Why aren't more people outraged about the current situation in Washington? It's something often fretted about at Dkos. Maybe it just hasn't been time yet.
When I was young it was accepted that if you put a frog in water, and gently heated it, the amphibian would passively sit there until the option of escape was gone, passively simmering to its demise. A quick search reveals that it's an urban myth, but there is still that sense that we can be lulled into an incrementally worsening, ultimately fatal circumstance.
That's the great threat, the disappearance of all that's held dear, one degree at a time. I think that's the scent of the fear detected so often here. The truth, according to the expert at snopes.com, is that the frog will do everything in its power to jump out of its predicament.
The real threat is not dissipation, but delusion. When faith, in a deity or talking points, determines policy, when those things accepted in the absence of evidence are used as the touchstone for earthly decisions, then can you hope to make good outcomes?
In 2003 a Gallup poll found that 80% of respondents gave public education overall a C or worse grade, but 47% thought their own public schools deserved an A or B. So the meme of the the failure of public education trumps the actual experience of individuals. Why not use vouchers? You're only getting rid of something whose lack of merit has already been determined.
An oft-cited Time-CNN poll in 2000 found the that 20% of the respondents thought they were in the top 1% of income earners, and another 19% thought they would enter that august company. Why not give those tax break to a group we're already in, or are soon to join? Why not tax wages more than capital gains? Because you don't even know how poorly your income compares to theirs.
Americans have the finest health care in the world, don't worry about universal coverage. For twice the percentage of GDP as other nations we get (for an industrialized country) high infant mortality, mediocre longevity, and a public health system that we are warned isn't prepared for the nightmare scenario of biological weapons directed against the civilian population. But a single payer system is not a proper role for the state, what good would that do?
Certainly the apparent novelty of the Congressional response to the Schiavo case make the murky political waters a bit warmer. Let's hope that more frogs are starting to feel that need to get moving and address other issues as well. Returning some sense of reason in making these decisions is overdue.