Are the Americans Really that Crazy?

I am utterly shocked at how the US seems to have devolved into insanity during this debate healthcare.

I admit I liked Sarah Palin when she first surfaced in US national politics, but she is clearly WAYYYY out there and I made a mistake in my assessments of her. Her opposition to the health care bill is beyond anything I can understand.

I also have to admit that I admire Obama more than I expected to. My major concern about Obama was his complete lack of executive experience. To get the health care bill passed is an amazing accomplishment. He has also governed in general as a thoughtful leader of the country and not as a partisan small minded moron - eight years of that was enough for anyone.

The health care bill is far from perfect, but it certainly is a dramatic improvement over what the US has now. The cost to the US of all the uninsured is huge for numerous economic reasons. Lack of access to decent health care increased rates of poverty in the US.

The evidence is out there to clearly show that health care in Canada has delivered better outcomes than the US system even though we spend a lot less on health care in Canada. Canadians about 1/2 of the Americans have access to the same type of health care. Some Americans have access to better health care, but the Americans that had access to no health care or bad health care have had measurable outcomes in the overall health of the US.

The over the top response to the health care bill by the Republicans is depressing. Are there no Republicans that see the benefit for this law? Has the whole party take a stupid pill? It may not all be the health care bill.

This piece in the New Yorker suggests that the issue is one of disenfranchisement by the traditional heterosexual white males in Washington.

Being in Canada where almost no one cares if a politician is gay or straight, what their race is or if they are a women, it is hard to understand that there is a backlash in the US to having a black president, a women speaker of the house and a powerful gay congressman.

If there were an opposition in Canada based on race, sexuality or gender, one would expect to see that from the Conservatives. But the Conservatives had people from all three categories run for them in the last election. Canada is a country with very few Jewish people and in the west they are really rare, but we have had a Jewish premier of BC and Alberta, though most people do not know because religion is not an issue in Canada (for the record the premiers were Barrett and Klein)

The TPGBSD (Tea Party Glenn Beck Stupid Disease) that is infecting the US right at epidemic levels is something I can simply not understand. The US Republics are rapidly going to push themselves off into an extremist corner and will be slaughtered in the fall elections.

Yes, at the moment their anger is giving the right a bump, but by November TPGBSD will run its course in the general public and only remain in small pockets where the people reinfect themselves over and over again. Irrational opposition will only make Obama and Pelosi look better and will push the public away from the Republicans.

The Americans are not crazy, they are just suffering from this current illness. It will pass by the fall.