So A Guy Walks Into A Bar...

You can walk into a bar in almost any city or town in America - the right kind of bar, of course - and find someone who knows all the answers.

Often, they have a small crowd around them, listening and nodding their heads as he or she explains a big problem and offers an easy, obvious solution.

And it’s not a Republican or a Democratic thing. A raw meat Republican with a beer in his hand who denounces how the government is coddling the undeserving (mostly minority) lawbreakers and welfare moochers has the same act as the ultra-sophisticated liberal Democrat who sips a fine, dry German Riesling and talks about how our indifferent policies are causing so much harm to our nation and to untold people around the world.

Neither brag about their blinders. No one in the crowds that gather around them dare to argue or talk about what goes on inside their little box of issues.

But here’s the thing. You don’t go into a bar to get answers to hard problems with multiple causes and which can unleash even more and worse problems.

But that’s just what a good part of our nation is doing about health care. We’re fighting off the alligators and forgetting that the job involves draining the swamp.

Get me a shotgun right away. And forget about hiring an engineer or a guy with a bulldozer. And, hurry up, pass the ammunition and forget about an environmental impact statement on what will happen when all that water in the swamp goes running down the hill.

That’s what’s happening in Congress right now, of course. But, it’s also happening in our homes, and where we work. And, it’s in every commercial on television which urges people to “call your Congressman and let them know...”

Two of them stand out for me. One urges me to let the government know I support the President’s plan for health insurance reform, even though he hasn’t yet given us a plan. The other says taxing health insurance is wrong, and we have to get rid of the Cadillac tax. And not one person in a hundred knows what that tax is, how it works, or who pays it. Guess what - get rid of it and you do.

It’s easy to set up a straw man to blame for any problem. The long, sad record of human suffering is full of examples - from people who are labeled witches because of some crop failure or local tragedy to wars entered on some thin, often wrong pretext. And if you think that only George Bush did it, go back to the ancient Greeks or Persians, or the history of Ireland or Britain or the Middle East. Or Native American tribes or...well, turn any page in those dry and dusty history books and something is likely to shake out.

But today we are supposed to be smarter. We have computers, and we have cable news. Any show you want, any opinion you already have.

Want to know an easy way of telling if you have been sucked in by the know-it-all in the bar with the easy answers? Simple. Just try and spend five minutes articulating the other side of the argument.

Not five minutes of yelling and cursing, or making stupid and baseless claims, but a simple straightforward argument about what the other side believes and why they believe it. Something that you could actually say if you go into the other guy’s bar and not be laughed at.

Back in college, I was on our school’s debate team. We would argue a topic with other schools, and you would have to support an idea in one round and oppose it in the next round. Interesting concept.

Then, as a reporter, I covered a lot of stories where some people wanted to do something or stop something from happening, and others opposed it. And I had to find out what both sides were really talking about.

Now that I think about it, maybe going to all those meetings wasn’t necessary. Maybe all I had to do was just go to two bars. Nah, then my stories wouldn’t have given readers any facts.