How I would prefer this health plan thing was done

I have said to lots of people that I support a public health care option of some sort. I am not too particular about its shape, so long as there is an insurance net that protects people who cannot afford health insurance. I also favor overall health care reform that gets costs under control and prevents the case where people's lives can be utterly destroyed by one massive medical bill.

But that doesn't mean I like how things are going in the current health care proposal - and my discontent is aimed at Democrats, Republicans and Mr. Obama. Here is my breakdown of things that I wish we would change.

1. Lose the antagonism
I agree with Obama's statement that the time for bickering is over. I wish that people would stop playing party wars and just work on the problem at hand.
I was quite upset, then, when in the middle of the speech Obama pulled out the "we said/you said" guns. He ripped at the Republicans for trying to privatize Medicare. He ripped at congress people, senators and a governor for promoting the death panel argument. He ripped at the previous administration for its spending practices.
And in the same speech he tries to position himself as the father figure coming in to tell the troops to behave. You lose a lot credibility on that stance when you immediately afterward: 1> pick a side, 2> start throwing the same tomatos.
I assume it is Obama's inner litigator getting the better of him. I get it - I do the same thing. When someone throws a line of bullcrap at you, bury them. In some venues it is almost a moral obligation to demonstrate that you don't take that sort of crap. In some venues.
The venue where it does not work is the one where you need the other guy to help solve the problem. If you just finished telling them they are liars, connivers, plotters and schemers (even if it is true) and then jump in and hurl jabs back, then you are going to lose them. It doesn't matter how reasonable your points are because you didn't lose on rationality. You lost by pure alienation and insult.
The President should have legitimately risen above the fray. Yes, he should have acknowledged the opposition, the attacks - but only so much as to give context to explain the counter argument. He should have ignored the insults like a bear ignoring bees. He should have focused more on laying out the mechanics of the plan, the options on the table and the means to solve the impasse so that the people in the room would be able to get to work. He should have left nobody any room to cry "foul" for him taking a partisan stance. I wish that had happened.

2. Lose the timeline urgency
I do not buy the argument that we need a full-packaged solution in place now. Human kind has lived for millenia with dreadful healthcare. Our healthcare has only reached humane proportions in the last century at best. The species knows how to continue its existence with misery, suffering and pain. I want a solution, but I would rather work on it slowly and get it right than rush it in. I believe rushing it in and getting it wrong will have worse impact than if we had not done it at all.
I am very cynical about the reason for the urgency. I believe the real reason for the urgency is because nobody wants "I voted yes on public health care" on the minds of the voters come next election. I suspect Obama knows this, and knows he won't get nearly as much participation from Democrat candidates if this goes on longer. They want this over and done with so they can put something else in recent memory to talk to their voters about. If this thing is all they have they are doomed at the polls and they know it.
This really makes me upset, because I believe we are going to lose the possibility of getting anything because of the rush. I want this to slow down. I want us to take longer thinking about how it should be done. I want us to... well... read the next section

3. Break the monolith into miniliths
Fixing health care actually has support from both sides. Disagreement is on exactly what to do and exactly what needs fixing. Maybe I think the wrong way for Congress, but that to me sounds like the type of thing you break into multiple bills which you vote on separately. Just a layman look, I would propose a couple: 1> health care insurance policy reform bill: this would cover all the "no pre-existing condition clause, no maximum lifetime cap... etc" stuff, 2> health care cost control reform bill: okay, I have no ideas on this, but the current bill seems to be rolling a bunch of stuff into it that proposes to reduce costs - so let's put those together, 3> public health care coverage bill: this is the one everyone is pissing in the wind about, so let's isolate it and have the vote on it so that it doesn't do collateral damage to other stuff people actually want...
Something like that. I am sure there are smarter ways.
I hear a lot of "If you don't keep clause , this all comes crashing down! You have to do !!!" I don't do economics, but I have been doing software testing for almost twenty years now, and I always cry "bullshit" on that. I hear it every time - some person become passionately enamored with a feature, and once they hear it is going to be cut declare the entire product unshippable without it. They have amazingly sound arguments... so compelling. Well, I have seen many features cut on a product line that makes billions of dollars a year... and I have seen many "critical" features kept (at high cost with added bugginess) that didn't matter two ounces to the customer. I suspect strongly the same thing goes with different aspects of any legislation - health care proposal included.
What I have learned from shipping software, though, is that you have to ship SOMETHING. Shipping late is bad, but not as bad as never shipping, and not nearly as bad as shipping something so dreadful and improperly built that you cannot sell or support it. It is better to cut in order to save the product. Yes, cutting is a risk - but let's remember what we are trying to accomplish here and not get so tied to our individual fixations.
And that is my proposal on the health care bill. One giant monolith, it is likely to die. Cut into pieces, the individual chunks may make it through. You also take the heat and controversy off the whole item - which means that you are far more likely to get comprose and less partisan bickering once people see parts of the problem they can actually work with.

