When did the current level of debate sink lower than a sea cucumbers fartmaker? When did conversing in order to find a truth or compromise die a messy, painful death and leave a bloated carcass in the sun to mark where a chance for consensus once stood?
It would seem that the current infatuation with anti-intellectual clap-trap snuck up on us, which is embarrassing. It was about as stealthy as one of those giant walking tanks from the last decent Star Wars movie but it ninjaed right up behind the whole country and slapped an atomic wedgie on our best opportunity of improving our culture at the expense of Glenn Beck and Keith Olbermann getting a shoulder ride around the gym while Formal Argument got a swirly in the locker room. And then, suddenly, it stood on our neck and called our mother names. Making a sound argument or appealing to supposedly universal ethics now make you as popular as a cello player at the football rally. How did that happen?
When was it that facts became the mullets of conversation? When was it that opinion came to be a flamethrower with attached shotgun and fact became the annoying hum from your fridge everyone has learned to ignore? What seismic shift occurred that led so many of us to believe that believing was more important than knowing and that knowing had nothing to do with proving? And when did proving come to be considered the social equivalent of spitting in someone else’s Big Gulp?
The surest proof of this final surrender is in the number of people who use the phrase “Nothing can change my mind.” If nothing can change your mind I don’t think you can actually call your skull-filler a mind. Even a rat will take the better way through amaze once it has been made apparent.
However it happened, it is too late to stand around placing blame like an overweight accident investigator. Let us fight back! How? Intolerance! The next time someone insists that their opinion is as valid as any fact treat them like a telemarketer with a lisp and thick accent. And even that is not enough. It is time to start reacting to sound arguments like chocolate in chocolate sauce with a chocolate filling. Congratulate people when you hear them being brave enough to cite a valid source. Give footrubs to the rational, offer a ride to anyone willing to debate clearly. Get out the carrot AND the stick. It isn’t too late.
Showing posts with label belief. Show all posts
Showing posts with label belief. Show all posts
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Health, Terror, Belief.
What is the greater likelihood: that Al Qaida will target your home or that you will be refused medical care?
We have spent the almost eight years being told we should be afraid of Al Qaida coming to get us. Al Qaida has struck no American school, no American home. Refusal to cover basic medical procedures has struck millions. Bankruptcy caused by medical bills strikes more people, more families, everyday. The youngest victim of 9/11 was two, the oldest was 85. Lack of healthcare strikes Americans of every age.
There is no way to absolutely stop terrorism. If some faction, somewhere in the world, decides to strike us there is no way to stop them from driving a car into a gas station, damaging the piers of the bridge you travel most frequently, possibly spreading a silent, invisible disease. These people, filled with hate, can strike you or me.
But you can save me from not having healthcare. You can take preventative measures to protect yourself should you or your spouse lose their jobs and thus lose their health benefits or, at least as common, finding out that the insurance you have paid for year after year just flat refuses to cover a needed procedure or treatment. And it will not slow you down at the airport or keep you from travelling freely. How about we create universal health insurance through the group that has the lowest overhead for such service?
Is any percentage of your income more important than humanitarian care? Does your religion not tell you that you are, indeed, responsible for caring for others? Is your greed for 300 cable channels, a bigger car and another vacation so great that a child should die for it?
You pay for roads and education for others and these things will not prevent an untreated illness form mutating into something that kills a member of your family. Are you so secure in your income and absolute marketability that you are positive you will never need this care? IS your position in life permanent? If it is, feel blessed…and responsible for helping another.
If you are a Christian can you not spare a few more dollars, even a lot more of your paycheck, for others after someone else died for you? Did Christ not compel you to charity? (Matthew 25:31-46) If you are a Muslim does the Zakat not compel you to care for your brother and sister?
I hear a lot that the current proposal is being rushed, but universal healthcare has been near the forefront of political debate since Clinton took office in 1992. That is 17 years, far more time than we have debated our right to start any war. I hear people stating that they support reform but it must be done better than the current plans aims. Does this mean we cannot impose this plan to protect ourselves until you come up with a better one?
Think on it. Think on it without outside influence. Pretend you mother is watching. Know your God is watching.
We have spent the almost eight years being told we should be afraid of Al Qaida coming to get us. Al Qaida has struck no American school, no American home. Refusal to cover basic medical procedures has struck millions. Bankruptcy caused by medical bills strikes more people, more families, everyday. The youngest victim of 9/11 was two, the oldest was 85. Lack of healthcare strikes Americans of every age.
There is no way to absolutely stop terrorism. If some faction, somewhere in the world, decides to strike us there is no way to stop them from driving a car into a gas station, damaging the piers of the bridge you travel most frequently, possibly spreading a silent, invisible disease. These people, filled with hate, can strike you or me.
But you can save me from not having healthcare. You can take preventative measures to protect yourself should you or your spouse lose their jobs and thus lose their health benefits or, at least as common, finding out that the insurance you have paid for year after year just flat refuses to cover a needed procedure or treatment. And it will not slow you down at the airport or keep you from travelling freely. How about we create universal health insurance through the group that has the lowest overhead for such service?
Is any percentage of your income more important than humanitarian care? Does your religion not tell you that you are, indeed, responsible for caring for others? Is your greed for 300 cable channels, a bigger car and another vacation so great that a child should die for it?
You pay for roads and education for others and these things will not prevent an untreated illness form mutating into something that kills a member of your family. Are you so secure in your income and absolute marketability that you are positive you will never need this care? IS your position in life permanent? If it is, feel blessed…and responsible for helping another.
If you are a Christian can you not spare a few more dollars, even a lot more of your paycheck, for others after someone else died for you? Did Christ not compel you to charity? (Matthew 25:31-46) If you are a Muslim does the Zakat not compel you to care for your brother and sister?
I hear a lot that the current proposal is being rushed, but universal healthcare has been near the forefront of political debate since Clinton took office in 1992. That is 17 years, far more time than we have debated our right to start any war. I hear people stating that they support reform but it must be done better than the current plans aims. Does this mean we cannot impose this plan to protect ourselves until you come up with a better one?
Think on it. Think on it without outside influence. Pretend you mother is watching. Know your God is watching.
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