The State of Politics in This Brave New World

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I am not a health care analyst. Although I dabbled in macro health-related policy in graduate school, I could tell you very little about the intricacies of our health care system. But this post really doesn't have much to do with health care policy, rather it's my take as to how we got to where we are today.
 
In many of my previous posts, some of you may have noticed that I'm not one to take partisan sides on the issues that I write about. Truthfully, I've worked very hard to remain as objective as possible. Today, however, I'm going to have to be a bit partisan, and I hope you won't think less of me for it.
 
The health care bill the President signed the other day is a terrible one. I realize that a few of you (at least according to the polls) might have decided to stop reading at the previous sentence. That's too bad, because as you'll find in the remainder of this missive, I am neither interested, nor sufficiently prepared, to give you a detailed accounting of why I think this bill is a mistake. I will say it is my strong belief that it will make health care more artificially expensive than it would have been had we done nothing at all.
 
Instead, to continue along this partisan line, I am going to share with you a bit of my anger and frustration with my fellow "right-leaning" constituency. While there seem to be many people in the country that might fit that description thanks to this absurd legislation, I don't consider most of those individuals as card-carrying members. No, the folks I'm speaking of are the ones that believe that Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity speak the gospel truth, seek enlightenment from blogs like RedState, or are ready and willing to vote for Sarah Palin because she's not an "elitist."
 
They were the ones that you might have seen protesting last weekend and accused of all kinds of terrible things. Whether the news media got it right when they reported that "Tea Party" protesters were shouting racial epithets or harassing our brave Congressmen as they strolled triumphantly to their ivory tower, I couldn't tell you. What I can tell you, though, is that the majority of these individuals are hypocrites and they have no one but themselves to blame for this health care disaster.
 
The fact is that legislation of this magnitude and stupidity could have only been made possible under one condition: a decisive victory in the previous election by the Democratic party. Just how could such a victory have ensued? It's been my humble belief that it was thanks in large part to the previous Republican administration that horribly mismanaged the governing of this nation.
 
For many of you reading this, that might make a bit of sense. You lived through the Bush presidency, and from both Republicans and Democrats, a collective sigh of relief could be heard when those years were over. Indeed, there are a lot of legitimate reasons to dislike the previous administration. So many in fact that the American people handed the Democratic party one of its largest victories in the history of the Republic. But if you were marching in that protest on Sunday afternoon, chances are you wouldn't have been tuned into just how much this country wanted to part ways with President George W. Bush and his defenders.
 
You see, this group of individuals doesn't see the Bush years for what they were to everyone else. In their mind the Bush administration was doing the "right thing" -- the always popular defense of scoundrels. During the time when Bush was President of the United States, these individuals would defend just about anything the administration did, whether it was dumping buckets of money on farmers, creating a whole new Medicare entitlement, wiretapping Americans, or simply ignoring Afghanistan to the point where the Taliban has once again become a threat.
 
And they are still defending those disastrous years, because they can only view them through the lens of the current administration. In other words, because certain things are worse than they were during the Bush years, that somehow makes those years successful. As a psychology major, I can understand that kind of thinking--it's similar to what Russians went through following the collapse of the Soviet Union when they told the Western press they yearned for the days of Stalin.
 
Despite that, it's almost as if we're having to live through those eight years again. The Republican leadership of the House of Representatives and the Senate, guilty of completely abdicating their Constitutional responsibilities, is largely unchanged. Outside of the government, prominent right-wing talking heads spend their time defending the Bush years. For every honest commentator like George Will, there are a dozen or so Karl Rove proteges (including the "Architect" himself). And then of course there's the Internet chatter, which seems to have grown even nuttier in defense of the Bush administration policies since the helicopter left the parking lot of the House of Representatives.
 
Which brings me back to the health care bill, and what it means for the future of this nation. As with any piece of legislation, there are certain to be winners and losers. From my estimation, the losers are going to outnumber those winners -- and, oh, by the way, those losers also happen to be more likely to vote. That leads me to believe the next round of elections is going to be a disaster for the Democratic party. And should promises remain unfulfilled and costs continue to rise, 2012 could very well signal the end of the Obama administration.
 
Yet, for the reasons above, I can't say I'm terribly excited by the prospects that my party may assume control of this country once again. That's not to say I'm happy with the status quo, but I am particularly concerned about those lessons that continue to go unlearned with respect to U.S. foreign and defense policy that have both endangered the Republican party, and far more importantly, our nation.
 
As this week's events demonstrated, the party in power cares more about their own political agenda than they do the real problems of this nation. That is no different than what happened during the Bush years. And based on most of the rhetoric that I've heard from both sides, it doesn't look like that's going to change anytime soon. Our nation suffers as a result.
 
Read more on the health care debate from YPNation.
 
(Photo credit: dbking; C.C. 2.0; Glenn Beck fans at a Tea Party Protest)