Maybe I am naive, but I actually believe that if antagonism is dropped, the urgency removed, the timeline relaxed and the problem broken up into more workable chunks we would see both sides actually working on this issue in healthy debate. I wish Obama had seized the opportunity to work this way.

I've got your death panel right here...

We shouldn't have publicly funded health care.

Why?

Because, if we do, the government will need to manage the costs paid out to recipients. This will motivate them to adopt policies that will restrict care which could save people's lives. For example, they could have end of life counseling sessions where they recommend inexpensive pain treatments rather than more expensive life-sustaining treatment.

So, because of this possibility, we should not offer publicly funded health care?

Right.

What happens to people that need health care, then?

They get it covered by private insurance companies.

What if they cannot afford private insurance?

They will get it from their employer.

What if their employer doesn't offer it?

They will have to buy it themselves.

No... we already asserted they couldn't afford private insurance.

Oh, well they will pay for medical costs out of pocket, then.

The main purpose of insurance is to cover medical costs you cannot afford out of pocket, or at even at all. Yes, some plans offer more than that, but the primary service is to address the affordability problem by spreading the cost around. So, we are talking about expenses, which by definition, this person cannot pay for out of pocket - and in many cases could not pay for without completely losing everything in terms of their home, house, etc. Also, many medical situations make a person unable to work, further decreasing their ability to pay. How will they pay for the medical care then?

Um... well... you see because the taxpayers aren't paying for a public option...

You cannot use that because it hasn't happened yet, and we are talking about a realistic hypothetical example that happens now. If the taxpayer burden for public health care has not been imposed yet you cannot suddenly give all that money to our person needing care at this moment.

Well, I mean, isn't that their fault for not getting a better job?

Let's ignore the culpability of this individual for the moment. We'll get back to it.

Do you promise, because I really wanted to...

I know you did. I promise. But let's ask the question, what is going to happen to them?

I guess they just don't get the medical care they need.

Correct. Then what happens?

Well, I guess it depends on what they have.

Okay, so if you had Leukemia, what would probably happen if you didn't get treatment.

You would die.

Okay. So, a likely result is death, correct?

Yes.

All right, and this death happened because why?

The Leukemia.

Well, yes, you are correct, but why wasn't the Leukemia treated?

Really, isn't that their fault for not getting a better job?

Hold on. We aren't talking about culpability of the individual yet. I know you want to talk about that, but I promised we would get back to it. So, why didn't the Leukemia get treated?

Because the person didn't have the money.

Okay, and why didn't they have the money?

Well, their job... you see... and...

Okay, I know what you want to say. We will get to that. But, when they didn't have enough money on their own, did the government give them the money?

No.

Right. And would it be correct to say that the government didn't give them the money because, as policy, the government doesn't have a public health plan?

Yes.

So, in effect, this was a decision. This decision was that people are on their own to provide for their own medical insurance. If they cannot, the government will not help. Is it fair to say that this decision was driven by cost reasons?

Yes! Yes! Oh... yeah, now you get it!! You see, taxpayers people cannot be expected to pay for the health care of others who cannot afford it!!

Right. So cost reasons.

Oh, I am so glad we agree on that point! Now you are getting it!

I am glad too. Now, what was wrong with death panels? Why wouldn't they offer treatment to peopled needing health care?

It was because they would be motivated to control costs... um...

Yes?

Well...

You said "Motivated to control costs...", in other words because of cost reasons, correct?

Hey, um...

So, in effect, the decision not to provide publicly funded health care is really providing the same functional purpose as a death panel. It is making decisions, as a matter of policy, and independent of the decisions that a doctor and a patient make together in the best interests of the patient, what medicine to provide and what not to provide. All of these decisions are motivated purely by cost interests. So, by matter of definition, we have a death panel in place right now. Please remind me, is a death panel a good thing, or a bad thing?

