Ed Note - Jerard Fagerberg is by no means a political expert nor does he represent the overarching or general political views of TSTLN. He is merely a middle-class liberal-minded college student cliche with stereotypical optimism that unsupported by substantial knowledge of political strategy or general knowledge about the ways of the world. He does, however, have the head turning outrage you typically entrust to the talking heads on NBC so we openly publish his opinion regardless.
Today has been an ugly day for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. For those of you who don't know, today Scott Brown (a republican) was selected (by the people) to fill Ted Kennedy's vacant senate seat. Though Brown will be up for reelection in November during the midterm elections, his victory is seen as a setback in Kennedy's lifelong campaign for universal health care.
Kennedy, who sat for Massachusetts in the senate for an astounding 46 years, was a stalwart liberal who championed the cause of social medicine. It was his life's work. His recent death has been surrounded by an ongoing debate over health care reform. The Obama administration -which the right has been quick to name "a bunch of fuckstick Communists who want to give Mexicans free hospital visits and, in general, all our fuckin' money, goddamnit" - supports a socialized medicine system (not exactly social medicine, per se, just something akin to it) and needed District Attorney Martha Coakley to gain a strategic majority in the Senate. With Coakley's concession to Brown tonight, Senator Kennedy's dream has suffered a terrible loss.
As a lifelong resident of Massachusetts, I've been weaned on this theory. Specifically, the theory that all people have value and, therefore, should not be punished for being in a lower tax bracket. I will not apologize for this Northeast liberal bias, it's simply who I am. I am not a Communist, though I believe Marx had good intentions. I am not even a Democrat, I'm a registered independent who is fed up withe the change-fearing old boys club the Republican party has become. Simply, universal health care is the most perfect answer right now. No, it is not perfect but it is a start. There must be great reform in the illegal alien debate before a permanent system can be instilled.
We were supposed to be the generation that called for change. The one that was pushing politics to evolve with grace instead of piloting a country of bankers with their heads in the sand. We elected Obama because we thought the light was gonna shine. There was supposed to be progress. Were we all just optimism-prone freethinkers with no respect for the real world?
Maybe the media is getting to us (yeah, that's right, the liberal media and it's left-wing agenda). Newspapers and 11 o'clock programs are telling us nothing is changing, that Obama was all campaign promises and now it's coming back to haunt us. Republicans are calling "Hope" a pipe dream and Democrats are jumping to the GOP just a year and a half into the turnaround. Now, in the shadow of a slowly rising economy and a debate leaning towards progress in the health sector, the change generation - the NOW generation - is losing their battle for rebirth.
We gave in to political shitflinging. Sitting in front of the television yesterday, I watched Coakley and Brown trade insults via campaign ads for hours on end. It was a goddamn onslaught of misleading fact skews and slanted language. Coakley, who once built her campaign around he past accomplishments and ability to progress, had reverted to labeling Brown a Bush sympathizer who was out to sabotage the Obama agenda.
This is not the strategy that birthed America's first black president. This was a cowardly decision that put us into the passenger seat of a car stuck in reverse. By giving the seat of the great Ted Kennedy (say what you will about the man's personal life) over to the Republicans, the change we so willfully elected to see will have to wait, to build and hopefully not die, until we can agree on a system that best benefits the States.
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