By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Did anyone punch anyone? Was there any actual blood? I think I might've missed it.Did Pelosi kick John Boehner in the testicles and then run away laughing before a screeching Virginia Foxx grabbed her by the hair, pulled her to the floor and punched her in the kidneys?
Did just about everyone on the House floor bitch-slap Bart Stupak -- who should right now vanish of the face of the earth forevermore, you simpering mealworm -- while Rahm Emmanuel head-butted Harry Reid, even as both burned a sneering Newt Gingrich doll in effigy? I might've been dreaming.

Did Obama finally strut in like a prize-fighter, like a Muay Thai boxer, bruised and exhausted after a solid year of this insane, polarizing BS, the viciousness of which even he never imagined? Did he deliver a dazzling barrage of calm, swift kicks to the heads of bitchy Repubs and nervous Dems alike, as everything devolved into a violent, smoke-filled melee of broken glass and shattered dentures, with little Joe Lieberman whimpering in the corner, rocking back and forth, wondering whatever happened to his integrity?
I don't think any of that happened. It sure felt like it happened. Maybe it should have happened. But I guess it didn't.
Behold, with the astonishing passage of flawed-but-incredible health care reform, we have the concomitant, frightening realization that this remains one of the most acidic, bitter, hopelessly divisive times to live in America and care a whit for national politics while maintaining a shred of morality, hope, a progressive soul.

Like millions, I was fairly convinced it simply could not get much worse or more acrimonious than when Dubya ran the nation into the ground, embarrassing and humiliating us planetwide a thousand times over as the rogue idiot pseudo-cowboy laughingstock war-hungry prick of the civilized world. I was wrong. But not in the way I imagined.
As Paul Krugman rightly points out, most Dems in the HCR fight reluctantly took their cues from Obama himself; they were inspired and urged to move from a place of genuinely trying to do what's right, a rather simple moral good for the nation, even at the expense of their own careers, all led by Obama's genuine ideal that basic health care is a national right, not a privilege.

In short, despite all their whining and infighting, the left wasn't pushing HCR because they wanted to stick it to the GOP. They weren't pushing it because they wanted to personally profit from various corporate cronies, though I'm sure some certainly will. They weren't pushing it due to multiple personal agendas. It was an authentic, at least somewhat egalitarian push to advance a basic ideal of the nation. Well, mostly. Which, in politics, is about as good as it gets.
The Republicans, on the other hand, were pure venom. Theirs was a systematic fearmongering, a nonstop bombardment of misguidings and untruths, an acid bath of panic overlaid with a fine sheen of racism and rage. This is turning out to be easily the nastiest, meanest GOP organization in ages, the house that Karl Rove built, a group shaming their own party's once-noble legacy. Even Reagan, who claimed Medicare would destroy the country, would be stunned at this gang's level of savagery.
Common wisdom now holds that while Obama finally succeeded in a truly historic, once-impossible vote, he has failed in his promise to be the uniter president, the community organizer of our liberal dreams, the guy who could somehow mend or at least bridge the hemorrhaging rift, not merely between the two parties, but also the two sides of American culture. This rift is defined hereby as the gulf between people with extant intelligence and subtle understanding of ideas, and the Sarah Palin-grade paranoids who don't quite understand what the hell they're raging about, but nevertheless do so with much clenched passion, fake tears, guns and a whole garage full of stockpiled bullets.

This is, to me, perhaps the saddest outcome of the insane health care fight. Not even Obama, the most intelligent, calm and experienced bringer-together president we could possibly hope for, was able to make a dent in the great wall. In fact, all evidence indicates he's even more polarizing, the absolute reverse of dumb-guy Bush who so violently repelled the intelligent and the informed. Obama is doing the opposite: the paranoids are so scared by the guy's untouchable force field of smarts and self-assurance, they're coagulating into little clusters, foamy little pools of resistance and anti-gummint hate.
Verily, health care reform will go down in history for many things -- Catholic nuns kicking ass, Ted Kennedy not having to roll in his grave, Democrats actually vaguely unifying -- but few are as amusing as the creation of the silliest political movement in recent American history, the Tea Party, a group barely cognizant of what it even stands for, with zero grasp of the history it's named after, who nevertheless will doubtlessly grab every tax benefit, housing subsidy, COBRA extension, Restoration Act moneys and (now) health care benefit that evil socialist Obama hands to them and their sniveling home states, even as they spit tobacco juice in his face. Adorable.

Perhaps the saddest idea of all, however, is the general lament I've heard repeated countless times on the left, this sense that if Obama can't do it, if this astonishingly calm and assured, rock solid, deeply reasonable president can't bridge the divide or at least hack through some of that barbed wire, we are, if not completely doomed, then certainly stuck deep in a sociocultural abyss no one has a clue how to navigate.

Eventually, something will have to give. Much like Wal-Mart pretending to care about going "green" because it realizes it can make/save lots of money, or Exxon pretending it gives a damn about the environment because it's a good PR move, perhaps the only way to force a change upon modern politicians it is to somehow incentivize it, to make it in both parties' best interests to shut the hell up and work together, lest we corral all of them into the street with pitchforks and fire, and run them off a cliff.
I have no idea how this can be done, what magic levers might be pulled or what miraculous tactical maneuver from Obama could possibly make both sides come to terms with the hateful chasm separating them -- and by extension, us. The environment? Education? High-fructose corn syrup? Wall Street? Colonizing deep space? No one knows.
One thing do we know for sure: As stunned, bedazzled and burned by the HCR fight as Americans feel right now, that's nothing compared to how we would respond when presented with some dramatic, exciting step forward that both parties were able to agree upon via passionate, articulate, thoughtful discussion and debate. True compassion, honesty, and heart? In thiscongress? Now that's impossible.

Mark Morford's latest book, 'The Daring Spectacle: Adventures in Deviant Journalism,' is available at Amazon, BN.com, and beyond.

Join Mark on Facebook and Twitter, or email him. His website is markmorford.com.
Mark's column appears every Wednesday on SFGate. To join the notification list for this column, click here and remove one article of clothing. To get on Mark's personal mailing list, click here and remove three more.