The Sausage Factory

Every time I expose myself to a media outlet these days I hear some variation on this: "Yes, there are problems in X part of healthcare reform, but we're in the sausage making phase and things get ugly." Meaning that Americans are resistant to political change because our political process is as inherently revolting as that Upton Sinclair describes in The Jungle. The metaphor implies that American representative democracy stands or falls on the same aesthetic criteria undergirding meat consumption. Yes, it is ugly, but the finished product is aesthetically pleasing; that's precisely why we displace and disguise the gross part. Does it also mean that our government and its mouthpieces link themselves with the ethical connotations of meat making? If I say: hey, maybe we shouldn't be making sausages either--where does that leave the governmental process? The flimsy morality of this metaphorical defense strikes me as a sign that the Obama administration has not found a new clearing for the left to establish itself but is still in its intellectual death throes. And reform, if it comes--will it be as laden with pain and remorse as the sausage?