The rise of the Tea Party in America has presented lefties and liberals with more than two brain cells to rub together on both sides of the Atlantic with a problem.  Picking a facepalm of the week just got a whole lot harder.

Following the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona, Republican senator Jon Kyl attempted to argue that her assailant was too mentally unstable for it to be a politically motivated attack, despite all of Sarah Palin’s crosshairs.

“It’s probably giving him too much credit to ascribe a coherent political philosophy to him,” Kyl said.

A bit like the rest of the Tea Party then?

“We just have to acknowledge that there are mentally unstable people in this country,” Kyl added.

Glenn Beck, check.

Bill O’Reilley, check.

Sarah Palin

What’s that, you daft accidental anti-semite? Your liberal enemies have accused you of drinking the blood of Christian children? I think we have a winner.

Whilst I am always in favour of a ‘re-politicising’ of politics, or a reclamation of politics as an ideological entity rather than a form of droll, pseudo-scientific administration, some of the scenes in the USA this week, with Republican Party activists actively promoting a situation which is bordering on civil disorder in protest at Obama’s much-vaunted health reform bill, have been beyond despicable.

Whilst coverage of the issue has been predictably partisan even in articles positing themselves as ostensibly neutral reports, there is broad agreement that the polarised atmosphere has veered into the downright nasty. Effigies of Democratic congressmen have been strung up outside their offices in unpleasant invocations of Jim Crow, and coarse heckling of Democratic meetings and Q and A sessions on the proposals by Republican officials insisting that they are simply ‘ordinary moms’ have become fairly commonplace.  Of course, they have every right to voice their disapproval. But the deliberate fostering of this vitriolic, all-consuming antipathy to a president taking a pro-active approach to one of the most repugnant aspects of a country that otherwise has a great deal to commend it, that of healthcare provision, is repellent.

As we are all aware, Obama is no socialist. And his healthcare plan, whilst certainly far-reaching, is not bereft of problems. But how it can be condemned as ‘evil’ is beyond me. Amongst the main bones of contention for the foaming-at-the-mouth Right is the fact that the budget deficit will, in all probability, rise, due to the shortfall in an extension of provision that will cost in excess of $100bn per year, as opposed to the administration’s own $50bn estimate. I accept that these are trying times, but would it be preferable to exercise a wonderful degree of fiscal discipline which induces erections over at at the IMF whilst over 47 million people suffer from a lack of access to even the most basic healthcare provision, something the rest of the developed world takes for granted? A standard issue economics textbook might answer in the affirmative. But if it someone doesn’t challenge the status quo at some point-and it has certainly become more and more entrenched during the Bush era-then it simply won’t happen. On an issue as vital as this, the budget deficit can be made up with curtailments of other forms of spending; no fiscal issue can attain the unparallelled moral importance supplying poor familes with adequate healthcare.

Another ‘problem’ making veins in right-wing foreheads bulge is the fact that stringent regulation of insurance providers-for example, they will not be allowed to charge more than double the premium paid by their lowest-risk customer (eg, a 25 year old, teetotal personal trainer) to their highest risk purchasers-are to be introduced. Similarly, ‘insurance exchanges’, essentially mechanisms facilitating a situation whereby each state will provide access to cheap and fairly wide-ranging healthcare plans at similar rates, regardless of personal status, will be based upon heavy state subsidies-only natural, if you consider the implications of this. The corollary of all this is that private insurers-one of the key financial and rhetorical backers of the current unrest-will become much less competitive, and possibly go out of business in significant numbers. Workplace insurance policies will probably also be largely reduced in number, as employers opt out and replace them with a substitute tax on employees given the rising cost of the former. This has predictably riled the well-off, notably that old, borderline-retarded chestnut, Sarah Palin. “The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down’s syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s ‘death panel’ so his bureaucrats can decide… whether they are worthy of healthcare,” she wrote on Facebook.

This is a shrill, hyperbolic, thinly-veiled reference to the inevitable rationing that would ensue under Obama’s plan. First year university economics 101 will tell you that in a marketised economy, if you disregard the principle of market equilibrium and make a good available at a price which does not ensure adequate satisfaction of demand at any given point, using state subsidies or controls to achieve this, then demand will far exceed availability or the ability to produce at a level sufficient to satisfy it. Therefore, this will lead to a form of rationing in health provision, as people ‘excessively’ consume health products and services which might be deemed ‘non-essential’-mental health counselling, hearing aids and so forth-at an ‘excessive’ rate due to their newly affordable, non-marketised prices.  The vast majority of economics professors will, understandably, tell you that rationing in a market economy is to be avoided in all but desperate situations (it disrupts the most important principle of the free market, that of natural equilibria), the example of the second world war being a favourite indicator.

