Posted on 04/24/2014 10:56:05 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
I fear that the president declared a premature victory for the Affordable Care Act when he said that its initial goals were met, it was time to move on to other matters, and the idea of repealing it is no longer feasible. He made the mistake of thinking that facts matter when a cult is involved. Obamacare is now, for many, haloed with hate, to be fought against with all one’s life. Retaining certitude about its essential evil is a matter of self-respect, honor for one’s allies in the cause, and loathing for one’s opponents. It is a religious commitment.
I am reminded of an exchange that took place between the historian Francis Russell and John Dos Passos. In 1920, two Italian anarchists—Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti—were accused of killing a security guard and an employee of a shoe factory during a payroll robbery to finance their political subversions. Their trial, which resulted in murder convictions for both, was manifestly unfair, and it caused an eruption of sympathy and protest on the left.
Celebrities around the world rushed to the two men’s defense. One of the leaders in this movement, who wrote extensively about the case, was the novelist Dos Passos. Nonetheless, the two men were executed in 1927.
But in the 1960s Francis Russell produced new ballistics tests and interviews to prove that one man, Sacco, had killed the two men at the shoe factory; the other, Vanzetti, was innocent. He tried to show this evidence to Dos Passos, who had given up his leftist ideas by that time. Dos Passos told Russell he could not even hear evidence that would unsettle his personal stake in the matter. He had invested too much of his youthful energy and self-esteem in the case to reopen it even for the slightest reconsideration. It would destroy his very identity, which had been tied up in that passionate commitment.
That is the way people cling with ardor to causes they have felt honor-bound to maintain. In the mid-term elections this fall, evidence will matter little to the opponents of Obamacare. Like Dos Passos, they will refuse to consider anything that goes against their devotion. Such people understandably think their own best self was given over to defeating the hated thing. It is not only a matter of self-respect but of commitment to others. Dos Passos had crusaded with some of his most treasured friends for Sacco and Vanzetti. Some truly despicable people had been on the other side, tainting it forever in his mind. The case was, moreover, symbolic of other commitments—to the right to a fair trial, to immigrant rights, to free speech—which he could not dislodge by removing one brick from the structure.
That kind of commitment looks all the nobler to those preserving it as they resist attacks. I presume that Obamacare will become just successful enough to endure after adjustments and repair; but that will not make it any less hated by the people who have spent years encouraging each other to inveigh against it in extreme exercises of vilification (death panels, socialism, destruction of the Constitution, etc.). We have to remember that Social Security remained hated long after its success made it undislodgeable. As a symbol of the New Deal, Republicans have tried to defeat it down through the decades. Paul Ryan is still at it. George W. Bush tried to use his re-election mandate to privatize it. Once such a cause is made sacred by sacrificing for it, it will remain a cult object forever.
The irrelevance of evidence in the face of sacred causes explains the dogged denial of global warming, the deep belief that the Obama Administration was responsible for the killing of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens in Benghazi and that Obama is not a legitimate American. To go back farther, it explains the claims that FDR arranged for the attack on Pearl Harbor and gave much of the world away to Stalin at Yalta (an idea Joe Scarborough is still clinging to). Repealing Obamacare will eventually go the way of repealing the New Deal. But the opposition will never fade entirely away—and it may well be strong enough in this year’s elections to determine the outcome. It is something people are willing to sacrifice for and feel noble about. Creeds are not built up out of facts. They are what make people reject all evidence that guns are more the cause of crime than the cure for it. The best preservative for unreason is to make a religion of it.
Short books for a short mind.
Even if Obama are provided benefit to a majority of Americans not at the expense of the others, it would still be repugnant because it puts healthcare under the control of the state. That will not change because some people benefit.
He made the mistake of thinking that facts matter when a cult is involved>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Yes, a cult of freedom, which created a nation and wrote the greatest national document in history, The Constitution of The United States of America.
These Coercive Utopians can ram all of the “false facts” and “lies” they want down the throats of Americans, but the cult of freedom will never die without a fight.
The translation should read: “ Obama Propaganda Fails to hoodwink America into accepting Obamacare.”
How is this ANY DIFFERENT than PROHIBITION?
We haven't been free to choose what and how for over a hundred years now!
The dems assured the demise of 0bamacare by the way they “passed” it.
It will not stand. No sir.
Gary Wills is a perpetually self righteous lefty geek. Truth is an inconvenience to him. He is Walter Duranty redux
Garry Wills-idiot!
Ah, still clinging to the opiate of the masses, are we? To the camps with you, bud!
I was at a non profit organization dinner last night seated across from a Harvard professor. He pontificated on the success of Obamacare. I responded with facts including my own situation — cancelled private insurance policy, 51% increase in premium to get an ACA compliant private policy with less coverage, finding the closest bronze plan on the exchange offering less coverage and even higher premiums than the private substitute.
After a few minutes of back and forth dialog in which repeated the White House talking points about the 8 million signups and all of the people who now had access to medical care, he realized he was confronted by someone armed with facts who would night yield. He then dismissed me say, “You are an outlier. The noise level from the GOP has stopped so the ACA must be working. You can afford to pay the higher premiums so you should just accept that you are an exception and move on.”
I asked if if it occurred to him the noise level may have subsided because 1) the captive media was supporting the president by not reporting the reality of the situation in the general population and 2) Republicans had gone quiet waiting to beat the drum again closer to the election when people on employer plans get hit with huge premium increases. He gave me the strangest look and then turned to talk to someone else.
Ha! Gotta catch me first!
Sure hope so.
He has everything exactly backwards. The evidence he speaks of, in each case, has been disproved many times. It is he & his ilk who clings to AGW, gun bans, & Obamacare despite a multitude of proof they are wrong.
How will this country/world survive when 50%+ of the people are fundamentally WRONG?
Gary Wills forgot to mention that food stamps create jobs, that the Chevy Volt will cool the sun, and that improved cow farts will halt continental drift. Communists think out of the box—and out their minds.
Anyone need a ready-made tag line? This would be a good one.
Seriously, the main driving reason that leftists want to impose socialism on us, not only in the medical arena, but all facets of life,
is to punish those whose decisions resulted in a comfortable and successful life, with a house, family, cars, insurance, climate control, and entertainment.
You see that with the popularity of this latest Marxist book that calls for the elimination of above average salaries.
Good for you! Facts are of no moment to these people. They never learn that the “ivory tower” is a prison of the mind not a refuge.
Gary Wills is a leftwing leftover from the hate-Nixon era of the late 60’s. Completely predictable.
The New York Review of Books is so far left they make Mother Jones look center-right. Another Sixties leftover rag read only by Greenwich Village radicals sipping their Starbucks.
“Opposition to Obamacare is racist!” is all Wills needed to write, no article necessary.
heh. What an ironic article. I kept having to remind myself that the author was accusing conservatives & not leftists. And using leftists as an example!
Wonder if he (the author) hears himself?
Nah.
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