What Can I Do to Help?

Robert Reich asks us to consider policy before identity, details instead of slogans, and progress before taking credit.

The Big Guy minces words.

(Salon)

"People who voted for Barack Obama tend to fall into one of two camps: Trusters, who believe he's a good man with the right values and he's doing everything he can; and cynics, who have become disillusioned with his bailouts... cap-and-trade pollution permits... seeming reversals on eavesdropping... and squishiness on a public option.

"In my view, both positions are wrong. A new president — even one as talented and well-motivated as Obama — can't get a thing done in Washington unless the public is actively behind him."

— Robert Reich, little guy, big idea

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Although my power of persuasion is more often dissuasive, I've been annoying people left and right, stranger and known, friend and foe, about the details of reform, instead of getting bogged down in securing my identity as a cynic, misfit, outsider, or radical.

Those roles are moving targets when single-payer orthodoxy can just as easily add up to federal subsidy of megalo-conglomerate corporate scions skiing down private runs in Switzerland. We're Gay Shame one day... hetero-normalist marriage-monger the next, because we want to win without knowing who we really are.

"As FDR said in the reelection campaign of 1936 when a lady insisted that if she were to vote for him he must commit to a long list of objectives, 'Ma'am, I want to do those things, but you must make me.'"

Go here to amplify the health insurance horror stories that make reform important.

The left is easily disheartened, if you don't speak their peculiar language, so much so that web comment sections are awash in single-payer supporters scorching public option people, and lowering cost takes a back seat to what we should call the plan to do so.