Robot Heart: Sex, Religion, and Politics

Wherein I Account For My Alleged Regurgitation of Right-Wing Rhetoric

jeffmiller:

Contrary to the implication above, I do not want to see people go without healthcare.  I just believe that the Government cannot create a system that will do a better job than the market at delivering healthcare to people.  You might think I’m wrong, or I’m stupid, or I’m ignorant for believing this … but it’s not fair to suggest that I’m heartless.  And your characterization of my views … with the fake quotes and cruel adjectives … well, I really think it’s a shame that you’re so committed with certainty of your own point of view that you can’t believe anyone might honestly and compassionately hold another.

But with very clear evidence that the market can’t deliver health care to millions of people, and certainly not at the best price, how can you justify standing behind it if your interest is truly in ensuring health care? And I’m not just talking about ensuring that health care maintains a certain degree of quality for a certain group of people.

And on the whole, yes, I do respect you and even if I disagree with you, I think you’ve researched your opinions and you’ve got good reasons for thinking the way you think. On health care, I feel you are off-base and even though I think your opinions on health care are incredibly misguided (primarily because you dismiss or write-off many of the huge negatives and gaps in service in the health care system as is, while being irrationally fearful of almost any alternatives) for the most part I’m willing to chalk it up to a policy debate and not make character judgments based on it.

The thing that really gets me, though, about this specific conservative talking point about how heartless Obama is because he’s not willing to provide the same health care to everyone that he has himself, is that it is so incredibly hypocritical. Most of the rhetoric on healthcare from the right has consistently been about maintaining or creating a system where the best healthcare will still go to the wealthy and the poorest will not have access at all. To draw attention to the inequities present in Obama’s proposal, with that faux gasp of shock (and perhaps you aren’t doing that, but certainly those you quote and others using this rhetoric are), while ignoring the inequities in the systems they themselves propose or support…well… While I think your position on this issue is more the result of, I’m sorry to say it, ignorance—in some ways willfully so, and in other ways very genuinely not—than callousness, and I’m sorry for the negative portrayal of your opinions, it doesn’t stop the commentary itself, from you or anyone else, from being strikingly hypocritical.