Don't let fear guide your decisions.

Don't let fear guide your decisions.

Here is why the health care bill was a boondoggle.

The passage of the new health care bill in Congress in 2009 was a travesety.  Not for the bill itself, or its impact on the USA; but rather for the processes that led to the passage of the bill.  For most of 2009, Republican congressman have done everything in their power to stop the bill, delay the bill, and sabotage the bill.  While saying that improvements could be made to health care, they then proceeded to fight against ANY change to the health care system.  Amazingly, in early 2009 they publicly declared that blocking the bill was not about health care; but rather that it was about handing a "defeat" to the president.  The Republicans declared that it was in the best interest of the American people for a health care shambles rather than have something potentially labeled as another victory for Barack Obama.

But I don't write this to complain about the Republicans; for the Democrats also failed us.  They allowed the health care bill to be about a victory for the president and thus a victory for Democrats.  They too, were no longer interested in passing the best bill they can; rather they seek to pass "something" by the artificial deadline in which they can claim victory.  Republican pundits preach impatience and quick action in order to get public opinion to turn against change.  They also preach lies (such as "Death panels") to create negative impressions.  Democrats respond by trying to hastily pass a bill at all costs.  And the result of all this mess?  No one knows.  There will definitely be some winners, and there will definitely be some losers; but only time will tell (and by time, I mean 5 years, not 5 months).  But we know, as we already knew if we paid attention to bills passing through Congress in the pass, that the entire process of passing bills is flawed.

Decisions are complicated

Decisions are complicated. But in American politics both sides seem to strongly believe that the decisions are easy and life is full of clear cut black and white/clearly right and wrong choices. I recently experienced a non-political quandry and am not satisfied with either possible choice.

A stray cat has been coming around our house, and I noticed that it was recently injured. Should I call Animal Control? If I do, they will try to catch the cat, and if they succeed, they will search for the owner or try to put the pet up for adoption. But if they don't find the owner, and no one adopts the cat, they will euthanize it. I don't desire that outcome. If I don't call Animal Control the cat will continue to fend for itself, the cat may die as a result of its wound; but it may already have a home nearby will be cared for; or it may survive well despite that injury.

I don't even know the probability of each outcome; and if I did know that it was 40%, 40%, 20% I would still struggle with the decision. Why can't we admit that most political decisions have the same ambiguities?

We are powerless against evolution

We know that more people have less than perfect eyesight than in the past. Is this caused by some change in our environment or diet, or could it be caused by evolution - specifically that people with poor eyesight are more likely to have offspring than in the past. Has science, in the form of longer health and eyeglasses caused this phenomenon? Even so, it is not necessarily a bad thing. Poor eyesight no longer seems to have any impact on quality of life. But something more dangerous could be afoot. Maybe there are other small changes in people that are occurring that are evolving us in a negative direction. Perhaps people have shorter attention spans; or perhaps people are more prone to making decisions based on emotion instead of logic. Such small changes could lead to a society that is quicker to anger and more violent. Eventually this would probably be very harmful and could destroy our society. I suppose the bright side is that, as always, with evolution, there may be some survivors and those survivors may have better traits with which to continue the species. There are no guarantees though with evolution. It may be that a violent society will allow people with more violent tendencies to be more likely to survive, and our world will enter an age of lawlessness and rule by gangs. This is certainly a possibility, and we are powerless to stop it.

Don't let short term goals become your long term goals

Setting short term goals is a great technique for reaching long term goals, but don't let the short term goals become the long term goals. Has this happened to our politicians? Did they begin with long term goals like, "We must improve health care", and "We must eliminate government waste"? Did they set short term goals such as "Get elected" to meet these long term goals? Has their goal then become simply, "Get and stay elected?"