Hey, wait - but this person... it's their fault! They should have worked harder, studied harder, got a better job, saved more money instead of spending it all on beer and donuts and getting a big fat ass and making me, a responsible taxpayer, cover their expenses.

Ah. You talk as if you know this person very well. Do you?

Well, no, but come on, look at most people, see how they behave! They don't deserve it! They're all a bunch of whiners.

Oh, statistics! You want to work with statistics!

Yes! I mean, it isn't morally right to have a bunch of lazy bums sap money from people who work hard.

Okay, so we should use statistics to determine who deserves health care.

Yes, let's be scientific.

Guess who else uses statistics to decide who deserves health care.

Rush Limbaugh?

I don't know. But I know who else. A death panel.

Hubba... wha?

A death panel looks at demographics, behavior, cost of success of procedure and other factors and decides who gets treatment and who does not. You seem pretty ready to whip out statistics right now. How do you feel about a death panel telling you that you are a good person or a bad person, or that you deserve to die because the medical condition you have is something you brought on yourself.

I would be really upset... but...

So, if we have defacto implemented a death panel by not providing public health care, and if the proponents are justifying this decision, as you just did, by suggesting that people cannot afford medical coverage because of something they brought on themselves and therefore do not deserve it, well, it seems that the death panel is indeed doing that very thing. How does this make you feel.

You're a Liberal!

I am confused. Is that an actual response to the question?

Communist! You are a socialist pinko.

No, I don't think that was an actual answer. I think that was a personal attack. Our conversation is still incomplete without your answer...

You're a Nazi! You want to suck the pocket books of the people dry!!!!

Now you are confused. The Nazi movement was anti-Communist, so accusing me of being both doesn't really make sense.

His birth certificate is a fake!!!!

Okay, now you are just getting weird.

I don't think this is about health care...

The anger seems way out of proportion.

To every person I have had an argument with that has calmly present balanced, and well supported reasons and facts against the health care bill... this is not directed at you. But if you showed up at an Obama speech with an automatic rifle, or if you are in league with the birthers, or if you cannot talk about health care without passing out in fear from anxiety over death panels... you are it.

If this was really about where to put the tax dollars, then I would expect the debate to be far more reasoned. People may demonstrate some passion, and some excitement, but the anger seems far beyond just discussing budget allocations.

The debate seems to be about something far deeper. This debate is, I believe, showing something about our inner personality as a nation that we don't even consciously realize ourselves.

I believe that what is happening is that this debate is actually destabilizing things people very closely associate with their personal identity. I believe that people create a set of rules about how the world ought to be and look, and tie that in to their identity. To challenge the veracity of those rules is to invite an irrational debate, because they rules are not defended as a matter of a series of points and counter points to be considered, but instead are defended as a personal matter, because giving up on those rules means giving up on yourself - you have to become a different person to accept the challenge, and human beings do not like to give up on their definition of self.

I don't believe, however, that we clearly understand the rules we entangle with identity. I believe the rules are expressed at a subconscious level and that we post-hoc rationalize them with more palatable explanations.

Case in point - a couple of the individuals in my church that I attended as a child were racist. They would have never considered themselves racist, but just the fact that they tried to teach the kids in our Sunday school class that interracial couples should not marry was pretty solid proof to me. Their justification - "There are enough challenges keeping a marriage together and raising children without adding the extra burden that mixing the races will introduce" My suspicion of their inner reason that they wouldn't admit to was likely "Mixing white and black people is wrong because the one group is better than the other". Of course I don't know that, but come on. I am asserting, though, that for these specific people, they proposed a really weak argument against interracial marriage because they needed to supply something that sounded rational to explain a highly irrational position that their personal identity had been attached to a long time ago. It was part of their world order that white and black were different classes of species and they could not stand to see their world tossed out and redefined.

Back to health care... I completely respect the suggestion that a publicly provided health care option might not fix the problem. I completely respect the suggestion that there are better ways to use the money. I disagree, and in my disagreement admit that this is too complex for anybody to really be certain about - but still respect the opposing opinion when it is clear that the person is really just offering the counter proposal.

