Inevitable, My Ass..

The other day, weary of the day-to-day histrionics and tired of the constant gurgling sound of our freedoms and liberties taking a few laps around the bowl before disparaging, I "re-watched" the movie Rob Roy (Liam Neeson, 1996), a medium-to-good film filled with men wearing ladies' old 1980's big hair wigs and skirts, running around the moor, brandishing great broadswords, and yelling guttural, almost-indecipherable oaths at each other.

But the payoff of the movie is the duel scene at the end, pitting Rob Roy McGregor (Neeson) against a character called "The Fop" (Archibald Cunningham, Tim Roth). It was a struggle between an over-sized, plodding highlander and a pirouetting, mincing, prancing, effeminate -- albeit highly skilled -- swordsman. For about the first 75% of the struggle, The Fop pretty much nicks and slices Rob Roy until he is brought to his knees. At that point, Roth sticks his blade to Neeson's throat and prepares to deliver the coup de grâce. Suddenly, Neeson grabs The Fop's razor sharp blade full in hand and, while bleeding profusely from that grip, reaches for his own fallen sword and splits and, seizing it,  Roth from pillar to post.

We leave our hero as he is bandaging his hands, looking down on the ex-Fop ("..run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisibile!!"), bleeding out on the floor, with "the blue moon in his eye".

The beauty of that scene is Rob Roy's logic: that Neeson weighs up his predicament and decides to sacrifice a hand -- only a palm, if you will -- for the prospect of winning the duel. His bargain is far more than fair for him than the tragic Fop.

As the credits rolled and I re-corporated myself into the present day, it struck me that this is duel is a perfect metaphor (allegory?) for the health care debate with our our metro-sexual, jug-eared Boy King playing the role as The Fop. He has been flouncing and mincing around us these past 16 months, stinging and slicing us with his affronts to our liberties and his attempt to commandeer our current private health care system. Now he stands, sword in hand and blade to our throats, ready to administer the seemingly inevitable coup de grâce.

Or will it be?

It goes without competent argument that, through out this year-long duel, he and his ilk have become grossly insensitive to the oafish, plodding highlander -- the good, common, hardworking, tax paying, ordinary citizen -- with the broadsword in hand, remorselessly shuffling after this gadfly, absorbing the cuts and wounds inflicted. We may be on our knees now and we may suffer a deep laceration as we reach out and grab the opponent's blade, but come eight months from now, The Fop with the Dumbo ears will find himself flat on his back, split open from breast bone to hip bone, bleeding out politically as we bandage our cuts and move on.

While Pelosi, Reid, and Obama say this will quiet the mob at their doors, the irony is that, by the House voting this into law, they have not ended the health care debate, but prolonged it. With 60% of the country against this and such tone-deaf leadership from the Democrats, they have presented their opposition a burnished, ruggedly crafted, razor sharp broadsword to wield from now until November..and even beyond.

It seems that this mound of putrefied fecal matter will not only be the target of an almost relentless series of court challenges from the states' attorneys general, but also a ready made issue for this Fall. Republicans, conservatives, and the ordinary working citizens who watch their lives crumble as government begins its inexorable intrusions will have this affront still fresh in their minds on November 2nd.

My guess is that a lot more people than the jug-eared Fop will be on the floor, politically bleeding out, blue moon in their eyes, as the ordinary citizen bandages his wounds and moves on.