Feeble Symbolic Resistance

The romantic notion of the lone crusader standing up to incredible odds is a common one in the American zeitgeist as well as literature and folk stories through the centuries. When David met Goliath on the battle field and slew the giant with a single slingshot stone to the forehead, he set in motion that notion that with god on your side everything is possible. The truth is David was more lucky than good because far more earnest champions have been crushed by their opposition than ever were victorious. Far more heroes have gone down in flames and were immortalized by their sacrifice than by their rise to prominence.

There are forces of social change that bring great good and those that bring great evils. There are those forces that depending on who you are and what you believe are either good or evil in your own mind. The relative good or evil of some forces of change can be debated ad naseum without there being a satisfactory solution or reconciliation of the positional camps.

In the days of the American Revolution and separation from England, there were those people who felt that such an undertaking was a terribly bad thing to do. There were loyalist to the Crown who at the outset might have been heroes, but were hanged for their actions and positions.

The American Civil War likewise had its heroes and traitors who were rewarded or executed, respectively. In both of these wars there was a change of the tide toward the new social order that would be carried forward into our Present. Those people who embraced the change prospered by it and those who stood fast against the change were buried under it. Our own Nathan Hale regretted that he "had but one life to give for his country." He gave it at the end of a rope. He was however on the "right" side of history and counted as a hero.

Patrick Henry is variously credited with saying some version of "give me liberty or give me death" to motivate Virginia to commit troops in the Revolutionary War. While the stature of these men has grown over the centuries, they were but ordinary men in their time.

Today we must endure the rhetoric of men who would like to be great leaders except that they are on the wrong side of what will become history in short order.

There is a tidal surge of support for the social changes that are manifest in our time. The upheld Affordable Care Act and the marriage equality rulings of the Supreme Court are but two such components of the wave that is sweeping over America. Anyone one who tries to stand that tide will be washed away by it and relegated to posterity as a fool who thought he was wise.

A generation ago Governor George Wallace defied the Civil Rights Act and desegregation of his state and in a largely symbolic stance, stood in the doorway at the University of Alabama in 1963 to keep it segregated. Later in his life he renounced his racial segregation position even though he was on the wrong side of change in 1963.

In our time a dozen or so republican candidate hopefuls each make their feeble stand against the overwhelming tide to assert their beliefs for inequality much like Governor Wallace did 52 years ago. However on the stage today there is no symbolic university doorway in which to make the stand. Back then National Guard troops could escort black students into newly desegregated schools and arrest any man or woman who stood in the way.

Today governors can only issue lame proclamations that municipal employees should not process same-sex marriage licenses and they can refuse to set up the necessary health insurance programs that would provide a semblance of equity in access to health care by low wage and unemployed citizens. While these governors are acting like Twits and are attempting to turn back the tide, there is no geographic location at which the Federal government can send troops.

Health care signups are more virtual and can be accomplished anywhere there is Internet access and a computer. Every county has an office where a marriage license may be obtained, so no governor is capable of performing a Wallace-esque stand your ground act. All further disputes about access to health care sign up or marriage license issuance will be handled in the courts with no armed military necessary. The collective Twit universe will ultimately fail to stop what has begun.

The ramblings of such Twits as Mike Huckabee, Bobby Jindal, Ted Cruz, Rick Perry, Rand Paul et al to stand in the way of implementing the policies which the Supreme Court has upheld are one the acts of Twits. They will lose in the end, but will do a huge amount of damage to the integrity of the nation. They will divide people and keep them in their own cohorts in such a manner that they cannot act in concert on any socially beneficial legislation. Even the nay-saying Justices each wrote a minority opinion that serves to entrench the divisions among segments of the American people.

The dispute over marriage equality is not yet over, and will drag on probably for decades. To many people the American Civil War is still not over until the South rises again. The disagreement concerning Civil Rights, disability rights, desegregation, and the integration of school is still being waged these 52 years later.

As long as there are politicians and pseudo-celebrity personalities stoking the fires there will be twit-followers who talk up the rhetoric and carry it forward in relay-race fashion for yet another generation.

Actually all this resistance to the Affordable Care Act (aka ObamaCare) will serve to be the leading force of change that will eventually become a Single-payer Health Care system rather than the medical insurance industry it has become.