I accuse...

I ACCUSE!

but who?
It's not clear exactly whose name I should list. Who exactly can I blame? That takes the steam out of my anger.
Nonetheless, it is increasingly clear to me that there is a kind of conspiracy involving doctors, private companies which sell health services, and government, a conspiracy designed to make it difficult for citizens to obtain the health care they deserve, the health care which is necessary for a minimally decent life.

Of course, all that is complicated for an eighty-something year old person living in the wilderness which is El Paso, Texas, a city without proper public transport, where it might be necessary to travel for twenty or thirty minutes for a doctor visit. (But do I cheat? Is public transport necessarily better than a private car if you are in your eighties? No, not necessarily, but it is better if you are not able to drive, and it's grotesque and senseless that everything is so far away. It is grotesque and unnecessary... And it doesn't seem to be changing--worst of all! The government is building more and more highways instead of building trams, metros, etc. etc. As if we weren't running out of oil... as if people were not actually dying every year as a result of climate change... as if climate change were not real.... as if professors of this or that at UTEP who might actually know something about climate change were silent......)

So, the inadequacy of the national transport system is a contributing factor in this denial of dignity and decency.
(Or, perhaps, the insane way that cities are not really designed --or designed to achieve perverse purposes---has the consequence that life is harder precisely when it should be easier--harder after a lifetime of work! Hypocrisy in a country which prides itself on the so-called "work ethic". Shameful hypocrisy....
This is not all that I have to say on this topic, but it is all I can say right now.....

Communism in the USA

When I lived in Slovakia, I frequently heard the following story about life under "communism":
there was no incentive to work hard. If you worked hard you got the same rewards as someone who was lazy.

Equally, there is a problem with motivation today in the USA, though it's a slightly different problem.
You can work long hours with intensity and still get little by way of reward--aka low pay and few or no benefits.... You may have no health insurance, or once you retire you find that your retirement package has disappeared or diminished....

One's motive is not the hope of a better life, but the fear of starvation.

Not a pretty picture. You tell me that it's better than communism? No one had to fear starvation under communism.

Communism (so called) was a deeply un-egalitarian system, and therefore hypocritical in its maintenance of what Michael Albert calls a "coordinator class", but,
at least there was a material minimum below which people were not allowed to fall--and that does not exist in the land with the greatest destructive capacity in history

And, I will add as an after-thought (stimulated by something I heard a Hungarian social scientist say): those societies which we call "communist" did have a vision of a social minimum. There were some things which, simply put, every community had to have--such as a cultural center in every neighborhood, a social good available to all. I didn't live in Slovakia during communism, but I saw first hand the remnants of the old system. And people living in Eastern Europe remember this idea that every community, every neighborhood should reach a minimum level, and it influences them--especially the older part of the population. The young, by contrast, are often animated by a wholly unrealistic and unsupportable form of "market fundamentalism" and are blind to these ideas...they are, indeed, fanatical and ruthless in their devotion to this new way of getting ahead... as fanatical as perhaps another younger generation was in its pursuit of "communism".....But I hasten to add the the word "often" in that last sentence is not a sociologist's "often", the product of careful counting, but merely the expression of something I've noticed that was salient at the time....significant though its significance is not easily quantifiable...

[Perhaps the word "often" is merely an indication that the very the ruthlessness of the new believers in capitalism impressed me with their audacity and narrow single-mindedness, as if they were fleeing the past with all possible haste, not looking over their shoulders, and refusing to engage in any form of self-reflection, or hear any doubts about the direction in which they were moving.]

And that idea of a minimum level of decent life either does not exist at all or exists in an atrophied form in the USA. Individuals may have that idea, but it does not rise to a level where it actually influences social organization...Indeed the trend is currently downhill, toward a more feudal style of organization...

Note: If you asked me to support the claim that market fundamentalism is unsupportable, I might begin with citing or developing arguments in John Quiggin's Zombie Economics, Princeton UP 2010.

Complaint: No one had to fear starvation!?? But what about torture, political oppression?
Funny thing, that. I read somewhere that there has been torture in the USA, and I think I even read somewhere that someone had gotten in trouble for their political opinions too, like FBI raids early in the morning. But, then again, maybe I only imagined it.....

