Really, you do.
One argument i see Teabaggers make all the time is this -- "look, all our apparent madness is totally justified because we see, quite clearly, the incredible and imminent doom that the DEBT will bring to America. And that only OUR solutions to the debt problem will work."
It's that simple, they're the farsighted Cassandras wailing in the square. They're just like a person who sees a leak in the levee, or a forest fire spreading and heading to the town -- they are FORCED into action and have to warn the rest of us. And that's why they sound like doomsayers who "root for ruin" and cheer on any sign of government shutdown or debt default.
But the massive economic realities that face us are not simple.
Here's a more apt analogy -- they're like the people screaming about the end of the world before Y2K. Way back in 1999, people were saying many things about the dreaded Millennium Bug. If you were a rational person who liked technology and the modern world in general, then your response was probably something like "this sounds serious, i don't want it to happen, we'd better fix it, let's get to work." But if you were a nutter who didn't like the way things were and secretly yearned for some sort of apocalyptic collapse because you thought it would allow some new, pure, redneck society to spring forth from the ruin, then you sounded like the Teabaggers do today. "It's too late! Collapse is inevitable! You liberals and city-dwellers will get what's coming to you, while us real blue-collar Christian men will become the new natural aristocracy. Bill Gates will be a pauper, begging for a place in the new order from Big Jim the Drygoods King!"
They thought that was going to happen because they wanted it to happen.
It's the same thing with religious fanatics. They demand that everyone live according to their holy book, because the alternative is fire and damnation. "Look, i don't want anyone to go to Hell and burn forever in endless agony, but that's what's gonna happen if you don't listen to me."
See the common thread? Fundamentalists, Y2K alarmists, doomsday preppers, teabaggers... they all see doom on the horizon because it justifies their own personal worldviews. Do what we say or the Universe will punish you. It's not a coincidence that these people all sort of overlap on the Right in a churning, eddying ocean of fear and hatred.
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On the opposite spectrum, progressives are continually insistent that their economic policies will work despite evidence to the contrary. Like kings of the Ivory Tower.
Just look at Obamacare, what fools we were to doubt it would work. Granted, it's been a month and people still have trouble logging into the website, and that people are seeing their insurance premiums go up, and that small businesses which progressives love to claim they support are having to cut jobs, and that people are actually losing their health insurance despite Obama's pledge of "If you liked your old health plan, you can keep it". But who cares! It will work! Just give it time!
Bullshit.
Yeah, the rollout is sucky, and the sabotage and obstruction of the Republicans on every level are contributing to it. And a lot of the "damning facts" i read are coming from right-wing sources that purposefully omit the effects of subsidies and tax breaks to make it appear that costs are going up for everyone. I'm guessing you're reading some of those.
Yes, it DOES need more time. I feel for you -- when we were one month into the Iraq War, it was becoming clear that it was a bad idea and should have been abandoned -- but it was too late.
Liberal policies do work. High taxes, social spending, and union power is what brought about the golden age of the '50s that you guys supposedly love.
Universal coverage would have been handled far better on the state level, as in Massachusetts, than on the Federal level. But try geting a Repub governor to do anything that might advance "socialism." You guys need to listen to your leader, Mitt Romney. He had the right idea.
And read up sometime on North Dakota's State Bank, the only state bank in the nation -- a totally socialist enterprise that completely works, and is better for almost everyone in North Dakota -- well, everyone except the 20-25 obscenely rich fat cats who are unable to get even MORE obscenely rich from skimming every last dime from the working class.
Poor them! Don't those hick North Dakotans know how capitalism works?
This is from Forbes:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2013/11/04/49-state-analysis-obamacare-to-increase-individual-market-premiums-by-avg-of-41-subsidies-flow-to-elderly/
This is from the Wall Street Journal:
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304527504579171710423780446
This is from Bloomberg: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-30/california-coverage-cancellations-show-obamacare-price-increases.html
This is from USA Today:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2013/11/03/obamacare-coverage-cancellations-president-obama-promise-editorials-debates/3426681/
Do these sound like BreitBart and the Blaze do you?
David Cutler, a Harvard economist who advised Obama in his campaign in '08 warned the administration that the ACA was a trainwreck, that the people in charge had no idea on how it would work.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505263_162-57610620/obamacare-memo-reveals-health-care-adviser-warned-w.h-was-losing-control-3-years-ago/
For the record, this was in 2010, before the Evil, KKK Neo-Nazi White Power and Sieg Heil chanting Tea Party came into power.
Now I'm curious, where do you get your sources from?
Oh, here and there.
Look, there are a lot of people who want Obamacare to fail, just as there were a lot of people who wanted Medicare and SS to fail. So yes, you're going to have lots of people telling you want you want to hear.
Obamacare MAY fail. It might succeed in the states where governors embrace it, and fail in states where they don't. But it all depends on your definition of failure. To the editors of Forbes, a result in which millions of poor people receive access to better care but the top 2% of society pays slightly higher taxes -- that would be a failure to them.
But look, it might fail, i admit that. I've kind of lost faith that America can do anything anymore, because we're suffering this toxic mix of vulture capitalism, cronyism, corruption, and ideological insanity at the top, while workers at the bottom scramble around in fear trying to keep their paychecks going for one more month.
I work for a huge company, (at the bottom,) and there's absolutely no logic to how anything runs. The people in the field get ignored, while senseless edicts and technological "solutions" are piped in from California.
But here's where i disagree -- this madness is not a problem with government, it's a problem with AMERICA. It infects the public and private sectors equally.
What i cannot stand is people blathering and screeching that government can't do anything right by definition, and then turn around and wax nostalgic about the Moon Landing. While driving on an interstate, and eating food that is safe because of the FDA.
Government solutions can work. But not if they're implemented by corrupt, lazy people whose only goal is to get things looking right on paper, while they fall apart in reality. That sort of mentality that the corporate world brings us.
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