But there appears to be something else here. Shouting out town hall meetings? Death panel suggestions? Making up falsehoods about what the proposal suggests? No, there is more baggage here, and it is being driven by a highly irrational need to preserve personal identity.

I have my suspicions. I actually don't believe racism is the dominant motivation (although when I see more violent expression... like guns, Nazi references, etc. I start to suspect a deeper hatred because of race). My bigger suspicion is in an innate American hatred for poor people.

American tradition, American work ethic, as good as it is, is based largely on Calvinist doctrine. One of the aspects of Calvanism is the basic assertion that rich people are rich because they are good and industrious (hence God rewarded them) and poor people are poor because they are bad and lazy (hence God punishes). This definitely has some positive impact on society - it creates a culture that respects hard work, self-sufficiency, cleverness, etc. But it also releases people, and society at large, from an obligation to do anything about people that need help. It removes, completely, the possibility that people are victims of circumstances. It re-inforces the "this is mine, and you cannot have it!" not as selfishness, but as a virtue to be exalted and rewarded. This philosophy is wired deeply into the American ethic such that it defines a piece of personal identity for many people in America.

To admit that this view is wrong would mean admitting that you really ought not to get every last stitch of value from your hard work. It means that having more is not as good as giving more. It means admitting that you are no better than someone who is unable to pay for their home, their food, their health care. If you grew up believing to the contrary, then changing this means literally replacing your entire self-image with another. The walls will come up.

I believe there are other forces at work. Humans generally have a need to identify themselves as part of a group. Makes sense. Gorillas do it to, and we have continued it all the way through our evolution. Most of our existence was spent in village culture. It is only a small sliver of human existence where we have to exist in a non-village lifestyle, and it is no surprise that some part of ourselves has not really adapted to it.

I believe the same part of the brain that makes us need family, clan, village, etc. also makes us seek out other groupings of identity. Church. Club. Social peers. Work. Political party. Mobs. Protest rallies. Street gangs.

Once a person strongly ties themself to a group, it gets wired into personal identity. At that point, our protection of that association supercedes rationality. We almost don't care why, anymore, we are associated with a particular group - we just preserve that association.

This leads to actions in bulk. Democrats opposed Bush (1 & 2) for being Republican. Republicans opposed Clinton, and Obama for being Democrat. Most members of society even really understand the issues the different parties stand for, cannot articulate the goals or agenda of a given politician. People are really voting for the club. Why do they do that? They do it because the club they belong to is part of them.

It is the people who are very strongly tied to their party that will go nuts. Death panels freaks. Birthers. Swift boaters. People who assert the Pentagon wasn't struck by a plane.

There are other deeply rooted ethics. There is an American ethic of suppressed pride replaced with outer humility. Sounding "high and mighty" is frowned on in older, traditional American ethics. In the Puritan ethic, people were respected more for keeping their mouth shut than for speaking out. "It is better to be silent and thought a fool than to open one's mouth and prove the point." I love that quote, and probably should pay more attention to its advice, but in this case it leads a prejudice.

The prejudice is basically to distrust anybody who sounds smart. Use big words? You are an elitist. Use subtle arguments? You are shifty. You have an ivy league education with outstanding grades and a stellar reputation as a scholar? You are too big for your britches. Have a "C" in college, booze it up, speak with a limited vocabulary and make references that indicate you really don't understand anything about other nations and cultures - you are a "regular guy". People trust you.

This prejudice likewise ties in with identity. For one thing, it excuses the regular person for not being that very smart person. It provides justification for their envy and allows them to ignore their own feelings of insecurity. So what if they didn't get good grades, go to college? The guys that did - they cannot be trusted. They are unethical. There is something suspicious about them. This type of support and defense against personal insecurity is all wired in with who a person believes they are. The wiring is subconscious, because to be consciously aware of it would necessitate admitting that the person is really just covering up a sense of self doubt.

And, again, this sort of thing is defended with weak, strange, non-sequitir positions because the person cannot connect with their real reason. So many people say they don't trust Obama because he comes off as smug, too smart, elitist. What is wrong with elitist? We are talking running the most powerful country in the world! Heck yes, we need an elite leadership - so long as that elitism is based on intelligence, which is precisely the type of elitism that people seem to be complaining about. The fact is the only thing wrong with elitism is that it forces people to recognize that they are not that elite person, and that they feel inadequate about it.

