Politics seems to be keeping to traditional American style. In R.M. McVay's July 28 Gazette letter, "U.S. at a crossroads," we find that a health care system having a third of its citizens without insurance and largely without health care " except for the most expensive and socialistic sort of emergency room treatment " is "the best health care system in the world." That level of logic seems locally popular with recent rhetoric about how the candidate approving the message would support continued Medicare and Medicaid for our elders while help for the rest of the population with "Obamacare" was completely out of the question and distinctly un-American.

We shouldn't expect much relief from this level of discussion. The Democrats couldn't find a way to show that the death panels the "Tea People" railed about was actually hospice, which has been opted for by everyone I knew who had a choice in the matter. Considering the distraction they handed themselves in South Carolina with Al Green, a national candidate whose primary distinction was being first on the ballot, the intellectual challenge of silly claims may be an insurmountable barrier in the political arena.
 
History indicates that silly will outweigh serious in American politics by a large margin. Does it really have to be this way?

"Clinton Wiles
Oklahoma City

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