Cup of Tea?

Boston is proud of being the cradle of liberty and freedom, the most important American values; even the license plates of Massachusetts say “Spirit of America”. One can say that it was here that the history of independent America starts. Indeed, one of the founding myths of the country is about the Boston Tea Party, the iconic moment of the resistant movement. In 1773 as an action against the British government, heavily taxed tea was destroyed and thrown into water in the Boston Harbour. Today we are witnessing another kind of a tea party movement growing in the USA, but I hope this one is not leading to a revolution.

The replacement of the late Ted Kennedy by the hard-core Republican Scott Brown in the senate was a shock in the state that is considered as one of the most Democrat and liberal in the USA. Together with the rise of the Tea Party movement, it has been one of the big political topics of the year. I had been quite comfortable with the observations of my political environment (Obama ‘08 bumper stickers, Harvard intellectuals, legacy of the Kennedys) until I read about the contemporary Tea Party (see article in the New Yorker). Even when ignoring the goofiest climate change sceptics, creationists, and pro-life activists of the movement, it presents ideas difficult to understand from a Nordic welfare state perspective as they are against all kind of social spending.

Last Saturday, a day before yesterday’s exciting vote on the Obama health bill, some people had gathered in front of the Boston city hall to demonstrate against the health care plan that would guarantee health insurance for millions of uninsured Americans. At first, it was an entertaining sight, but eventually the horrifying reality behind it shocked me: the man carrying the sign “don’t spread my wealth, spread my work ethic” was actually being serious. What kind of people would spend the beautiful and sunny Saturday in order to manifest against everybody’s right to health care? Something I learnt already during my first year of social policy studies was that the health care system in the USA, excuse my French, sucks: it is the most expensive in the developed world and has huge gaps in coverage. Taking away universal access to health care in Europe would be unimaginable; here 50 million people are without health insurance. Hard to imagine how it is to call your parents: “Mum, you need to sell the car and the TV, I broke my arm…”

New York Times reported a Republican asking the Democrats yesterday: “Are you so arrogant that you know what’s best for the American people?” I’m out of words and I shouldn’t even bother because the whole health care discussion has been so unbelievably stupid and frustrating that no logical arguments seem to work (it’s like following the comments on newspapers' on-line discussions). Call it arrogance or elitism, but yes, those people not needing to sell their house in order to cure cancer in the future will be better off.

Here's Mike Peters' cartoon (in the New York Times) mocking the country's possibly greatest idiot, the conservative libertarian Glenn Beck who hosts a TV show (Fox News Channel, of course) where he presents his dilusions about a maoist-nazi-stalinist plot that is taking over the USA in the form of Obama government (What more do you need as proof than a proposal for almost unversal health care? Of course, discourse on social justice leads to dictatorship.) Jon Stewart dismantles his arguments using Beck's own corrupt logic in Daily Show (a part of it shown below), it is hilarious. Or actually, it is pretty shocking, because Glenn Beck really exists and lots of people probably believe in what he's saying (and not just probably because his book "Arguing with Idiots" is a New York Times #1 best-seller, though, I don't know if the title is referring to himself and his followers in the Tea Party movement) even if he sounds more like a parody in a sitcom.