I am offering my specific suspicions here - and I may be way off on the details. However, I am absolutely convinced that the notion of supporting inner subconscious motives that are intertwined with personal identity are really what is going on. All my examples have been about the current right wing attack on the health care proposal - but I believe that we have seen lots the same thing in the left movement as well. I believe the WTO riots (not necessarily the protests... the labor folks, for example, I think had a sensible statement to make) were really because there were people who had an inner need to throw rocks at the establishment because that was how they had identified themselves. This is a human phenomenon that hits us on all sides.

So, what to do? Will the problem ever go away? Can one propose controversial change without a public freakshow on the other side.

I am very skeptical and cynical about this. I had a discussion with someone once about gay rights. I suggested that the opposition was not going to come around with discussion. I suggested that what really needed to happen was for the opposition to get old and die. I personally believe that this is the heart of social change. New generations come about and their personal identity is molded based on the times that surround them. You don't get change by changing people's minds. You get change because the population supporting the previous opinion diminishes in size and is replaced by a population that supports the change. Young people are the only true hope of social change. Those in the generation ahead of them will always fight an uphill battle with their predecessors and peers. It is the young people, watching that battle, that eventually embrace the change and make it happen.

This means that the battle must always be waged. One must likely still strive for the dialogs as if minds would be changed, but this is for sake of showing the example to minds still forming. Racial acceptance, acceptance of gay lifestyle - to previous generations this was not just odd, it was morally wrong. To the young that are growing up today, most of them cannot even comprehend racial inequality (as opposed to my peers when I was young - I still remember the kids on my block telling me you had to hide whenever a car full of black people drove by - they used the N word, of course), and a growing number of them now and in the future will not understand inequality against gay people. This is in spite of a population of adults now who still do not see it this way.

Mass phenomenon in popular media

Marshall McLuhan coined the term "global village" in response to the rise of widespread mass media. I have always taken that to mean that when media was slow (word of mouth, could only travel as fast as someone on foot or horse) our area of interesting information extended about as far as the ground local villages covered. If something happened to someone 100 miles away, you probably never heard about it.

Or cared. Because it was not relevant to you. Or important.

Consider numbers and proportions and statistics for just a second. A village has at most a couple hundred people. Often less. If something happens to 1% of those people, you will know about it. If something happens to .01% of those people, you probably will never hear about it. Further, that number is so small, that the significance of it happening at all is fairly unimportant. Logically, you probably shouldn't even care.

But now, our "village" is defined by the boundaries of a much larger communication range. We can cover the entire planet, but let's forget about that and think of just the United States. If something happens in Plunketvilleport, Maine (yes, I made that up - but doesn't it just sound like all the little puny towns on the east coast?) then we can hear about it within minutes on the west coast. Consider the visibility of small statistical probabilities now. We are talking about things that can occur to .000001% of the people, because the possible population we are talking about is the size of the entire United States.

"But wait," one might say "if it is that small a proportion of the population, why would it make it on the popular media?"

Because the media lives for spectacle. It makes more money, and the more unusual and the more bizarre something is, the more it rubs against people's sense of right and wrong or curiosity, the more the media desperately wants to pick it up.

Add to this another important factor. Consider the TYPES of people who work in popular media creation. These are people interested in popular media. It is just like computer software - the people that make it are into computers, and think EVERYBODY should be into computers as much as they are. Likewise, the people who film, write and report the stories think everybody should be fascinated with the same things they are. And what are they fascinated with? Well, just take a look. They are fascinated with Octomom, Jon and Kate, Britney, Michael Jackson, Paris Hilton, Oprah, Angelina Jolie, Madonna.

The end result of this is that the bulk of popular media fills up with an increasingly larger quantity of trivial material. These are events and occurences that 1> occur with very low levels of statistical significance, 2> are so far and distant from the people consuming the media to have any real impact on them, 3> are selected from a set of fetish topics chosen by the people who happen to be into those fetishes.

