I love this clip--it encompasses everything the Daily Show does best, and brings into stark relief why the health care debate (if you want to call name-calling and screaming matches a debate) is a great example of capitalist ideology in action. 

"Ideology" is an interesting concept.  Historically, it came out of the contradictions of the French revolution, as the late anthropologist Eric Wolf pointed out.  In practical terms, it is often used as an epithet, to polemically charge an opponent with what Wolf termed "interested error".  Thus, conservatives see a "liberal ideology", liberals a "conservative ideology", al qaeda terrorists "ideologies of hate", this or that public figure has a "radical ideological agenda", etc..... If you can prove your opponent is "ideological", they lose, and you win. You don't even have to justify whether your own position is also "ideological". This, of course, pre-supposes that there is a purely un-ideological way of looking at the world, and that ideology is deviation from that. And of course, it also supposes that "I" am looking clearly, without warping effects of ideology.

But whenever you try to carry the term beyond whatever shouting match you happen to be in, this version of ideology loses coherence.  This kind of political ideology has no necessary conditions in race, class, gender, age, or geography.  There are some correlations (African Americans tend to identify as liberal, for example), but there are also enough counter examples to make ascribing political ideology to social factors a thorny prospect. 

And if the alternative is that we simply choose our ideologies based on preferences, then which ideology is right? Right now at least, the seems to be something called a "moderate" or "independent". Agreement is reached that both ideologies are extreme, and the goal is common ground. Which is why I reject the idea that ideology comes down to "interested error". If that's true, it means that all the fights, and all the bluster about who's right ultimately in politics comes down to making both people right. Difference, so important polemically, disappears in the face of comprimise.

A broader notion of ideology instead sees it as a way of explaining and justifying the world as it exists, and of maintaining that world.  For us, that means that ideology is ultimately about sustaining and reproducing capitalism.  Under this reading, ideology is not about difference, but about same-ness; about keeping the world, and the people in it, in the same patterns.  Liberalism and conservatism may have disagreements on how to do this, but they ultimately agree that it should be done.  Or, to get back to the clip above--we can disagree on what the death panels should do, but we all know that we need them. The problem of ideology then is not which one you choose, but of the circumstances that make those choices the only ones available. 

If that's a little too  satirical for you, consider this.  The Democrats Health Care bill, H.R. 3200 is called the "America's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009".  Despite all the talk about socialized medicine, the two salient words in that title are "affordable" and "choice", both of which point toward markets and consumption.  The bill does very little to attack market forces in the health industry--the whole concern about a public option is ultimately about setting up another consumer "choice", in the interests of "keeping costs down".  These are important ideas, but as ideologies, they ultimately tie us to the world as it is, rather than as it could be, or should be.