House of Eratosthenes

Here’s Every Argument You’ll Need To Win Your Obamacare Debate This Thanksgiving

We’ve all got a crazy uncle we love…We’ll call him Uncle Hank…Everyone has or knows a Hank — that is, except for Hank. Hank has a problem on turkey day: his hopelessly naive, Nation-reading, vegetarian niece who likes to quote from Howard Zinn and tell him about the genocidal roots of the holiday they’ve gathered to celebrate. She wants to spread the wealth around, but has no interest in hard work, no respect for the people who make this country run. She has never signed the front of a paycheck. Let’s call her Emily.
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Here at HuffPost we believe in news you can use, so we’ve put together a guide we hope is just as useful to Hank as it is to Emily. Because what good is having a political opinion if you can’t prove it’s the right one in front of your extended family on Thanksgiving?

Whether you’re Hank or Emily, here are some handy Obamacare talking points that will drive home your argument.

Not sure how this is going to pan out for the “Emily” types who are following it. Hank Argument Number One is the thing about the cancellation notices, and “Emily’s Rebuttal” is “This is just another example of corporate greed.” Hmmmm…will that yield good success? Dunno. What’s the goal here? Change Hank’s mind? Obviously not. So it must be to sway the passively-participating onlookers. My experience with this is that there is a vacillating ratio, somewhere between 10% and 90%, swaying to-and-fro, one Thanksgiving to the next, that would just love to stuff a sock in the whole thing and talk about Miley Cyrus’ twerking act, Grumpy Cat, or aren’t these sweet potatoes delicious. I know for a fact that the fraction rises and falls, because sometimes I join them. There are a lot of factors. What’s-being-discussed, for one thing. I don’t give a flip about gay marriage, I’m not gay, I’d rather talk about the newest reality teevee shows…which is another way of saying I’d rather not talk about anything.

ObamaCare is not gay marriage, though. It’s ruined it for all of us, except those who’ve managed to catch a waiver. And the economy will sour for those folks too. What this all means is, this year there aren’t going to be too many Cheesecake Nazis forcing a change of subject on “Hank” and “Emily.” Maybe that’s not correct. Time will tell. But, I think most of the onlookers will be watching and wondering what ObamaCare has to say for itself. People tend to get that way when you, or your political allies rather, insist on dictatorial control over the most intimate parts of their lives…as well as the length of those lives…and then, screw the pooch on it, and when you’re called-on to see if you have anything to say for yourself, the best you can burble up is something about “just another example of corporate greed.”

I don’t think that’s going to make Emily look like she won-the-argument. Nor do I think it will make her feel like she did. And I suppose maybe that’s the only objective to be achieved, here. Permit me a brief jog down a bunny trail on this…isn’t that a bit odd? Why’s the article called “Here’s Every Argument You’ll Need To Win Your ObamaCare Debate”? Why not “Here’s Everything Obama Needs To Do To Fix This Thing” or “Here’s Everything ObamaCare Proponents Should Do To Help Those Poor People.” That the Huffington Post article is about just winning an argument, speaks volumes about motives. Hank could point that out. What’s Emily’s rebuttal then?

This is a guide for how to pummel Hank into the ground? Dunno. So far it’s making me wish I was Hank.

Emily’s doing a great job of acting out Item #7 in John Hawkins’ 12 Unspoken Rules for Being a Liberal (via Young Conservatives):

Intentions are much more important than results: Liberals decide what programs to support based on whether they make them feel good or bad about themselves, not because they work or don’t work. A DDT ban that has killed millions is judged a success by liberals because it makes them feel as if they care about the environment. A government program that wastes billions and doesn’t work is a stunning triumph to the Left if it has a compassionate sounding name. It would be easier to convince a liberal to support a program by calling it the “Saving Women And Puppies Bill” than showing that it would save 100,000 lives.

Seems to me “Uncle Hank” has got this thing locked up. Heck, my own arguments about the health care mess, before anybody ever even heard of “ObamaCare” or of “Obama” either for that matter, are standing unscratched, untarnished and unblemished. I say: Yes, the status quo is a mess and there’s no use denying it. Put a deep cut in your hand on a weekend that requires stitches, or screw up your knee, make one casual visit…as in, in-and-out…to the emergency room. You’re looking at a bill with a comma in the total, even if you’re “covered.” That shit happens, it really does. Take a tumble when you’re in your golden years and accidentally end your fragile era of living independently — you have entered, not only the final chapter of your life where you have to rely on others, but the tragic closing act where your greatest fear is outliving your savings, and it’s a fear all too real thanks to the high cost of your medication and treatment. That shit happens too. In fact, here, Hank could point out that thanks to Obama, we don’t have to wait until age 70 to be living that fear. Obama’s made it so we can start being legitimately terrified of it any time we want to be, all the way back to when the umbilical cord is cut. Hope won, fear lost?

So my argument has always been…and I notice, after all the drama and that product-launch that makes New Coke look like a raging success, it’s still the best one…we have an advantage in the situation that things have soured so badly and so quickly. If you put a drill bit through your thumb on a Saturday in, say, 1980 or 1970, while covered, you certainly weren’t looking at a three thousand dollar bill. Now, you are. That means something is broken and recently broken. So we go out the way we came in. We don’t come up with these fancy new plans that cost money and make liberals feel good so they can follow Unspoken Rule #7. Instead, we ask: What changed? And my answer to that would be…liberals. Liberals and big-government. Every time their plans failed and they ended up hurting people, they just wanted more and more control, and more and more liberalism. Emily shows us how that’s done in her “third rebuttal”: “Uncle Hank, it sounds like you wish there was a public option.” Down at the bottom of the article under “Here’s how to finish it all up” Emily pushes it again. Total state control.

What a silly rebuttal that is. Wouldn’t that just reinforce everything Hank’s been saying about liberals for years? They won’t stop until they drag us all the way to Communism. Wow, that one would make Hank sound like he’s ready for the rubber room, wouldn’t it…oh yeah, except for one little thing, it’s not Hank saying it here, it’s his liberal niece, Emily, acting it out.

And she thinks she’s winning the debate? Really?

I wish liberals cared as much about actually helping people, as they did about acting out stereotypes about dense curmudgeonly slope-foreheaded uncles and noble, egalitarian-spirited tofu-eating hippie nieces, and winning arguments and starting food fights. Those things might stir currents of glee in Emily’s heart and they might make the cranberry sauce taste a little sweeter when she just thinks about them…but they don’t make things any better for the people who lost their coverage when Barack Obama started “fixing” our system. Such an obvious thought to have, it seems impossible to imagine Hank wouldn’t say something along those lines. And I notice Emily has no rebuttal for it.

Somebody at the table “dissing” Obama, PPACA, Socialism, Fascism?
No worries for our HuffPO (et cet) folks,, HERE’S the SCRIPT we’ve written for you.
No need to expose your own “thinking process”, and risk the family title as “Crazy aunt Zoe!”

I guess identifying usage of those “key words and phrases” will make it easier for the rest to determine when to subject Aunt Zoe to Socialized Women’s Mental Health Institutional Services.

And make her sit at the folding card table.
- CaptDMO | 11/28/2013 @ 11:36

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That Thanksgiving DebateTuesday, November 26th, 2013

That Thanksgiving Debate
Tuesday, November 26th, 2013