Olbermann
Olbermann’s hourlong exposition drew power from being personal, arising from his experience helping his ailing father. All the more so, he explained, because he’s in the uncommon position of being able to afford whatever care and treatment his father might need.
Here’s a small but especially evocative sample of what the host of MSNBC’s Countdown had to say.
The resources exist for your father and mine to get the same treatment to have the same chance and to both not have to lie there worried about whether or not they can afford to live!
Afford to live? Are we at that point? Are we so heartless that we let the rich live and the poor die and everybody in between become wracked with fear — fear not of disease but of Deductibles? Right now, right now, somebody’s father is dying because they don’t have that dollar to spend. And the means by which the playing field is leveled, and the costs that are just as inflated to me as they are to you are reduced, and the money that I don’t have to spend any more on saving my father can go instead to saving your father — that’s called health care reform!
Death is the issue. How can we not be unified against death? I want my government helping my father to fight death! I want my government to spend taxpayer money to help my father fight to live and I want my government to spend taxpayer money to help your father fight to live! I want it to spend my money first on fighting death. Not on war! Not on banks! Not on high speed rail!
If you missed the broadcast, do follow the link. Olbermann’s whole commentary is there, in text form and videos. Watch it, reflect on it and recommend it to others.
And, keep what Olbermann said in mind when someone bellyaches about health care reform being just another big-government scheme, a political ploy, too costly or unnecessary.
A final thought: Here’s hoping President Obama saw, or will see, Olbermann’s commentary, along with a handful of Democratic senators who need to start acting like Democrats.
When one heard Cantor’s exhortations to a woman with cancer to go find some charity to help her, the words of Ebenezer Scrooge could clearly be heard in the background.
America has a mean and selfish element to it. Without the meanness and selfishness, the Rushpubliscum Party would cease to exist.
When the American myth centers around the bullshit notion of rugged individualism, it’s not surprising this meanness and selfishness is so rampant.
” ‘Are we so heartless that we let the rich live and the poor die…’ ” This, of course, is nothing new, but is the history of Western civilization. Absurdly, many of the wealthy feel self-made and morally superior, believing that “poor” is a moral condition that people bring on themselves (akin to the myth of “rugged individualism” that Randal mentions). Thus, the poor do not die in this scenario, they commit suicide and the world is cleansed. (Oddly, the poor never actually seem to die off and go away, the fervent end-point of this scenario.)
I think the one stunning point he made was that in just a few years we will have a system that will be equal to what it was when Dickens was alive. The thought echos: “Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?”
Have we become that uncivil and that greedy?
JR, Randal, Jeff and Demeur, thanks for excellent comments.
Rugged individualism was a fine characteristic of adventuresome people who voluntarily left the relatively safe and familiar populated areas of the East to move West in early America, seeking a new life on an untamed frontier. But even there, there were plenty of times when people helped each other out.
Life in a civilized society must be communitarian. We must give up some rights and prerogatives to be able to get along, to live safely and decently elbow to elbow in cities and suburbs. We must also do some sharing, lest the environment we live in become blighted with squalor, disease, tribalism and fits of runaway violence.
Call me a bleeding heart or maybe a Christian, but I believe we must do some sharing lest we become slaves to our own greed and selfishness, and set examples of those things our kids will emulate and perhaps be worse about — to their ultimate grief.
I can think of few more essential things where sharing is called for than health care — the fight against death Olbermann talked about.
What the Rushpubliscums and their healthscare stooges don’t understand is that we simply do not live in a society where the so-called “rugged individualism” is going to work. We’re not all subsistence farmers, working our own plots of land. That means that nearly every one of us is dependent on the rest of us; I depend on a farmer to produce the grooceries that he depends on me to buy, and many a domestic and foreign concern depends on my ability to do my job well. Break something in this chain of interdependence, and we all suffer; in my own case, if I get sick, people I work for and with will be immediately impacted (which I suppose makes me more important than Mark Sanford,) and they in turn are liable to not be able to do what they have to do in a timely manner. My health is not just my problem, and that goes for nearly all of us.
I took your advice and watched Olbermann’s Show, he was speaking from a personal point of view and he translated it well to apply to all of us. Remarkable.
The house democrats should be locked in a room and forced to watch it over and over.
Thanks for posting that, SW. I had heard about Olbermann’s show last night, but didn’t have a chance to look it up for myself. It was indeed a good piece, and Olbermann should be proud of himself for being one of the few voices of reason, on either side.
Our society has certainly degenerated in the past few decades. I blame Reagan. In the broadest possible sense of blame.
J.R., you’re right. Very few of us live and work on the land any more. When times are tough we can’t eat from our harvest and the pigs and chickens we’ve raised. Nearly all adults under 62 are dependent on businesses for paychecks. Businesses exist to maximize profits in good times and minimize losses in bad times. They’re not about seeing to it people can keep a roof over their heads and food on the table. Thus, when the economy tanks and unemployment assistance isn’t adequate, it falls on those who have to help those without, with government as the intermediary.
Health care insurance has become such a racket that too many can’t depend on it even if they can afford it, and upwards of 40 million can’t afford it. The system we have now for helping those without is inadequate, wasteful and unsustainable. Something’s got to give. This time, it had better be the insurance industry, the resenters and conservative ideologues. They’ve had their way all along, and look at the result: 45,000 Americans die yearly for lack of medical care they couldn’t afford.
Holte, thanks for seeing what Olbermann had to say. I wish he could address a joint session of Congress.
Bee, the so-called Reagan revolution advanced and legitimized greed-is-good notions while beginning 30 years of dismantling vital and hard-won reforms and safeguards. Most of us are suffering the predictable result, although a few, like big-bank executives and the sharp operators of Wall Street, are enjoying predictable benefits.
Just never forget that Reagan didn’t do it alone. He won the presidency and had millions cheering him on. Ditto for Bushes 41 and 43, and to a lesser extent, Clinton.
Very powerful speech by Olbermann.
It’s a terrible commentary on our society that we’re in this predicament right now; that we let it happen. Imagine the tragedy of hearing your doctor give a terrible diagnosis about yourself or a loved one, and having this horror compounded with thoughts of “are we gonna lose the house?”
Thanks for posting this. I’ll go to the link and watch Olbermann’s show – I had heard about it but hadn’t had the opportunity to watch it on the night it was broadcast.
All of the comments are spot on and I can just add John Donne’s famous quote, “No man is an island, entire of itself…any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”
Tom, that people let this happen is proof, to my mind anyway, that as a people we have too little real knowledge and understanding of history, and are much to subject to electing handsome, likable, well-promoted dolts to leadership. In 1980, Americans elected and supported a likable dolt who made clear he was all about dismantling reforms and protections erected over four and a half decades — and the people foolishly cheered him and his wrecking crew on. Those American voters were mostly too young to remember the Great Depression and how it came about. They saw themselves getting rich and being in a big way the beneficiaries of GOP favor-the-wealthy, trickle-down, laissez-faire policies.
I wonder how many, if any, of those people have any inkling now about how badly they’ve screwed up, screwed their own sons and daughters, by electing Reagan and two Bushes.
Maugirl, thanks for reading here and following the link. Donne’s statement is indeed beautifully appropriate.