I am getting a kick out of watching the current ruckus over health care reform. Who is right; who is wrong? First, doesn’t that depend on one’s definition of ‘right’? If we are referring to ‘right’ from a Buddha’s Eight Fold Path point of view, then those who rant and rave on either side are certainly not Right. The rantings we see are merely emotions at play (at war actually). When emotions are at play, all discernment and impartiality go out the window. All that remains are our emotion driven biases, i.e., our needs and fears. We rarely retain even enough clarity to recognize what is happening to us.
What is more, no attempt to reason calmly and clearly ever counteracts such emotion blindness. 
Emotional fervor, like a wildfire, just has to burn itself out. Now this can be very discouraging to anyone who harbors expectations of humanity acting differently (i.e., better than other animals). Trying to shoehorn the real world into ones’ idealized world (how it ’should be’ ) is not only futile, it add fuel to the fire.
Harboring expectations in itself is an emotion driven bias. So surely, true impartiality is a super-human impossibility. In fact, I suppose not even God (in the Christian sense anyway) is capable of impartiality. ‘He’ is on the side of the Good, right? It is a no win situation; it is no wonder that Mother Theresa had such a hard time. On the bright side, I have found that looking for mysterious sameness is the next best thing, and it is doable. All you need to do is see yourself as no different that any other animal on the planet. Ah, but that can be such a blow to the ego! I suppose that is why we often prefer the path of self righteousness. It feels easier, but just as eating lots of cake feels easier, the long-run consequences are otherwise.