We are inundated with material that is unimportant and does not matter. Really - ask yourself the following:

• Is it important to me, and society in general, what Octomom does? If she makes any decision, will it actually affect me or society?
• Is it important to me, and society in general, whether Jon and Kate split up, or work it out and get their act together?
• If Oprah ever manages to get total control over her weight will society be the better for it? Will I be the better for it? What if Oprah continues to have weight issues, will that actually affect my personal health and well-being?
• Will my life change if it turns out Michael Jackson was murdered?
• Will my life change if Madonna adopts another baby from Africa? Will my life change if Angelina Jolie's lips grow wings and fly to Mars?

The questions above are rhetorical - the answer to all of them is "No". Increasingly, though, the media is portraying these events not as novel trivialities for sake of amusement, but as if they are somehow important. Somehow, Octomom's behavior raises issues that we need answers for. This is all just posturing by the media in an attempt to get more eyeballs - invent a bit of controversy and you get people watching.

I write all this knowing it will not change anytime soon. This like this happen when humans have built-in desires and proclivities that someone figures out how to exploit. It's like sugar, we have a built-in drive to consume it that developed during the 99% of human existence when food was incredibly scarce and hard to acquire. Now that sugar is easy to get, it's nearly killing us and as a population we cannot seem to stop consuming it. There is something about human behavior that clues into these things that did not develop when information could spread as quickly as it does now. In order for this sort of thing to change it must introduce an evolutionary disadvantage to those with the proclivity versus those without it. That disadvantage must impact successful propagation and continuation of the species. So, if worrying about Octomom's behavior means you never leave your house and therefore mate, well then maybe those who don't care will be the ones who lead us into the future. Or maybe fixating on Jon & Kate will cause a culture to ignore an invasion from a media adverse third world country that storms in and kills us all. I don't see those outcomes as very likely. I keep thinking of the movie "Idiocracy" that asserted the stupid people just have more kids and edge out the smart people, so in a couple thousand years we are inevitably headed toward a world of TV-addicted morons (dumb movie, but some of the humor in it is pretty funny).

What would Jesus do? taxes and freedom

There is a popular phrase among Christians today. "What would Jesus do?" While the phrase has some ludicrous implications that don't extend to the expectations placed upon Christians (such as establishing yourself at the right hand of God and declaring yourself to be the authority by which all humankind is saved, for example - although there so do seem to be a lot of Christians who act is if they were given that charter), it is often a good guiding compass for regular moral behavior. Say, when you want to spraypaint "jerk" on your neighbor's garage door because they play loud music at midnight, you think "What would Jesus do?" and put the can of red enamel back on the shelf.

So, the question: Should we fight to the death (other people's death and ours, both on the table) to ensure our own freedoms? - and the rhetorical response, "What would Jesus do?"

I love rhetorical responses, because you are implying the answer is obvious without actually giving the answer. In truth the answer is ambiguous, but the person offering the rhetorical response really only has one point in mind, and if you don't know what it is then you apparently aren't smart or informed enough to know, which immediately puts you on the losing side of the debate without even offering a position, because from here on out we can remind you that we demonstrated early on that your capacities for intelling argument are in question anyway, so anything you say from here on out is really just - well cute, but not worth considering.

Anyway, I don't know what Jesus would do. I can only guess. But my guess is that Jesus, when faced with his own lack of freedom, would not have killed anybody to secure it. We are talking about a man who in his own trial for acts of sedition against the state of Rome offered no defense. We are talking about a man who was the member of an oppressed population under Roman occupation, during a time when virtually every religious movement was about the return of a Messiah to throw off the Roman hold and re-establish the nation of Israel. This is what Jesus' apostles all thought was going to happen. You can imagine that Peter, when he grabbed the sword from the Roman gaurd and cut off the ear of one of the soldiers was thinking "This is it! This is the moment it starts!" And Jesus is the man who at that moment offered no resistance and healed the ear of the man Peter struck.

Now, today, when we talk about freedom in America, we are usually talking about far more trivial issues than occupation by a foreign empirical force. "Freedom" is frequently described in terms of "freedom to use my money without paying taxes..." So, when faced with the oppressive occupation of his native people by the Roman empire, Jesus didn't take up one sword, lead any riots or throw one stone. He did not instruct his people to do likewise. If under those conditions he did virtually nothing about freedom, then what would he say about the things that people get fired up about now?

