Health-care reform has cleared what is hopefully the last major hurdle as it works it's way to President Obama's desk and it came at an ugly price. I'm not talking about any of the number of compromises made, but I am talking about the ugliness portrayed in many anti-health care reform demonstrations which, predictably, featured there fair share of racial and homophobic slurs, directed at members of the House, that seemingly transported us back to the early 1960's (not in a good way).
But I also got to thinking about the main argument for 'killing the bill': it's too expensive! All fallacies of this argument aside, to trumpet financially stability and debt reduction under the Republican banner is fairly comical. After all, it was the manipulation of the Republicans that led us into an unjust war which has now cost American taxpayers over $710 Billion. Combine that with our foray into Afghanistan and we're over $1 Trillion spent, and this doesn't even take into account the incalculable loss of life that has occurred in both of these countries. So why the complaining about health care reform? After all, it is much more concrete that the maddeningly abstract issue of national security for which we have spent trillions over the past decade.
As is always the case, hip-hop provides answers for this question. While contemplating why spending money on two wars is so unquestioned yet spending money for health care reform to extend insurance to millions of Americans I turned to 50 Cent who stated this rather fitting statement in Many Men (Wish Death On Me):
Death gotta be easy, cause life is hard
It'll leave you physically, mentally, and emotionally scarred.
If anything, this health care debate has confirmed what is often declared by many hip-hop artists. It's much easier to die than live in this country it seems. The ever volatile 50 Cent wasn't the only to point this out, so did Biggie in his masterful 'You're Nobody (Till Somebody Kills You). Hip-hop songs with similar themes are literally endless and the common critique asks why the genre must be so nihilistic. However, as is often the case, hip-hop is able to reveal something about America that it too often wishes to ignore about itself.
In a country where we invest more in our prisons than our crumbling inner-city schools and don't question fighting two wars half-way across the world but fight tooth and nail to pass (modest) health care reform that would extend coverage to tens of millions of Americans, this nihilism makes a lot more sense. And it's not just hip-hop. William Faulkner expresses a similar sentiment in the equally morbid As I Lay Dying:
It takes two people to make you, one people to die. That's how the world is going to end.
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