These days I often fear that our nation has reached Terminal Stupidity™. I most especially feel this way when I'm at McDonald's (the only place I ever see Fox News) and I see and listen to otherwise reasonable and sometimes well-meaning people around me repeating the blatant and factually incorrect stupidities coming out of the flat-screens, discussing them matter-of-factly as though there were actually some substance to them.
(Perhaps the very circumstance that I ever find myself eating at such a deadly, stupid-class establishment lends support to my thesis.)
Terminal velocity, as you probably recall, is the speed that cannot be exceeded by a given object in a given environment. For a human in free fall toward the earth, it's about 120 mph. There it is the speed at which air resistance counteracts the force of gravitational acceleration and prevents the object from accelerating any further. So terminal velocity means, in essence, "it just can't get any faster than this."
And thus Terminal Stupidity™ means, in essence, "it just can't get any more stupid than this." (In that sense, it might be considered a profession of hope and optimism.) But it's also akin to terminal illness, meaning, "this stupidity will kill us." Because here is a nation arguing and bickering and spewing invective about the very first baby steps toward fixing the things that are killing our people and our prosperity, problems that if left unsolved will guarantee something close to 2nd-world status for a once-prosperous, once-leading nation. And we can barely get out of the starting blocks in the race for solutions. The clock is running out, we need to be getting close to the finish line, and we're still bickering and brawling about lane positions and jersey numbers.
In the case at hand, I cite all the misinformation and frothy hyperventilation about the bills now being passed. That can largely be summed up in the three words used by politicians and the media alike to describe what is happening: health care reform.
No, all you idiots in the media and the corridors of power! For the overwhelming part, these bills are not about health care reform. They are about health insurance reform. If the government were taking over anything as a result of this legislation -- which it isn't, though we'd probably all be better off if it did -- it would be taking over health insurance. As it happens, health insurance reform is the most urgent need for America, (although scarcely longer term, health care reform is also critical), so these laws are a good thing.
But calling this initiative health care reform provided a golden opportunity for the distortionists in the opposition to poison the public rhetoric with stupid talk about death panels, government taking over health care, yada yada yada. How much of that would have been possible if the discussion had been about reforming health insurance? Some of it, I am sure. But I also think there are many more people in Middle America, or in free fall after having been nudged over the railing of Middle America, who love their doctors while hating their insurance companies, or the insurance companies they used to have the luxury of hating, who would have thought it was actually a good thing for the government to take over health insurance. (Which it isn't doing anyway, but still...)
What will the Democratic majority call their initiative when it actually IS ready to reform the delivery and billing of health care? If we try to call it health care reform then, the stupidity mongers will say, "Didn't you reform that already? If that was a failure, why should we trust you to do it again?"
I heave a cautious sigh of relief that we have gotten this far with the legislation at hand, even though I will have moved/retired to the EU before nearly any of the benefits can begin accruing to my own family. It will save many lives, hopefully even, as I saw one wise person express it, "a 9/11's-worth every month." But when this much resistance and acrimony and ugly compromise was required for this first of countless necessary steps, I have to wonder in all sincerity, will it be possible for a nation like ours to break through the barrier of Terminal Stupidity™?
Have we reached a point at which stupidity can increase no further and may even begin to abate? Has this first step back toward reason and reality broken the fever? Or have we reached a point where stupidity will hold steady until we splat as a nation against the onrushing realities that deniers and distortionists tell us are only conspiracy theories? Or will we accelerate to further stupidities as yet undreamt of?