CAPITALIST RESENTMENT

I've worked hard all week.... endured the degradation implied by following a boss's orders.... had to smile when I didn't mean it... in short, I had to eat shit.

But now the weekend is here, and I can do whatever I want.
I can play my music so loud that my neighbors get annoyed, but hey, F. them!
It's my music and my house.

And I can let my dogs run free in my fenced in lawn. And they can shit and bark at anyone they choose. It is my lawn and it is my shit.

Now I can experience the pleasure of freedom, capitalist freedom...

No, I've never read Frederick Douglass's "Life of a Slave". Why do you mention it?

war crimes

As I learned at Brian Leiter's "Leiter Reports", there is important information about US war crimes at Alan Gilbert's "Democratic Individuality" blog,
http://democratic-individuality.blogspot.com/

You'll want to see the entry of Wed., November 10, 2010

At Gilbert's blog, you will learn that there is reason to add the name "Petraeus" to the list of prominent North Americans who are guilty of war crimes.

guest blogger

New Special Feature: A Guest Blogger.

Professor Louis L. Lucas (hero of "A Neurotic in an Exotic Land") comments:

You've seen the headlines:

"Violent Protests"
"Protests Turn Violent"

How many times does the press talk about "violence" when what's really happened is only damage to property?

(Oh, yes, there may be pushing and shoving between demonstrators and police, but the question is whether the press routinely and systematically exaggerates in order to promote a negative view of legitimate protest....)

Comment/Objection:

Are you saying that if a protester throws a bottle at a policeman, that's not violence?

LLL replies: If you throw a bottle at someone, that is an attempt to injure them. That is an attempt to do physical violence.

But, then again, was the policeman protected by a riot shield? What damage was really done? To be sure, policemen, like soldiers, are doing a job and they are not members of the rulling class......So, what I am really saying is that we need more context. And I am suggesting that there is a broad tendency to portray events in one direction, so as to under-mine any legitimate grievances. The same thing happens when unions who strike in France are portrayed as lazy--not by exactly using that word, but by more subtle shading of the reports....

if I only had the time...

If I only had the time, I would like to mention Baby Bush's recent interview on network television promoting "his" book...(did he really write it--all by himself?)

As an author without a publisher, I take such questions very seriously...
(My book--a short, comic novel which is a cross between James Bond and the Nutty Professor--is available through "Wordclay", and there's a link below...)

Not to mention the actual content of the so-called interview...
not to mention Bush's attitude: a combination of arrogance and shameless stupidity...
as if he were thinking, "I have to do this but I really find this guy annoying and his questions an annoyance..."

Torture? Legal? The lawyers told me it was.....
Is torture really so technical a matter, so hard to figure out?

Possibly my favorite piece of arrogance is the suggestion that the poor man's feelings were hurt..
He played that card a couple of times... I presume that someone told him to do it....

Ohhhhhh Poooor Baby Bush! Does he lay awake thinking about all those who were massacred in Iraq? (I doubt it!)

But even more important: ?Why can't doctors visit sick patients? My imagination is filled with the thought of the elderly and the sick travellilng to their doctors....

I have heard that in France doctors still make home visits....

But I really haven't got time to say anything today...

in passing

I was dumb-founded when I hear some politican called Boehner say repeatedly that
the USA has the "best healthcare system in the world."

This is not true according to any reasonable interpretation of "best".
Short argument: There is a chart in "The Spirit Level" which compares expenditures against life expectancy. The USA spends more per citizen on health care, but the citizens of countries which spend much less live longer (on average) than do citizens of the USA...

Possible explanations:
a. Boehner does not know what the word "best" means.....
b. When Boehner says "best" he means the USA pays more per capita...
c. Boehner doesn't know what he is saying.
d. Boeher is dishonest or craven or a liar, or possibly a demagogue....

Well, strictly speaking Boehner did not say the USA has the best system.. He only said that Ob ama was threatening to destroy the best system... maybe he was thinking of another country's health care system...(Sweden or France or Germany.... )

Source: I heard Boehner say this more than once on "Democracy Now". Presumably they re-played it because they were themselves amused/surprised/ or possibly even outraged....
November 4 2010
Democracy Now: http://www.democracynow.org/2010/11/4/headlines