I was reading The Rude Pundit today and he had a link up to a Mother Jones editorial about the rise of right wing extremist groups. The editorial discusses, in a fairly long-winded way, the fact that extremist groups want to operate outside the American system, overturning governments they dislike through violence and force of arms, rather than elections. They tie this into Richard Hofstadter, the Paranoid Style, what have you – you’ve probably heard this song before.

“The paranoid spokesman,” Hofstadter wrote, “is always manning the barricades of civilization…Like religious millennialists he expresses the anxiety of those who are living through the last days and he is sometimes disposed to set a date for the apocalypse…He does not see social conflict as something to be mediated and compromised…Since what is at stake is always a conflict between absolute good and absolute evil, what is necessary is not compromise but the will to fight things out to a finish.”

The interesting part comes when they try to tie the extremist actors in the right wing to first the Republicans in Congress, and then.. well, me. (Us?)

If this were all just so much blowhardery—designed merely to drive ratings and bait liberal bloggers—it would be slightly tawdry but perfectly ordinary political theater for the groundlings. But what may have started as tactical rhetoric has become a philosophy of governing. As MoJo blogger Kevin Drum has put it, the congressional minority’s guiding principle is now “What part of NO! don’t you understand?”

This is the true danger of condoning rhetoric like Oath Keepers’: It’s not just that it might push some from the paranoid fringe to the terrorist fringe. It’s that the political debate becomes corroded to the point where we as a nation no longer have enough common ground to agree to disagree. When one side’s goal is to stonewall and destroy rather than discuss and engage, we get paralysis—it takes two to tango, but only one to stonewall. (And stonewall-and-destroy is by no means a strategy unique to Republicans—yes, kill-the-health-care-bill lefties, that means you.) There are many ways to attack democracy, and one of them is to slowly, cynically undermine the founders’ mandate: to work together toward a more perfect union.

In the original, ‘kill-the-health-care-bill lefties’ links to Jane’s Huffpo piece listing ten reasons to oppose a specific piece of legislation. Which is somehow akin to bringing down a government through unreasoning fanaticism. (They might have noticed that Jane’s call was specific to the Senate health bill, not the House’s version or healthcare reform in general, but that subtle point slipped past their keen editorial radar somehow. Reading comprehension’s not what it used to be)

Aside from convincing me to never purchase another copy of Mother Jones, I don’t find this editor’s note very persuasive, but let’s see if we can follow their logic:

1) Extremist right-wing groups exhibit Hofstadter’s Paranoid Style, characterized by a fanatical, uncompromising stance that views one’s enemies as pure evil and all political conflicts as fights to the death between good and evil.

2) Republicans in Congress have translated this into a political strategy, using obstructionism to try and bring down the government rather than allow any of their evil enemy’s policies to take effect.

3) Progressives who oppose a specific piece of legislation are just the same as Republicans in Congress, because they don’t agree with President Obama on absolutely everything ever. Oh, and they’re subversives undermining the country, attacking democracy and betraying the Founders.

Hmm. What was that definition of the Paranoid Style again?

Because it sounds a lot like the editors at Mother Jones.

Most likely you’ve all seen a Bond movie (or three), but for those who are new to the concept, let me outline Bond Supervillain Syndrome:

Dashing, womanizing, and ultimately cold-blooded killer James Bond has been captured by a villain while on assignment by Her Majesty’s Secret Service. The stakes are very high; often the villain has by this point assembled a doomsday device or at least stolen a nuclear weapon; sometimes they have brought the United States and the Soviet Union to the brink of nuclear war.

At this point, a rational human being in the villain’s position would take a remarkably simple course of action: kill Mr. Bond. Quickly, efficiently. Get it over with and move on to World Domination, or at least a comfortable retirement on some warm tropical isle. Instead these old-school villains invariably set up some elaborate death trap or other and leave Mr. Bond to escape, now knowing the full details of their scheme and positioned correctly to defeat it. Hilarity ensues.

Why bring this up? Well, after a long year of secret backroom deals, ridiculously heavy lobbying, and writing the damn bill themselves, the Health Insurance Industry had victory in sight thanks to the legislative abortion known as ‘Health Care Reform’ in the Senate. All they had to do was shoot Mr. Bond in the back of the head, dump his body somewhere, and keep quiet for a couple of months.

Instead, what did they do?

Anthem Blue Cross is telling many of its approximately 800,000 customers who buy individual coverage — people not covered by group rates — that its prices will go up March 1 and may be adjusted “more frequently” than its typical yearly increases.

The insurer declined to say how high it is increasing rates. But brokers who sell these policies say they are fielding numerous calls from customers incensed over premium increases of 30% to 39%, saying they come on the heels of similar jumps last year.

That’s right; instead of keeping their heads down and getting the Senate bill passed, ensuring them government mandated profits in the billions and forcing millions of Americans into their clutches for fear of the IRS… they decided to set up a winch over the piranha tank.

Tom Simmons, the president of a consulting and design firm with four employees in Oakland, said he had recently read about the Anthem rate hikes when he received a letter from his insurance company, Blue Shield of California, telling him that his monthly family health premium would increase from $908 per month to $1,596 per month, an increase of almost 76 percent.

