Time travel as possible "final solution" to the unpleasantness in the health care debate

I was half-listening to NPR this afternoon at work, sort of semi-consciously taking in today’s slate of craptacularly crappy news: Suu Kyi convicted again in Myanmar [check!]; seventy percent of women in the eastern Congo may have been victims of rape by their army so far [nice work, crazy assholes]; the whole world’s coral reefs may be dead within our lifetimes [just terrific…next?]; teabaggers and brownshirts continue to disrupt attempts at having town halls on health care [of course they do, let’s move on, please…]; and then I heard something that momentarily stopped me in my tracks. It was this statement, recorded at an anti-Obama rally outside his town hall meeting today in New Hampshire and aired on All Things Considered: “If I want socialism, then I’ll go back to pre-World War II Germany!”

Now I have never been accused of over-estimating the intelligence and reasoning faculties of these kinds of rabid nutjobs. I do not believe I am on record anywhere as averring that they may hold anything inside their skulls any more lively and sapient than a moldy dishtowel. So such a piece of dumbassity as that statement should have come as nothing remarkable to me, but I found myself playing it back in my head and parsing its possible meanings and implications.

“If I want socialism, then I’ll go back to pre-World War II Germany!”

I thought to myself, “Hoh. Lee. Shit. That’s bloody brilliant! I would have been happy enough if the dude had just said he might as well leave the country (and good riddance! And don’t let the door slam your ass on the way out!). But he’s suggesting leaving our time entirely!” I started wishing that he could possibly be literally serious about it. If things became so socialistic here—and presumably worse, in his view, than conditions in Nazi Germany—and he decided to get out, then how would he do it? Is he like the Time Traveller from the Wells story? Or would he jump through the Guardian of Forever? Try to hitch a ride in the TARDIS?”

“If I want socialism, then I’ll go back to pre-World War II Germany!”

So, obviously, this fine exemplar of that species of American that I usually call The Indignant White Douche—you know the type: all insecure and self-righteously mad and quivery-lipped and quavery-voiced about all the perceived attacks on his douchy middle class assumptions of privelege and entitlement—was saying in his dimwitted way something like: “If Obama is going to turn America into a totalitarian socialist dictatorship, then we might as well be living in Nazi Germany. Because that would better than what Obama has in store for us. Better: Nazi Germany was better than what Obamamerica will be. I’m totally fine with the fascism and the Holocaust and the other excesses of the Nazi regime. Totally cool with all that. That was much better than what this furreign-born President is planning to do to me.”

But I’m going to focus more on the literal words he said. The word “back” in this statement can, of course, be taken as “back in time to the days of Nazi Germany.” But it could also be read as “back to Nazi Germany, where I came from in the first place.” Considering the political tactics that these people have decided that they must employ—since they can never win by debating the facts or letting their opponents speak—it seems to me that the time-travel solution is perfect win/win outcome for everyone: this man and his buddies can all go back to Nazi Germany where they will be right at home in Hitler’s Reich where everything is black and white (well, more white, really) while the rest of us who stay on in the twenty-first century can resume a sane process of arriving at a sensible and fair reform of health insurance.

But before seeing these creeps off on their time travel trip back to their proper home and era, I would be tempted to ask this guy exactly how many fewer years that he figures that J and I deserve to live as compared to himself and his family members. I’d like an honest answer, if he could give one. What would he say? Five years? Ten years? You see, J and I do not have health insurance nor any affordable means of getting any. I have not myself been examined medically one single time in my life since I was admitted to the hospital after a seizure when I was 18 years old (I’m almost 38 now). I wonder if I am developing any chronic diseases? Maybe some cancer somewhere that I can’t feel yet. But I won’t be finding out until it’s too late because I won’t be going to the doctor.  When I get sick enough, and it gets really serious, I will go to an emergency room.

 J was admitted at the emergency room a couple years ago for what they think was an acute attack of pancreatitis. They stabilized him as they must do by law even for people without insurance, but no further examination or treatment was offered. But he accumulated thirty thousand dollars of medical bills during this episode anyway, and all the “Keep Your Hands of My Health Care” douchebags are living in a fuckin’ fantasy land even trippier and nuttier than their visions of Obama’s Soviet conquest of Amurrrica if they think that those bills are ever going to get paid by us. Scenarios like ours play out all over the country every day. So when people say that the health care system is just fine the way it is (with their “I got mine” attitude), they are basically saying that they deserve to be healthier and also probably live longer than me and mine. Which means I will feel little sympathy for them when they get their way this year, torpedo national health insurance reform, and the system continues to degrade until eventually they themselves lose their jobs and their health insurance, or their employers quit offering coverage. Since it’s only fifty million Americans who don’t have insurance right now (out of over 300 million), maybe it’s easy to ignore us. I wonder what will happen, though, when that swells to 100 million, or 150 million.  Afraid of “socialism” now?  Just wait, assholes.