Dr. Evil might be advising Republicans now

Lest anyone be confused about the difference between political parties, we're getting a textbook illustration now with the health care bill. The Democrats, following the ethos of "I am my brother's keeper," realize that the biggest source of our national strength is to ensure the basic health and peace of mind of our citizenry.
Life is messy. People struggle. People become dependent through a whole array of reasons. In many cases a crisis is temporary and in others more long-term. Democrats understand the fundamental importance of a safety net.
And in a country with no apparent overriding outrage over the abuses and corruption on Wall Street, involving dollar figures so wildly high we can't really internalize them, why can't more of us accept the idea of helping average folks along their health care road so anxiety doesn't overcome them? Or personal bankruptcy?
President George W. Bush said the bailout was necessary to keep our financial system from collapsing, but was it possible the emperor wasn't wearing any clothes? Do we really know what the consequences would have been, had Wall Street been forced to deal with the consequences of its shenanigans? Bush asked us to trust him, as with the WMD menace. He carefully phrased his reaction to the financial crisis so that it was based on what his "economic advisors" told him. An umbrella term for faceless technocrats. . . Convenient as scapegoats if needed.
In the wake of the health care bill's passage, Republicans have been predictably behaving like wounded animals. Even worse is the reaction of that party's sycophantic spokesmen in the right wing media. This is a paranoid chorus that treats a little redistribution of wealth like a plague. Congressman Michele Bachmann is a cheerleader.
All Western industrialized democracies are a hybrid of free market capitalist principles and yes, socialistic concepts. What people are getting schooled in now, in case they missed the primer, is the recognizable spots that differentiate the right wing ilk of the Fox News crowd from the more temperate, reasonable faction of the public. This is a faction that isn't mesmerized by political talk in the first place. Richard Nixon might have called them the "silent majority." That majority takes on a decidedly different hue now, granted.
These are people who concede that politics is messy business and that no elaborate framework for political change is going to survive strict scrutiny. Political intervention is flawed because it is enacted by flawed human beings on behalf of other flawed human beings. The old political "earmarks" are evidence of this. The scrutiny afforded by the new media may wipe out earmarks. Hopefully it won't damage something like the health care package, which could probably be tweaked further to help people.
We cannot allow scrutiny of the type laid out by Fox News to try to torpedo the president and the Democratic majority (or "the Democrat majority," as Republicans are wont to say in an imflammatory way, needlessly).
We must not allow the Fox News contingent to impede government intervention when such widespread need is demonstrated. That need has been burgeoning. A health care overhaul is overdue. And it most certainly isn't going to be perfect.
The time came for Social Security and Medicare to be embraced. And each had to climb past hurdles but nothing like Fox News and its hair-on-fire on-air personalities, who manipulate the paranoia that is always out there. It inflames and it's dangerous.
Maybe "Dr. Evil" should go on the air in place of Sean Hannity just to make things perfectly clear. In fact I'm reminded of a Dr. Evil line when I ponder the current behavior of Republicans and their salivating media sycophants like Glenn Beck. Although Beck is more of a loose cannon firing in who-knows-what direction.
As most of us gain the sense that this health care overhaul is "one of those things that simply must be done," the right wing blathers. Like it's scripted. Because really it is. This is just how these people are, defying logic and temperate, sober wisdom.
Why are they so predictable and annoying? Well, as Dr. Evil said to his son Scott when Scott used basic logic to question something his father did: "Let Daddy do his work." (Scott was questioning allowing hero Austin Powers to be escorted away by an "inept guard.")
"Let Daddy do his work" i.e. "This is just what I do, and what I'm expected to do. . . (knee jerk fashion)"
You could insert, instead, Rush Limbaugh and all those cut from that cloth.
Hats off on the herculean task of getting health care reform through, or at least started!
-Brian Williams - Morris mn Minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com