Sorry... It's been a while since I posted - I've been busy working on a professional certification, to increase my "marketability." (I'm wondering if a new package design or flashy television commercials would also help.) Anyway, now that that's done, I have time to get back to random bloviation.
We should think of the Internet as being a bridge. It connects people to all sorts of information about people, places and things that would otherwise be inaccessible, and, as anyone who has spent much time on internet forums or chat rooms can tell you, it's home to many, many trolls.
As if to demonstrate their complete and total disregard for the general public, Goldman Sachs and Citigroup received shipments of swine flu vaccine, while there are still small-town doctors and public-health clinics that haven't gotten all the doses that they need. And of course, the news media were all over it, making sure that we knew that undeserving banking executives were getting vaccines while there were still poor widows and orphans living in fear of the deadly H1N1 virus.
Except... that's not really the way it went down. The state of New York, having been given the authority to dispense vaccine as they saw fit, allowed large employers to apply for doses, so that they could vaccinate their high-risk employees in the workplaces. Shocking, I know. Of course, this is really only an issue because of the financial crisis. If people weren't currently ready to string up anyone who's ever worked within 100 yards of a bank this wouldn't be all over the papers and the airwaves. And that same impulse to splash this story all over the place is also driving coverage that implies that wealthy bankers are being cared for, while ordinary citizens wait. Never mind the fact that people in the at-risk categories work at banks, and other major employers in New York, like Time Inc. and Columbia University also received doses for their employees. Even reasonably complete stories, like this Associated Press piece tend to play up the fact that Wall Street is receiving vaccine before everyone on Main Street (those Main Streeters who aren't convinced that the vaccine is either absurdly dangerous or a government plot, anyway) has gotten theirs.
As much play as various stories about media outlets being politically biased are receiving, it's important to remember that first and foremost, media is a business, and a business driven by eyeballs. And nothing gathers eyeballs like a controversy, even if the editors have to create one themselves.
Of course, we as the public should know this by now, and not be quite so easily taken in. Fool me once, shame on you - fool me about once a week on an ongoing basis, and I probably really am a fool.
So today I received a flyer from a group calling itself the "Campaign for Responsible Health Care Reform," exhorting me to call a number NOW to register my displeasure with my congresspeople (Representative and Senators). Of course, why it's responsible for me to start calling people simply because someone sends me a flyer in the mail telling me to do so is left unanswered. It turns out that this "Campaign for Responsible Health Care Reform" is an arm of the United States Chamber of Commerce, and an ideological slant was immediately apparent. It turns out that "Real Reform" is this wonderful thing that brings all sorts of benefits, without costing anyone a dime (and, of course, it comes with no details), while what Congress has in mind is just about increasing costs and cutting services.
It's unfortunate that the flyer didn't arrive in time for Halloween - it would have made for a terrifying decoration all by itself.
Of course, in the political scheme of things, someone at the USCoC should be drawn and quartered. The sort of blatant fear-mongering that this flyer represents is a travesty. People should become involved in their government because they understand that it benefits them to be more involved - not because some group with an agenda of its own is spreading fear around like manure. But fear works, and so we're going to see more of it, coming to a mailbox near you.
Now that the Republican Party is turning the long knives on anyone who can even spell the word "Moderate" perhaps it's really time to see a viable third party in American Politics, one that doesn't spend its time pretending that it can appeal both the the extremes and the center. While Ross Douthat thinks that this could be a wonderful job for small regional parties, I disagree with his notion that at the national level, there's only room in this town for two camps.
As anyone who's played Dungeons and Dragons (yes, I'm being uncool again) can tell you, attempting to fit large numbers of people into even nine pigeonholes is a very tough job. Forcing everyone in a nation of 300 million to pick from one of two political positions seems to be a recipe for mass apathy, as people who can't find a home in one or the other simply drop out, pushing both parties to become even more shrill and extreme as they fight to keep the outer edges of the spectrum energized. Of course, adding only a single new party won't put an end to this, but it will allow for those people who have more in common with each other than they have differences to create a organized center that, while not freeing the people from partisanship, will at least create a partisan orthodoxy that doesn't demand that one side only with the political outer reaches.
It's incorrect to think that a nationwide third party will automagically make everything better. It's entirely possible that grouping moderates together could create just as many, if not more, problems than it solves. But, I'm willing to chance it.
Moderates wanted.