Would Jesus get all fired up about higher taxes? Would Jesus get mad about a publicly offered health care plan?
Again, I don't know. I can only guess. I don't believe Jesus would care one bit about taxes either way. When asked whether or not people should pay taxes to Ceasar, his response was "give unto Ceasar what is Ceasar's, give unto God what is God's" Now, there is a lot of baggage associated with this statement, and you can read it many ways. Previous to this response, he had asked whose image was on the coin (hint: Ceasar's...) - so someone being really literal (don't get me started on literalism...) would say "Oh, so it is because Ceasar's face is on it... and since George Washington is dead we don't have to give our dollar to him anymore..." - but that obviously misses the point. Others might indicate that Ceasar had declared himself a god, and the people were asking Jesus if paying taxes was like a tithe, and that Jesus was only indicating that it was not. My personal take on this - Jesus was telling people "Just pay your taxes. Your concerns need to be of matters of a spiritual nature, and taxes are not among them." I believe Jesus would have paid his taxes without getting all worked up over it.

Regarding publicly funded health care, I am assuming he would be in favor of it. There was a popular religious belief at the time that people's misfortunes were based on misdeeds of their ancestors. Jesus' apostles even asked him concerning this once during one of his healings. This is not much different than popular American Christian post-Calvinist beliefs that rich people are well enough because they deserve it (higher virtue and such) and that poor people bring their problems on themselves and thus deserve their disadvantages. Jesus' response to his apostles was that the man being healed was that way to give evidence of the glory of God (I paraphrase). Remember that Jesus spent a lot of time hanging out with people that were considered the bottom of society - people of a criminal element. Think about that. That completely nullifies any idea of blame, or guilt, or why the person needs help. They just need help, and their plight is there to demonstrate that they can be helped. In modern Christianity, the glory of God, among other ways, is meant to be demonstrated through charity and love. So, regarding a publicly funded program, I think Jesus would say "Why are you fighting it? You should have faith and be glad that you live in a country where the government wants to use its money to help people instead of just building bigger palaces for its kings and heavier yokes for its slaves." But I am filling in the blanks here.

The stance I am trying to get to is that American values (I know, there is a mixed bag there) are not the same as Christianity. So many Christians in American try to smash the two together. Freedom to assemble. Democracy. How much/how little to tax people. Freedom of speech. Socialized versus privatized social services. None of these, as well as many other common American values, are really pertinent to Christianity. You could have a 100% communist society, sharing all labors, no private land ownership, all earned income going back to the government, and be a completely Christian nation (read the Bible, the first Christian churches were communes). You could have a total monarchy, with all land and possessions owned by the king, the labors of the royal subjects supporting the aristocracy, and still be a completely Christian nation. You could have a total libertarian anarchy (let's ignore the "anarchy degrades into might makes right quickly, which by definition is no longer anarchy " argument for a second) with everybody doing only what they want and perceive as right and be completely Christian. You could live as a slave in an atheist society, and still live a completely Christian life.

If we believe in God, then we have to look at history and acknowledge that God permitted every form of government so far to exist, often for millenia. Democracy has had the minority of time in human history. Whatever the "right" form of government is, God hasn't imparted on us exactly what it is, so it sure isn't our place to dictate its terms in context of Christianity (the closest God ever comes to this is in the Old Testament when God advises against appointing King Saul because he wanted the Isrealites to be a nation led by priests - but it is difficult to tell if that is meant for all people, or just the nation of Israel, and one also has to remember that the Old Testament written record was kept by the priests... so the point may be a bit skewed by the record keepers).

My belief - God doesn't care what government we live under. I believe God expects us to live the right and proper life no matter what context we are in. Getting fired up about taxes, how much to support poor people, whether or not to fund public education - none of this should be tied into religious discussions, and is not worth fighting over. Going to war and killing people to establish democracy elsewhere and fight other forms of government - I believe Jesus would call such acts dispicable and horrible.

Read aloud, the unnecessary stands out

I am reading my book to my daughters. They seem to enjoy it, particularly the parts where I poke fun at seemingly invulnerable adult characters. Seeing a gruff adult turn all sappy, or a scary villain trip all over himself is funny to them. They like hearing the story and beg for more. I enjoy reading it to them.

