WHAT KEEPS US AWAKE NIGHTS

Posted on August 17, 2009


“Unsettling” is the best word for it. I and many others first felt the sting of a layoff almost one year ago. It doesn’t seem possible. Yet in reviewing my medical bills it confirms the time that has passed and that most office visits were the result of some condition or other the roots of which could be traced back to tension. For $300, I am now the proud owner of a night guard to prevent damage from teeth grinding.

The statistics on the nightly news have been like Chinese water torture  – a phrase that readily comes to mind in honor of our fiscal saviors. Surrounding the litany of numbers are sound bites from the mouths of Congressional representatives and their queen bee, Nancy Pelosi; from the various Czars appointed to oversee every aspect of our existence and from the daily debriefer-in-chief, the Presidential Press Secretary.

By now most of us are well aware of the bottom line about the party line:  it’s what is not being said or reported that is directing the course of the nation. The health care reform bills (Senate and House) are a case in point. Both bills are very vague in critical areas. There is, as in any legislation, ample room for amendments. But the bills are not the big problem. The truly big problem is that the President and Congress went on August recess prepared to sell a pig in a poke. While they were on the hustings,  that bone of contention – end of life counseling – was quietly considered dead in the water among Senators. Will the House follow?

Here are those hardy reps facing down their constituents at town hall meetings acoss the land with no hope of educating or persuading any among them because, well, Congress does not yet know what it is doing vis a vis health care reform.  They still have to hammer out the shape and form of a single bill.  In effect, all of August we will be arguing over uncertainties and wasting everybody’s time.

To think that those who govern us would even consider taking this show on the road defies logic. I would think I was probably the one out of my mind were it not for the yelling and the screaming from some of my fellow citizens. It got my attention and got me thinking. Perhaps it did a lot of others since support for the phantom final bill has slipped away to negligible numbers.

I think the end result of all of the above is that we citizens in our various groups throughout the country have noted the confusion at the core of our government and have finally found our collective voices. This is the bright spot in an otherwise gloomy future we were all anticipating. We aren’t quite ready for socialist prime time. We will consider revisions but not revolution.

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