I've noticed a lot of conservative (and I'm referring to television-conservatives so maybe this doesn't really apply to anyone) criticism for the health reform bill in congress on the grounds that it's got "like a thousand pages."
Conversely, I've been hearing a lot of liberal (and the television- prefix still applies) criticism of Obama, and other democrats, for not explaining health care in a way that can be easily understood by the general public.
The first response seems clear enough. Republicans are offended by the notion they have to stay up late cramming (even though the bill seems to have been around for a while now... just saying... in college I remember reading several thousand pages in a much shorter amount of time), and I suppose democrats are upset because their politicians aren't selling this bill with that P. T. Barnum-esque panache we so expect from middle-aged to incredibly-elderly lawyers.
Both objections condemn health care reform as too complicated (which conservatives love because they can feign exhaustion when asked as to where in the bill it's explained how funding will be allocated for the roaming gangs of death-squad-claims-adjusters, and the liberals can pretend they've got a great bill with seven amendments guaranteeing weekly oral sex by trained medical students while ensuring, in the event of colossal failure, responsibility will fall on the base because voters don't care enough to get involved... even though we did... when we elected representatives — and on that note, why are the conservatives shouting at democrats for not representing them? They've got their own guys. Why aren't they shouting at those guys?).
And I can appreciate this argument. I don't like when things are complicated. I like when things aren't complicated and I get to wake up, eat some yogurt, and download pornography, but, what I don't understand is why an average citizen feels the need to grasp the inner-workings of an issue they've elected (arguably) some very competent people to deal with.
I don't understand how my laptop works. I don't understand how my car works. I don't understand how an electro-chemical signal sent along the length of a neuron from one portion of my brain to another breaks the barrier between the physical exchange of sodium and potassium (which shifts the polarity of the cell triggering a signal to release certain neurotransmitters, which are themselves absorbed by some lock and key function on the dendrites of the next neuron) and the ethereal to become the self-indulgent inner monologue upon which the viability of this blog depends.
And these things bother me.
I'd like to know how to tie a necktie (I'm going to google it), I'd like to know how to pick up beautiful women who happen to be geniuses who are so passionate about liberalism and social issues I'd be forced to read more newspapers and start accomplishing great and unexpected deeds just to keep up (I'm not googling this), and I'd like very much to know how to stop being irritated after reading an innocuous article in the New York Times, in which the author uses the phrase "maybe Shakespeare got it wrong when he said" and then proceeds to quote a portion of a play in which the speaker is employing subtle (depending on the actor) propaganda to incite mob violence against a couple stab-happy roman senators, to pad out some contrived ending for his piece by inserting what must be a literary quote because hey, it's goddamn Shakespeare (a man who was not by any means infallible, in fact I've read he very famously couldn't manage to spell his own name — it was the style at the time — and yet I object to presenting a line taken out of context from a work of fiction, written to be ironic, as if it were the central thesis of some long-winded political philosophy).
But there is a reason I don't understand some of these things-I-don't-understand and that reason is I haven't bothered to learn about them (or that they're "above my pay grade" as some successful young man said in response to being asked about an important social issue made insipid by a California pastor who shoe-horned the question into an ontological abstract on a faith-based forum months before this young man was elected president).
If I wanted to understand the health care reform bill I suppose I could try reading it, yes, all one thousand pages (I'm assuming it's available to be read by the public... if not then I guess I'm really just admonishing the whinier members of congress), and if I happen to accomplish that and still have no idea what's in the bill I could try going to law school, medical school, or economics school (I know they probably just call that grad school for economics, but I didn't want to disrupt my flow), and if I happen to accomplish those feats and still have no idea what's in this bill I could try rounding up a posse of big-brained east-coast types and have them write a series of essays I could then read.
Or, I could just not do any of that and accept that I don't need to understand the health care reformation bill in the same way I don't need to understand how my laptop works or why women don't find my arrogance as charming as I believe it to be.
And, speaking of arrogance, I'm fucking smart.
I grant there are smarter people than me (some of them might be thinking I should have written I just now instead of me... I don't know which is correct, though I do know it's not going to matter because grammar rules are constantly evolving in new and silly ways), and I know that these smarter people are dealing with smarter people things in the same way I know there are dumber people dealing with dumber people things (like twitter).
I don't expect to understand the health care reform bill and I can't understand why so many critics do.
