Back from the Future

Thank you to readers who have been checking in on this blog, wondering what happened to me. I stepped into a time machine, and the exit door didn't open for a week.

Which is another way of saying that, for one week, I got a few unwelcome reminders of the kinds of system breakdowns that occur when economies head south and companies and institutions stretch their resources until, inevitably, things snap. A couple of these breakdowns resulted in my losing my Internet connection for most of the week, explaining my absence from this blog.

Of course, breakdowns come part and parcel with technology in the best of times but, undeniably, the clatter of signals of the economy's downhill slide, like splashes of gravel hitting the roof, have been getting increasingly alarming, even here in my little corner of Progressive Paradise, where most people have been using ObamaHope as an inoculant against reality. Obama, they were certain, was going to make everything wonderful by acting as their proxy to smooth-talk the world out of violence. He was going to make a gift of hassle-free, state-of-the-art health care to everyone physically present in the United States. He was going to lower sea levels by dispensing with fossil fuels and the internal combustion engine, while making every hip Progressive who invested in wind, solar, and lithium battery technologies rich, or at least a lot more comfortable, courtesy of free (somebody else pays) government subsidies.

Reality nevertheless managed to pay a call here, and Obama devotees who forgot that there are certain benefits to living in a capitalist society are facing shortages of jobs and money. Academics are getting by on less funding, supplies, and staff. Shopkeepers are sitting in empty shops waiting for customers. Yes, and even women with pink ribbons pinned to their lapels are being slapped with guilt trips if they consider "wasting" the nation's precious health resources by getting mammograms or even using self-examination lest they find lumps that turn out not to be cancer, thus burning up valuable diagnostic time and healthcare money that could have been spent on something (somebody) else.

Many people who can't (or can barely) afford health insurance understandably still have their fingers crossed that Obama will come through for them, sadly without coming to terms with the cold fact that whatever Uncle Sam puts into one pocket, he vacuums out of another (never neglecting to take a cut to pay Congress), and that both those pockets inevitably belong to the same people who are rooting for Obama to save them.

Not even Progressives will escape. A rising tide lifts all boats, but the opposite also is true. Private insurance may go away, but paperwork will not, nor waiting lines, nor mix-ups in computerized records; in fact, these will get much, much worse.

But it is clear, now, love of Obama will go away.

Progressives who otherwise are perfectly computer literate have allowed themselves to believe that health care will be made cheaper by a magical process in which 310+million people's health care records are seamlessly transferred into a giant, fantastically reliable Obama-nationed computer network. Their awakening will come when some portion of the accuracy and integrity of the government record-keeping at recovery.gov is applied to their personal health records.

We don't need a trip in a time machine to understand that the state-of-the-art health care and environmental protection are luxuries affordable only by the people of wealthy nations with plenty of disposable income, not by the people of nations cutting back on production, jobs, resource use, money, savings, and the bits and pieces of technology that keep business and medical care humming along.

But, unless we can stop them, a trip in a time machine is exactly what we will be getting as Congress, led by Obama and cheered on by those who think they won't be paying the fare, passes out the obligatory "your only choice" tickets to the future that will make the last year look like a good year.

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