As part of the writing process, reading it aloud to them really helps out. The grammatical errors become glaringly obvious as my mouth trips over trying to say the sentences out loud. Even more glaring, though, are the writing indulgences which prove completely unnecessary to the book. In order to keep myself going, I force a free form "write whatever hits your head" approach. If I get an idea, I write it down on paper the way the words form in my head. If I think something is funny, amusing or interesting I just go for it right away before I lose it. Sometimes I will even skip several chapters ahead just to get something written out as it hits my skull, although usually I capture the idea in notes (as an aside, my inner geek shows through, as I use SGML style markup to do it... like this).

The problem with this approach is that many ideas are distractions which might have seemed fun to me, but that really don't play a part in the movement of the storyline. For the kind of story I am writing, sticking to the action is critical to keep the audience's interest. I have read whole chapters that on reflection should be removed entirely with just the bare stitching need to fix the hole they leave behind. Some chapters I want to keep, but maybe move to later in the story, as they deal with character development that become important points of the plot.

I'm not saying anything new or novel here. I have read several times in articles by other writers that reading the story out loud really helps in the proof reading. It is just interesting to reflect on it now as I am doing it.

Hey, advertising is free!

Really, all you need is the time to make a video. Then just post it on YouTube. Here are two of my own that I did for the book:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOjah2HWsGE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkMSEaBvLuM

Obviously this isn't all. The desire is for the video to go viral. I have to admit to my own ineptitude at manipulating the interests and desires of the general populace. I really have no idea how to get something like this to go all over the place. I tend to lean a great deal on hoping the content itself will carry it, but as I have seen with other attempts at promoting my book, that really is not enough.

Other people seem interested in this phenomenon as well. Advertising companies are doing a great deal to get their ads on YouTube and the web in general. One of my friends, Dave Kindard, seems to be invest a deal of research into the viral tipping point, particular with his recent use of Twitter as a distribution medium. Maybe I need to start reading up.

I recently read an article by another author about Amazon detail page visits. He never published the article, but he sent me a copy because the idea for the technical hack making it possible came from me. I had suggested to him a means by which an author published on Amazon could track how many times their book's detail page had been hit, something Amazon doesn't tell you (the technique no longer works - Amazon's behaviors changed around May this year). He ran an experiment and found not only could he count his hits, he could tell how the person visiting the page had got there (Amazon keeps such information on the URL query string), which allowed him to catalog the effectiveness of different means of promoting books. The conclusion: personal websites, Amazon guides, Listmania lists and author blogs are ineffective. The most effective means are Amazon's "bought together" feature and placement in search results.

Its all part of the "what drives people to something" soup that is the Internet. I personally found that paid web-based advertising was completely useless for promoting my book. I set the account on a small budget (this is a hobby to me, not a business) - and got lots of clicks (I chose pay for click as the model). Not ONE of those clicks registered as a visit to my website. Again, to reiterate - not ONE SINGLE CLICK that I PAID FOR resulted in a web site hit. I believe I was likely a victim of clickbot fraud. This is when automated programs simulate clicks on advertisements to exhaust the advertisers budget, after which point that ad no longer runs. This leaves the ads the clickbot deployer paid for a greater amount of the remaining ad displays. The problem is so big that MS actually sued the daylights off a business in Canada doing precisely that.

You know what DID drive people to my website? Chest pain. Well, searches on chest pain. When I first created my website, I wrote an experimental blog post about having a heart attack. The article talked about how after a heart attack all the day to day little muscular pangs you get in the chest area scare the daylights out of you. I forgot about the article for about six months until after I had published my book and put a page about it on my website and ran some ads on Facebook and Google. I was looking at the site visit reports, and surprisingly I had traffic, but many months before I ever published the book. I followed through the referrer URL, and they came mostly from Google searches. Google? Why would people be searching my site on Google? I checked the tag terms, and they were for "pain in chest". Apparently calling Google comes before calling 911. Go figure.

But the point that is interesting is that in both cases, effective placement in search results seems to be an important aspect of website promotion.

Yet, I am not sure if that is works for viral media. I always get that delivered to me by someone in email, or on sharing sites like Facebook and Digg. I am wondering about the dynamics of social movement described by Malcolm Gladwell in The Tipping Point. There, Gladwell describes the necessity of three personality types to start a social phenomenon - the early adopters (the ones on the fringe who differ from the mainstream), the observers (these are people who understand the early adopters and see a fad coming) and the connectors (these are people who have a massive network of other people they either know and communicate with, or who hang on them for advice). I am wondering if viral media rely on the same sort of thing.