Am particularly interested by the rage inspired in so many by the idea that more Americans should have access to healthcare. Hard to understand, especially since it's still pay-to-play and still controlled by private insurers, so these people's beloved illusion of 'free-market magic' is still safe-and-sound, thanks to close to $200M of bribes from insurance lobby. These are the same angry people, by the way, who are usually the ones waving signs saying 'Don't mess with my Medicare'... The irony is lost on them...
At the same time of course, a whole host of things are happening before our eyes, and it baffles me that not more people are in a permanent state of outrage over them. A short list would include:
- Our air and water are being poisoned and our planet's life-sustaining resources are being fast depleted in the name of profits.
- Our food is filled with cancer-causing chemicals and obesity-causing additives while robbed of brain-developing nutrients. Also in the name of profits.
- Our political and judicial system is now fully controlled by private money.
- The US Constitution is now considered by many as a quaint historical document mainly useful when needed to somehow justify that every citizen should have the right to arm themselves to the teeth. All these other inconvenient articles and amendments are just guidelines, not rules, right?
- Our war machine is a tool of industry aimed at controlling the flow of natural resources at artificially low prices (if you exclude the cost of war of course, but businesses don't get to pay that, taxpayers do). Where are the old days of fabricating wars just in the name of ideological superiority and as a way to enrich the military industrial complex?
- America believes the world's most dangerous religious extremists are somewhere in the Middle East. The rest of the world believes they are in the US. And not Muslim.
- The real problem with taxpayer-funded welfare in the US has to do with the hundreds of billions given away to large, rich private interests in the form of all kinds of subsidies, right to unfairly exploit public lands and natural resources, tax breaks and the like.
- The American dream is dead. Best predictor of a man's lifetime income is his father's. The country's wealth is gradually and increasingly being amassed by a smaller number of people, who then use their immense wealth and power to ensure nobody interferes with that wealth and power.
- We love to say US is #1. At what? Not quality of life. Or education. Or health. Or freedom. Or opportunity. Or democracy. But obesity and other preventable diseases? Household debt? Pollution? Cost of healthcare? Cost of higher education? You bet!
Healthcare is not a right.
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