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I can't help but think of the seasonal Lemming migrations when you state "It is at least an ADVANCE." I am reasonably certain, given the number of lemmings involved, that there would be some who would ask (of whatever other lemmings are in charge), "Why are we doing this? Is this really a good idea?"
Given the fact that a great number of lemmings go hurtling to their deaths, or otherwise perish, during these seasonal rodent stampedes, it seems quite reasonable for the lemming proletariat to question the lemming leaders regarding the wherefores and whys of such lethal mass movements. Yet, each year these lemming hordes repeat the same disastrous act that killed so many of their kin just the year before.
What must be the compelling advice that the lemming leaders repeat, yearly, when all the Enlisted Lemmings cock their heads to the side, squint at their Lemming officers and ask, "Oh, yeah? You sure about this? Seems to us that this is the wrong way to go! This isn't what we started out to get. This isn't in our game plan."
Two things are certain:
1)Whatever answer is given by the Lemming officers, it works every time.
2)Whatever goal the lemmings start out with each year, they always fail to make it.
Considering these two givens, I wonder if the final answer given by the Lemming leaders is not something like "It is at least an ADVANCE.". And, for whatever inexplicable reason, the Lemming Army instantly forgets their historical 0-28,500 yearly success record while using the "Advance" advice and rushes headlong to plunge over the cliffs.
Perhaps the Lemmings have simply forgotten that the purpose of having goals is to achieve them? If so, let us hope that we in the US prove to be human rather than Lemmings because, if so, we might learn from both experience and logic, and avoid repeating disastrous strategies.
I have grown quite tired of hearing our leaders repeat the mantra "Don't make the perfect the enemy of the good." Why? Because such advice counsels us all that there should be no political or moral absolutes. That advice, when followed, leaves everything to be ground out in the sausage-making process of drafting and passing laws and, thus, values the results solely upon the basis of perceived political advantage (i.e., "it would drive a stake into the hearts of the RePukes.") When we resort to that type valuation then we become worse than the GOP.
Why? Because we then abandon the concept of legislating on the basis of what is right and what is wrong. Indeed, the GOP constantly uses this "good" vs. "bad" choice against us and does so successfully. But the difference between their "good" and "bad" and our own is that what they perceive as "right or wrong" is nearly always based solely upon their own selfish interests and motives, while we Democrats (hopefully) put the Common Weal and General Welfare of our nation and fellow citizens above our own selfish interests.
If their (the GOP's) "rights and wrongs" wind up hurting other Americans outside their own selfish circles, then they fail to see that as a "wrong". Instead they see it as something that is simply "unfortunate" and, probably, "unforeseen". The trashing of the Appalachians by sawing off the mountaintops for coal or filling up the Tennessee Valleys with toxic sludge, while endangering the local citizenry, are cases in point).
Indeed, GOP-touted Free Enterprise Capitalism, uses "corporate persons" to create profit for shareholders while shielding those same shareholders from individual legal responsibility arising from any illegal acts of the "corporate person". And all the while these "corporate persons" allow shareholders to amass unlimited profits while limiting shareholder losses to the amount actually invested.
The GOP sees nothing "bad" or "wrong" with having a corporation that, in the pursuit of profit for its owners, just happens to ruin the homes and environs of the humans who live in proximity to these disasters. After all, that "corporate person" is just trying to make a profit. And, unlike humans, the only "corporate sin" is a failure to make a profit.
So, do we rationally thinking Democrats really believe there are no areas where "the perfect vs. the good" meme is simply a stupid, if not immoral, stance to take?
How about the issue of woman's suffrage? Should we have compromised on that? How about on the Civil Rights Act? Should LBJ have given the Right Wing a "phase-in" period on, say, poll taxes for, say, 50 years in order make that epic legislation easier to pass?
To make this question, in regard to "the perfect vs. the good" meme, an absolute black and white choice, let's look back on the issue of slavery.
What if Lincoln and the Republican Party, in order to make Abolition more palatable to the South and to allow for a "bipartisan effort" to avert the oncoming American Civil War, had offered to allow for the "phasing in" of Abolition over (say) 40 years, with slavery finally ending in the South onJanuary1, 1900. After all, that also would have been "at least an ADVANCE."
Another ADVANCE might have been introducing Abolition by forbidding the birth of African-Americans (or anyone, for that matter) into the condition of slavery, but with the proviso that those already in servitude would remain so. That proviso might well have been justified with the reasoning that the freeing any of those already in bondage would make the US guilty of seizure of the "personal property" of its citizens, even if that "personal property" was comprised of other human souls.
In such a compromise, Abolition would come slowly but surely. Both North and South would claim "It is at least an ADVANCE" and both could claim, loudly and proudly, that "No man, woman or child will ever again enter into slavery on the soil of these United States".
Sounds good, doesn't it? And it would have been an advance, wouldn't it? But, if that bipartisan option had actually been available to them, the South might well have entertained such a compromise with the North. And the institution of slavery would finally have had a stake driven through its heart. And that would have been a "good" thing.
But we are looking at the issue of "the perfect being the enemy of the good".
Obviously, such an ending of slavery should be considered a "good" thing, if imperfect. But a compromise that ended slavery via such a gradual process, though guaranteeing that "No man, woman or child will ever again enter into slavery on the soil of these United States", would have been so imperfect that it would have been an eternal embarrassment to our nation. Consider the down side to the bargain.
If the Congress of 1860 had struck such a bargain and passed bipartisan legislation which, by definition, must be a "good" thing for ending the institution of slavery in the manner above, it would also have provided an historical legacy which would have shamed our nation for decades, if not centuries.
How so?
Though a compromise such as the one above might well have entirely prevented the Civil War and its half million attendant deaths, it would also have assured thatevery single individual who was born a slave would remain one until death. Now wouldn't that be a legacy for us all. The last born slave of, say, 1860 would have died by 1970, at the latest.
Now picture a USA where most baby boomers would have had grandparents who were slaveowners (or could have been, if they wished to be). And that would be the price for insisting on legislation that is "perfect" rather than simply "good" or "good enough".
The pending bill Health Care bill in the House may have some good elements in it but it is nothing like what it should be and we all know that.. sadly. To push, as you seem to be doing, for a bill that is certainly not perfect, and hardly even beneficial to the general populace, merely to take "an opportunity for a major political win and an advance for the nation", requires a LOT of self-delusion.
It would be better for all of us to ask ourselves how we stand to benefit from this bill, if at all. To read the main points and see that the insurance industry has complete control of this process of legislating. There is no voice of the people in the proposed laws, at all. The bill is a farce.
I've grown tired. But the points I made are there. And this is simply a black and white issue. The legislation which will be voted upon is either "good" or "bad".
And though you say "It will not be the last step", you are wrong. When the industry has the power, as it does at this point, to make us entertain these cobbled together bits and pieces as if there was some comprehensive reform, has guaranteed that they have the power to draw a line in the sand for the American public cross. And they have done so!
There is no justification for an industry to add 35% overhead for profit, lobbying, ads, etc. when a single payer can cut that 35% to nothing. And do so fairly. When each citizen has no public option available to them to choose from, no single payer system available, and an agenda set by corporate health pirates, it is time to get smart, not deluded into thinking "This is the best we can get".
I suggest we ask the Lemming Kings to give us what we wished for initially, or tell us why not. We want Universal Coverage, public option, single-payer system. Let the Lemming Kings tell us why they can't deliver. And, regardless of why that is, we need to get a new bunch of LemmingLeaders.
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