paradox
• noun 1 a seemingly absurd or self-contradictory statement or proposition that may in fact be true. 2 a person or thing that combines contradictory features or qualities.
— DERIVATIVES paradoxical adjective paradoxically adverb.
— ORIGIN originally in the sense statement contrary to accepted opinion: from Greek paradoxon ‘contrary opinion’.
It may not surprise you to lean that, until today, I'd never heard of Senator Orrin Hatch (Rep. Utah).
Mind you, how and why might I have I done? Some provincial US senator from the paradox that is Utah: a state all but entirely owned and run by the Mormon Church; another of those David Koresh, Jim Jones-type cult-of-personality concocted religions in which the US seems to specialise (Utah: separation of church and state? Yeah, right); Utah, where polygamy is officially a crime and banned - but a crime just as officially ignored; Utah, where alcohol is not just frowned upon, but where both its sale and strength are actively restricted - unlike the fecundity and profusion of patriarch-dominated clans - and where "fruit-based beverages" come under similar restrictions when sold to minors.
But this piece isn't merely just a mildly cynical polemic about the mass of contradictions which Utah represents: rather it seeks to illustrate how a man from such a background, Sen. Hatch, can come to (and expect others to believe) the following conclusion - that the introduction of healthcare reform will mean the end of the two-party system of democracy in America...
Here's what he said in the interview:
HATCH: That’s their goal. Move people into government that way. Do it in increments. They’ve actually said it. They’ve said it out loud.
Q: This is a step-by-step approach —
HATCH: A step-by-step approach to socialized medicine. And if they get there, of course, you’re going to have a very rough time having a two-party system in this country, because almost everybody’s going to say, “All we ever were, all we ever are, all we ever hope to be depends on the Democratic Party.”
Q: They’ll have reduced the American people to dependency on the federal government.
HATCH: Yeah, you got that right. That’s their goal. That’s what keeps Democrats in power.
But even taking into account the above display of wince-inducing paranoia, his oft-voiced concern, that requiring Americans to purchase health insurance is unconstitutional, merely ignores the fact that the US failing to provide ALL its citizens healthcare is unconscionable.
When politicians, as Sen. Hatch does here, hide expediently behind their partisan petticoats in this way, and, like the coward, make the cheap excuse of wrapping themselves in the flag before (purely by dint of them they disagree with it) decrying something as being "unconstitutional", they transcend paradox and dutifully don the mantle of pathos. Indeed, Tina Fey should be all over this fool like tasteless bling on a sartorially challenged 'gangsta rapper'.
Which leaves us with the question: can Obama drag the US kicking and screaming into the modern-era where the provision of universal healthcare is concerned?
It appears only America can stop him now...
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