A friend pointed me to a 2007 Reuters article which was inspired by SICKO and talks about the Cuban health care industry. When I got to the end, I read this gem:

A decades-old U.S. trade embargo against Cuba forced it to develop its own molecular biology industry, which produces innovative drugs that prevent rejection in transplants.

Cuba has developed the world's first Meningitis B vaccine which is available in Third World countries but not in Europe or the United States due to U.S. sanctions.

A couple of interesting things in there. First and tangentially, the way that this country implements trade embargoes is absolutely ludicrous. You want to play hardball with a political regime? Okay we can talk about it. You want to play hardball with a population's access to basic medical care? I'm going to have to call human rights violation. Sorry, that shit irks me.

But, back to health care. This statement seems to fly directly in the face of the arguments that the pharmaceutical industry and their minions try to make. No, Americans don't need to pay exorbitant amounts for drugs in order to fuel innovation and research in pharmaceuticals. Cuba can come up with drugs to keep their populace just as healthy as the US. Oh and at $792 per capita in US pharmaceutical expenditures, what we pay for drugs is more than three times Cuba's $229 per capita total health care expenditure.

The Republicans have got the proreform contingent so scared of accusations of socialism that they aren't effectively pointing out all of the examples of state administered health care. Cuba pays 1/26th what we do per person and gets comparable results. That's right, Cuba handles health care better than the US. Backwards*, incompetent*, communist* Cuba has better longevity and child mortality numbers than we do and spends about the same amount on it as we spend on ring dings. And that's before you consider that not only do they get incredible savings from focusing on preventative care, it also means that they get sick less. They may have to bring there own sheets and green jello to the hospital but they have to go less often than we do. That's a trade off I would love to be able to make.

(Also, in my unmotivated attempts to find a quote from some Republican blathering on about drug innovation, I came across this article. Apparently, Cuba is able to accomplish comparable longevity to the US without access to US pharmaceutical research and Europe accomplishes more than the US with their research. I know this doesn't address the claim that US consumers are funding world wide pharmaceutical research. But it does raise the question: what's so great about the status quo that people are fighting to protect? Oh yeah, the profits they get at our expense.)

* I have no reason to believe that Cuba is backwards, incompetent or communist but am merely voicing what I suspect to be the criticisms of those on the right.

Back in February, Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX) stated his belief that the Taliban represents a useful model for Congressional Republicans to follow. Beyond being the "loyal opposition", it is unclear what the relevant lessons from the Taliban were. The two things that are clear are that Sessions sees the role of the GOP as a political insurgency and that his primary goal is for his party to reclaim the majority.

After watching Republicans for seven months, a better model seems to be the Sunnis of Iraq. The 2003 Iraq invasion had the effect of pushing the Sunni minority out of power. Out of fear of being marginalized by the Shi'a majority, many Sunnis boycotted the 2005 elections. Their marginalization became self imposed.

Though the Republicans have been pushed out of power through an organic shift, they too have made the conscious choice to boycott the political process rather than make use of the power they have to create compromise. Like a small child with a bruised ego, the GOP has repeatedly taken their marbles and gone home. Their actions indicate that the primary goal is not one of influencing policy but to gain power.

Where a militant insurgency uses violence to achieve their goals, the Republican political insurgency uses rhetoric. And since their goal is power for power's sake, they attempt to inspire fear and outrage against their opponents wherever possible. This is accomplished through deceit and distraction.

The problem is that a fairly common outcome is loss of control within insurgencies. Sooner or later, insurgency movements tend to splinter leading to protracted periods of violence and general insecurity. The divisions tend to happen between moderate and hard-lined factions disagreeing on a compromised solution or ideologically distinct groups no longer held together by a common enemy. Even in situations where there is a fairly well defined power structure and concrete ideological goal (such as the Irish or Indian independence movements of the first half of last century), an insurgency is a very difficult thing to control.

While this would not be a problem if Republican politicians' behavior occurred in a vacuum, the party would simply crumble and collapse in on itself. But in their quest for power, they have been feeding the ignorance, conspiratorial fears, hatred and racism of a marginalized segment of society. This dance with the devil is sure to backfire for many of these politicians because the people giving them power are not supporters but rather opponents of Obama and the Democrats. Therefore, these politicians will have to adopt increasingly hardline views or risk losing that power. This was demonstrated during McCain's campaign where he was booed by crowds on the occasions he attempted to throw water on the flames he previously stoked.

Unfortunately, the damage which has been and continues to be done will not easily be reversed. The tea party / birther / 9-11 truth movements have no true leaders (not unlike the Republican party) and those who try to moderate or walk back any of the canon beliefs are quickly rejected. The conspiratorial attitudes are so entrenched that they have become self-consistent. Anything which contradicts things "known" to be true is held as being a clear piece of deception. Therefore the movement is likely to grow in intensity and, to a lesser degree, size with a plausible result being a moderate portion engaging in real violence.

Many in the Republican party have been slow to condemn the violence and displays of force thus far, but a number have been quick to call for the escalation in at least a theoretical manner. The most outrageous example being Rep. Michelle Bachman (R-MN) requesting her supporters be "armed and dangerous" in statements difficult to interpret as anything but a call for violent revolution. Glenn Beck has been more careful in his diction but his rants are also likely (and probably intended) to foment violence.

It seems unlikely that Sessions was aware of the accuracy in his assessment of the role Republicans currently hold in this country. But if allowed to continue unchecked, the path they are currently on could quite possibly lead to fairly widespread violent opposition of the government. The views of those willing to take up arms for the far-right's cause are so warped it is unclear how to effectively correct their misconceptions. What is more clear is the culpability of those so eager to stoke these flames for their own personal gains.