failure on this, and possibly ego, made him seem invested in killing the bill for what I see as a  bizzare reason…a kind of “The bill has to die, because the one I worked on died, and here, let me show you how.”

I think Laurence  had a bit of a wake up call last night on Countdown looking at the check that Michael Moore wrote, to help fund free clinics…

I think he understood that the debate has become unbalanced, and that more Natoma’s  voices need to be heard as this comes down to the wire.  That it should be more about personal stories than it has been.

God, I’m tired.

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