Comprehensive Health Industry Reform and the Fat Red South
The south is fatter than the north. I’ve been there, and they fry bread. Iced tea is made by adding brown water until the sugar dissolves. Cookies there are actually carved from starchy root vegetables and collagen deposits found along the back of cow thighs and deep fried. Two things are true: I have been in the southern US, and the south is fatter than the north.
The south is also redder and more paternalistic/parochial than the north. We’re regionalistic shut-ins too, but our population and development make it more difficult to ignore the world actually happening behind the preacher, talking head or other messenger a citizen may consult for news of the world and … the others. Given their narrow political pallet and paucity of populace, the debate about health care may come down to a nation of assent stymied by shouts from one cantankerous double-wide.
They fought the railroads, emancipation, resented the civilizing influence American capital and talent brought after their primitive cave dwellers lost the battle to preserve their ‘way of life’ to our Union. What we know up here involves a lot of back story, including our long tradition of trying to make sure we all fit. They just didn’t want it, for some reason. The reason? It involved changes, the changes were alien, and the changes made it possible for the government to establish a way for southern products (100% agriculture) to be moved to places where people could buy them. Did they want to keep all that barley?
I want to see a poll map, one of those interactive jobs like CNN and Jon Stewart uses, to show ‘do you support a fact-based, technological and egalitarian reform of the health industry?’ answers drilled down to zip code or county. Is health attitude like general Republicanism, where the more space between people makes them less interested in knowin’ stuff and in the general welfare, or is it even more regionalistic, with the Jesus and other cults in the midwest and Texas reporting enough data points to show up in the homogenized national polls? Can we tell whether they’re afraid the government will ration sugar and grease? Step in and clean up Atlanta’s air traffic? Ban NASCAR?
They don’t necessarily have to be getting information along with their positions, but they’re listening to someone who doesn’t want the federal government to have the resources to contain or definitively end something like a swine flu epidemic. Who the hell would advise that? Exactly: they’re either stupid, desperate for armageddon, or on a different page altogether.