…

The recent news that WellPoint’s Anthem Blue Cross health insurance company in California wanted to increase premiums for individual policyholders as much as 39 percent is further evidence the current health system is not sustainable. And a survey by the Center for American Progress Action Fund found that California isn’t the only state where WellPoint is hiking individual premium rates by double-digit percentages. In fact, double-digit hikes have been implemented or are pending in at least 11 other states among the 14 where WellPoint’s Blue Cross Blue Shield companies are active: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Indiana, Maine, Nevada, New Hampshire, New York, Virginia, and Wisconsin.

This sort of melodramatic price-gouging is hardly new, as a report yesterday indicated. Insurance industry greed has driven the unsustainable growth in health insurance costs for many years now. However, the difference between villainy and cartoonish supervillainy comes when you take that extra step to rub salt in the wounds of someone you’ve already beaten.

And that’s what I think boosters of the Exchange model (sans public option) fail to understand. Supporters of the Senate plan believe that it will curb the rise in costs, that having information available to the end consumer, along with some limited protection from the most egregious consumer abuses, will be sufficient to bring the insurance companies under control.

The flaw in this thinking is obvious, given the insurance industry’s diagnosis of BSS: they can’t be controlled by anyone. They’re completely unhinged. No matter how many mechanisms you put in place to encourage them to put away their death traps, power down the laser beams and behave in a slightly more modest, though no less ruthless manner, they will return to abusing the consumer, again and again. They can’t stop; it’s a compulsion. Eventually they’ll destroy themselves.

The only question is whether we’ll be trapped with them in the secret volcano base when the time comes.

I’ll start out by saying that I never supported the House healthcare bill and I still don’t. It doesn’t do nearly enough to contain the soaring costs of health insurance in this country, it doesn’t come remotely close to achieving universal coverage, and it certainly doesn’t bring the insurance companies into line with tough and meaningful standards.

That having been said, a public alternative to our woefully inadequate private health insurance system, even a pathetic, crippled version like the one passed by the House, is better than compelling millions of Americans to buy the defective and dangerous products of the private health system.

In fact, for reasons Glenn Greenwald outlined months ago, passing the Senate’s version of healthcare moves us dangerously closer to a true merger of corporate and governmental power:

Even if one grants the arguments made by proponents of the health care bill about increased coverage, what the bill does is reinforces and bolsters a radically corrupt and flawed insurance model and an even more corrupt and destructive model of “governing.” It is a major step forward for the corporatist model, even a new innovation in propping it up.

I absolutely don’t grant those arguments, but as he said, it isn’t necessary to disagree about the expansion of coverage to oppose this bill. It’s merely necessary to oppose the government becoming an arm of the largest and most powerful corporations in the health sector. If you want your government to be of, by, and for Wellpoint, then by all means: support the Senate bill, support a bill without a public option. Construct your health insurance gulag (aka the Exchange) and cheer for your favorite company as they find ever newer and more exciting ways to deny claims.

Because, you know, that’s what they do. Insurance companies deny you health care to make money. That’s their model. They’re parasites, skimming dollars off the top that should go to necessary administrative costs or care. Arguments that they have a profit margin of ‘only’ 3% ignore both the realities of corporate accounting tricks and the moral imperative that, even if that 3% figure was accurate, it’s still WRONG to make money off of insurance premiums while denying and delaying the care that your customers need.

To make the argument that only skimming a little bit off the top is ok is akin to saying that because you only pushed Grandma down the stairs – you didn’t beat her prone body at the bottom of the steps with a tire iron – you’re a good person and exercise considerable restraint.

So here’s my pledge, the one mentioned in the title. If the Democratic party’s answer to our national health crisis is to send the IRS out as glorified bill collectors for Aetna and their friends, then they can forget about my vote.

I pledge, if the Senate version of HCR passes, that is to say, a health care bill that mandates that private individuals purchase a product they don’t want and can’t afford from private firms, then I won’t vote for any Democrat, in any election this year.

No matter what. I’m taking it out on ALL of them. I don’t care if you’re running for the Senate or for City Council, for the House of Representatives or for county dog catcher – no means no. Not one of you gets a vote from me.

Don’t misunderstand – I’m a registered voter (Wisconsin 2nd District). I absolutely intend to go to the polls. I’ll vote in every single contest.

But I will not vote for you.

And yes, I’ll even vote Republican if it comes to that.

It’s time to stop letting the Democratic party take our votes for granted. Returning again to the esteemed Mr. Greenwald:

Some of it has to do with broader questions of political power: if progressives always announce that they are willing to accept whatever miniscule benefits are tossed at them (on the ground that it’s better than nothing) and unfailingly support Democratic initiatives (on the ground that the GOP is worse), then they will (and should) always be ignored when it comes time to negotiate; nobody takes seriously the demands of those who announce they’ll go along with whatever the final outcome is.

I’m not bluffing, Democratic Party. I doubt very much if I’m alone, either.