Krugman begins his column in the NYT today as such: "At a recent town hall meeting, a man stood up and told Representative Bob Inglis to “keep your government hands off my Medicare.” The congressman, a Republican from South Carolina, tried to explain that Medicare is already a government program — but the voter, Mr. Inglis said, “wasn’t having any of it.”
Over the years I have encountered a wide range of willful ignorance. Usually such ignorance is related to something quite close to home - one's own behaviour or history (selective memory), the tendency to blind oneself to the negative qualities of loved ones, etc. Second-order examples would include religious and/or nationalistic beliefs that lead one to willfully ignore real-world evidence.
I am, however, astounded by the breathtaking ignorance shown by so much of the U.S. population concerning health care reform. This embarrassing blindness extends from the stop-think dismissal of national health programs in the rest of the industrialised world ("socialist...leading to lines and delayed care...lack of choice...inefficient,etc.") to the current proposals for U.S. reform. A sorry spectacle - millions upon millions of people frothily arguing against programs that would directly benefit them and their loved ones. Opposition to any changes in the current system is understandable from the elite - those wealthy enough to fly over the health care mess and not have their lives conditioned by health care worries, or those who are, and have been enriching themselves at the expense of the not-so-fortunate masses (the entire health care industry). One can understand the reticence of congress members (who belong to the above groups) to stand up to major sources of campaign funding. The moronic posturing, lies and manipulation of Fox news (and similar) is also comprehensible.
But regular Americans?
Yet another hang-over from the Cold War years. Anti-communism as a religion has had a remarkable effect on today's realities, even decades after that absurd ideological overreach has been able to work off any kind of foil. The entire worldwide radical Islam movement (and, consequently, the perversion of western democracy as a reaction) is clearly rooted in "Western" efforts to stimulate and support such movements against "Soviet" interests. Irrational anti-communism also provided political cover and fuel for the insane neo-liberal excesses that led to today's (and, alas, it would seem, tomorrow's) financial problems (in many ways, but most notably in the deregulatory excesses witnessed from the early 80's to last year).
Finally, the anti-communist overreach also created a Frankenstein of anti-government sentiment in the U.S. Just how far will it go, I wonder.
