The American Way and the Learning Society

In his recent speech to Congress President Obama said “There are those on the left who believe that the only way to fix the system is through a single-payer system like Canada's, where we would severely restrict the private insurance market and have the government provide coverage for everyone. On the right, there are those who argue that we should end the employer-based system and leave individuals to buy health insurance on their own.
I have to say that there are arguments to be made for both approaches. But either one would represent a radical shift that would disrupt the health care most people currently have.”

Aside from erroneously assuming some sort of parity of relevance between these two positions, Obama says that single payer would disrupt the health care that people currently have. This is part of Obama's mealy mouthed approach to the fundamental issue of this society's health care for its citizens. Currently 40 million are uninsured and the cost of health care is skyrocketing. Obviously something “disrupting” has to happen. Further, If social disruption is a significaant factor then why does he continue the adventurism in Afghanistan? The provisions of billions of dollars to bail out banks will be disruptive for this generation's children, but that seems acceptable. It is clear that the current health care “system” is being run in the interest of some of the wealthiest people and some of the most powerful corporations in this country. It is high time some “disrupting” goes on if we are ever to be able to have a reasonably equitable society.

But there is, to my mind, a deeper reason to be concerned by this kind of “reasoning.” It posits that this capitalist society cannot have a form of health care enjoyed by other democratic countries. Obama mentioned Canada specifically. What is so different about Canada? There are few, if any countries, more like the United States than Canada. Is Obama saying that the United States is incapable of learning from other countries? When such an inability occurs in individuals we call it a leaning deficit and seek a remedy. Is Obama saying American hubris prevents us from learning from others? It is long past the time to get over that trait. The world is shrinking very rapidly. We share a planet with nearly seven billion others and the problems we humans present to this planet are many, impending and coalescing. In our own interest, if we cannot consider those of others, we need to grow up and do so quickly. A significant step in this direction would be the adoption of a single payer health care system. Finally, I cannot help thinking that Obama's statement reflects his fear of, or collusion with, the clout of the pharmaceutical, insurance and hospital corporations, as well as the corporate media involved. In a corporation-dominated society like ours this fight is going to have to take place sometime if we are to get our democracy back. I can think of no nobler cause for this president to pursue than the restoration of democracy and civic decency.

There is, however, another possibility for explaining Obama's behavior, at least in part. I suspect that Obama is more cognizant then most of us of the racist potential of this society. We have all seen the bizarre behavior of the Radical Right so far during Obama's presidency. Maureen Dowd in a New York Times column has made it quite evident that racism is a large, if not the largest element in the vociferous attacks by the Far Right orchestrated by Murdoch's demagogic minions, e.g. Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and, now apparently becoming the worst of the worst, Glenn Beck. Dowd points out that Representative Joe 'You lie! Wilson “belonged to the Sons of Confederate Veterans, led a 2000 campaign to keep the Confederate flag waving above South Carolina’s state Capitol.” She argues that he and the rest of his ilk cannot tolerate having a balck president and are prepared to do anything they can to ruin his presidency. It may be that Obama, aware of the potential for a racist inferno in this country, believes pushing a genuine progressive agenda could ignite it. If so, this raises a question for progressives, Are we prepared to push the progressive agenda at this price? My own view is that we cannot let the welfare of this nation's population be held hostage by threatening radical rightists.

I will add that I think the fundamental flaw in political conservatism is their worship of the past, which as with worship in general, pretty well precludes learning from the past. This singular focus also precludes learning from current experience. The past is definitive of values for conservatives therefore they can only react to changed circumstances by appealing to it. Hence, the denial of global warming, evolution, the humanity of gays and other threats to humanity's future such as a looming food and water shortages of unprecedented dimensions. This is why the responsibilities of progressives to humanity's future have to be thoroughly thought our, articulated, and made politically viable.

Bob Newhard

The Unhinged Society

I know I have written before on America's lost grip on reality, but there is, in my judgment, new evidence of this phenomenon and that it is becoming very dangerous. I have previously remarked the flight to fantasy evident in substituting creationism for evolution and the concomitant use of politics to replace science in the pursuit of that goal. I have also remarked that celebrities have replaced heroes in the minds of children; that the passion to be noticed, Andy Warhol's 15 minutes of fame, has produced multimillion dollar industries such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter; that millions of people avidly adopt avatars and endlessly play global fantasy games, etc. But, as I said in my last column on this subject, it is dangerous. Witness the recent rash of death “jokes” about Obama by Republicans, e.g. hunting tags for Obama and as I write this column Fox News' Glenn Beck broadcast his hope that poison is added to Nancy Pelosi's wine. The Republicans believe these tactics, including the psychotic but effective assertion that Obama intends, through his healthcare plan, to kill your grandmother, have turned the political tide that ran so strongly against them in the 2008 election—and this in 6 months. If they are right and some liberal writers seem to agree, then the American people are obviously and dangerously unhinged. People now feel free to brandish firearms at political meetings.

Democracy cannot withstand this indifference to reality. It will give way to the chaos generated by emotion-driven conflicts over myths of race, religion, gender and age difference. In the latter case there is a developing effort to pit the young against the old as the movement of wealth to fewer and fewer people deprives society of the resources needed to insure the broad economic base a democracy requires.

Another indicator that this society has lost its bearings can be found in a recently published book The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement in which the authors, two professors of social psychology, are mainly concerned with cultural as distinct from individual narcissism. Their judgment, with an abundance of evidence, is that there has been something like a sea change in American culture and it is not for the good. They list a number of social ills that are attributable to this social narcissism to a greater or lesser extent. These ills range from the mortgage debacle to plastic surgery and the whole makeover industry to the plague of “reality” shows. The major result is, of course, social disintegration and all that can flow from that. Under the best of circumstances there is an inherent conflict in democracy between the individual's liberty and the requirements of the democratic society necessary to assure that liberty. Jefferson sought to bridge this bifurcation by making the aim of the state to assist individuals in realizing their full potential. It was assumed, perhaps naively, that such self realization would be consistent with a democratic society.

In trying to understand why society appears to be falling apart I have begun to wonder if, along with the pressures of over population and the fragmenting effect of technology, a new awareness of human fragility is contributing to this disintegration. Never before in human history have humans known so clearly that their world can be destroyed and perhaps is in that process already and that tey are the cause. Aware of the willingness of humans to destroy each other, mankind now fears that it could, and perhaps will, destroy itself.

I remember a final scene in the movie version of Neville Shute's novel On the Beach, in which a nuclear exchange between Russia and the United States has unleashed an enormous radioactive cloud that was progressively killing all life as it circulated around the planet. Australia would complete the cloud's globe-girdling trip. People knew it was coming. They fragment into those who pray and passionately declare that Jesus is returning, by which method they supposedly escape the impending doom, and those who accept their fate and have an enormous beach party. Mankind is increasingly aware of its destiny. Is it starting to fragment into the religious deniers and the entertainment addicted accepters? I personally think Shute should have had a third group indulging in violence as they displayed their anger at such a fate. Somebody had to be responsible! We keep telling ourselves that there is still time, if we act quickly, to avoid the various catastrophes awaiting us. Can we really expect the bulk of mankind to act quickly? At its best, will not such an effort create massive conflict as humans fight for diminishing resources and this in the context of nuclear destructiveness? If some external intelligence were to observe humanity playing out this scenario, would it not think the efforts of those who seek to avoid the cascading convergence of such species-ending forces pitiful in their irrelevance? We must, in my judgment, be brutally honest before we can be productively progressive, else we too live in a fantasy.

Bob Newhad