Now I don’t know about you, but I would call nearly 50 million Americans-well over three quarters of the total population of Britain-without any kind of health insurance,  in a society that doesn’t really believe in free shit like us fuzzy British liberals, a pretty fucking desperate situation. If some rationing of the more ‘frivolous’ aspects of healthcare (I don’t like to use the word, but for the sake of clarity and briefness of argument), plus a reversal of Dubya’s tax cuts for the rich and possibly an extension of the budget deficit are the prices that need to be paid in order to finally get the ball rolling on a long-overdue reform of a scandalous situation, then so be it. The idea that she might have to take a bit of a downgrade in order that the worst off enjoy a huge upgrade might appall Sarah Palin, but its just tough titties. Besides which, her hysterical pronouncements assume a complete collapse of the whole private insurance industry, which simply won’t happen-it’s America, for god’s sake. There are more than enough wealthy people to sustain it for those who want it, despite the pathetic fretting over the end of tax breaks for those earning over £250,000. It just seems appalling that they should begrudge subsidising others, upon many of whom their affluent lifestyles are predicated, to the extent that they enjoy reasonable medical coverage.

I don’t want to come across as yet another mindless, nu-lab Obama cheerleader; I certainly am not one of his most ardent supporters, and am fully aware of the unprededented corporate marketing machine that put him where he is through cynical cultivation of the vacuous and the MTV-saturated. But he is bravely, and at the risk of rupturing his treasured consensus-building and reconciliation, on both intra and inter-party levels, challenging the entrenched and monstrously unjust status quo in a manner that makes the (defeated) Bill Clinton equivalent many years ago look timid. The knee-jerkers and reactionaries treating this issue as if it was on a par with the liquidation of the kulaks should be thoroughly ashamed.

America has always occupied a confused place in the global consciousness. It’s the land of McCarthy and Martin Luther King. The land of Hollywood dreams and Bible Belt nightmares. The land of apple pie and imperialism. That land of the free and home of the brave built by landless slaves in the home of Indian braves. After eight years of George W. Bush, eight years of belligerent foreign policy, of war, environmental destruction, human rights abuses, neo-liberalism and neo-conservatism, it is hardly surprising that America found its image in the eyes of the world more tarnished than ever. But if Stephen Fry in America can teach us anything, it is just how much there is to celebrate about this quaint and quirky country, its rich culture and traditions and its people. And how one nation – so reviled in so many ways by anti-war protesters and anti-capitalists for whom it is a symbol of everything they oppose – can also be a source of hope. That’s the confused place of America. That’s its narrative, a complex series of twists and sub-plots, much more than the grand story arc of one nation under God marching manifest destiny.

The election of Barack Obama fits that narrative so perfectly. Black man from humble background makes good in America. It could have been a Will Smith movie with a title taken from the Declaration of Independence. But beyond that, beyond his laudable pledges to withdraw troops from Iraq and close Guantanamo Bay, beyond his commitment to lowering carbon emissions and undoing the damage of the Bush administration, Obama really has changed the world. He’s changed their perceptions of America. Going door to door and talking politics in the run up to the European Elections, one thing was clear. People are decidedly less anti-American than they were a year ago.

If there is one person, however, who personifies everything that is detestable about America, it’s Sarah Palin. That gun toting, socially conservative, economically liberal, oil drilling, anti-abortion, pro-death penalty hockey mom who’s for the war and against gay rights is a walking synopsis of the dangerous side of America’s narrative. For any moderately liberal individual with a conscience, she’s quite clearly the villain of the piece. Palin’s announcement of her resignation as governor of Alaska – making waves on these shores on the day of America’s independence, 233 years after a bunch of rich slave owners decided they didn’t want to pay their taxes – can only be a good thing. But, if the reports are to be believed, if she is “advancing in the direction” of a 2012 bid for the White House, should we be worried?

Many Republicans are writing this off as a foolish move. “She was a shooting star who dimmed in recent months and now she’s crashed,” said Republican strategist Ed Rollins. But despite the questionability of this move, despite her bumbling performances during the campaign last year, despite the fact America has never before elected a woman as its president and despite her representing the polar opposite of the newfound hopes of Obama supporters around the world, she could do it. Because this is the nation that elected one of its most liberal, intelligent and eloquent presidents immediately after returning one of its most conservative, ignorant and gaffe-prone presidents in history. And because Sarah Palin is every bit as much a part of the American narrative as Barack Obama.