Needed Now: A Real and Radical Left

nittany ram wrote:

waterfield wrote:

Here is an answer to your question WV.

‘Why don’t we just copy the Canadians?’ is because we can’t. We’re not Canadian and we don’t share the same history or the same social ethos.’”

I don’t buy that. It’s not because we are so culturely different; it’s because the US has been so propagandized that anything socialist is bad, and single payer is largely portrayed as socialist by the powers that be. It’s not culture – it’s a relatively small group of people who got rich off the current healthcare system, and therefore have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. IMO that’s what’s keeping us from having single payer. If you describe the benefits of single payer to most Americans and they are all for it. It’s not until you call it single payer that they turn up their noses.

I don’t know. I thought the article -like many from Wharton that I read-was fairly even handed. I think the point was that we are so ingrained in our health care system and we are so big and divergent in our views that it would almost be impossible to change to a universal system at this point. Maybe an infusion of universal care to some degree but to radically change to an entirely different model just won’t work. There may be a point in that. It may also be that there may not be any bad guys in this. Only that this nation has evolved in this system unlike any other. Its not the bad guys overpowering the good guys. Its never quite that simple.

nittany ram wrote:

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But at its core is a group of people who are ok with millions of Americans not having healthcare. They are ok with it because they profit from it. And these people do everything possible to maintain the system…

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Of course millions of middle-class people AGREE with the rich folks profiting from this disgusting system that leaves millions of people without health care.

So why do so many folks think this disgusting health-care system is just fine and dandy?

Well, the answer from us leftists is — propaganda works. People have been fed a pack of lies and disinformation for years. A propaganda campaign, from the Corporations. And it works.
(Its exactly the same kind of campaign that destroyed Upton Sinclair’s candidacy in the 30’s. I’m readin a book called “Empire of their own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood” and there’s a chapter about rightwing Jewish movie moguls who used movies and propaganda and money to defeat the socialist Sinclair…)

The thing that i wonder about is this — in order to support a system that leaves millions without health care, and gives rich folks a chance to live longer than poor folks — you have to be deep-down-selfish. You have to be. Right?
So what causes or nourishes or encourages that “deep down selfishness” in Americans? Somethin must be pushing Americans in that direction of selfishness.

Humans are malleable. They can be selfish and they can be non-selfish. So both are programmed into us biologically. So what could be pushing Americans in the selfish direction?

What could it possibly be…

w
v

“So why do so many folks think this disgusting health-care system is just fine and dandy?”

I don’t know. Sometimes I think we look at everything from a political view when stuff can be fairly simple. IMO “so many folks” have their own physician that they favor for a variety of reasons. So the mention of single payer or universal care causes anxiety over the prospect of losing that personal relationship with their doc. I don’t think it has much to do with the bad guys propagandizing the good guys as much as we want it to.

As far as being selfish I again don’t think the bad guys have caused this. We are born selfish. The baby cries cause he or she wants something. Gimme gimme gimme-until they get it. As the baby gets older the movies, television, etc tells the individual its OK to “gather” stuff and it becomes a matter of entitlement and “what’s in it for me”. The key to having a more compassionate society is to “learn” how to be unselfish. The only way I know how that can be done is through parenting. And good luck with that. But the first thing that needs to be done is to stop blaming big government and the politics for all that ails us. That’s simply an easy answer. The difficult one is how to teach a parent who has been raised with a sense of entitlement to reverse that in their children. And that’s difficult because to do that one has to lead by example. But that’s hard as most of us would rather sit back and say its the smelly leftists or the reactionary right wing or capitalism or corporations or this or that -when the real answer is within themselves. Any change in the form of government or its leaders won’t matter a lick if the “people” have no sense of empathy toward those of less fortune.

Now enough of my soap box theories.

Billy: As far as patients losing their doctors I’m not arguing their fears are well founded. I’m just saying they have such fears.

“Science tells us we’re born with an innate sense of fairness and a desire to share, as studies of small children show again and again.”

I think that misses my point Billy. Lets even assume that those studies are valid the problem comes when the so called “innate sense of fairness” becomes “unlearned”. Simply put its up to the parent to protect that “innate” sense of fairness and not destroy it. You and I probably know well meaning parents who object to soccer “participating trophies” for young children. The message repeated over and over becomes “its all about you not others”. Its the “show me a good loser and I’ll show you a loser” mentality. Take and take because it belongs to you not others. I think in today’s society children as they grow lose sight of the “others”. I guess my point was not so much how one is born but how one learns or “unlearns” as they grow up-which has nothing to do with the form of government or the left or the right. The small puppy you take home is cuddly, sweet, nice and totally loves you and is dependent on you. But you put that sweet puppy in a cage and beat the shit out of the animal day after day after day. On day you reach in to the cage to feed it and he will bite you. Maybe that’s closer to my point.

Evolutionary psychology tries to explain modern behaviors in evolutionary terms.

For example, they might explain the behavior of kissing as originating as way for our ancestors to determine the relative health of a potential mate. The problem is this hypothesis is untestable, and there are other ways to explain why kissing may have evolved. This is one reason why evolutionary psychology is widely criticized. But it does have its supporters too.

wv wrote:

I on the other hand am a system-blamer (not a ‘government’ blamer).
I think babies are born with brains that can be very selfish or very self-less. Its systems/environment that will nudge people toward selfishness or selflessness.

I think corporate-capitalism nudges people toward greed, individualism, superstition, and all the other stuff you dont like about Americans these days.
(I am wildly over-simplifying here as usual, but its a message-board post. Ya know.)

That’s pretty much where I am too.

And I’d add, that we all admit that life is far more complicated in the system we have now than it was two hundred years ago. Isn’t it logical to deduce an even greater role for “systems” in that case? As in, with the complexification and commodification of life, aren’t parents more detached from their own kids than they used to be?

George Scialabba talks about this in his excellent What Are Intellectuals Good For, especially in his essays about Christopher Lasch.

The very system of capitalism itself destroys the family unit, and conservative intellectuals once saw this too, back in the 1960s. They tear the father away from the family, the rearing of the child, when both parents were home (in the pre-capitalist world) as a matter of course . . . small farms, artisans, home producers, etc. etc.

Lasch thought this increased the likelihood of narcissistic children, for a host of reasons, but mostly because they no longer saw their parents at work daily, so more detachment and mystery got between parent and child.

And the dependence on an employers saps at our self-esteem too.

I think a lot about being able to go back to a medieval world, to its simplicity and relative order, though without any aristocracy in place. No capitalism. No ruling class. Just independent, small producer economies, democratically, cooperatively arranged. But maybe with Netflix somehow. And NFL Sunday Ticket too.

;>)

I think a lot about being able to go back to a medieval world, to its simplicity and relative order, though without any aristocracy in place. No capitalism. No ruling class. Just independent, small producer economies, democratically, cooperatively arranged.

So, msnbc has a story about a boy who raised $6000.00 with his lemonade stand to pay for his terminally ill brother’s medical bills. They reported it as an inspirational story.

However, the story’s not inspirational. It’s a tragedy and should be reported as such. It’s a tragedy because a family has to figure out a way to pay for the medical bills of a dying child. The horrible grief isn’t a big enough price to pay.

Link: https://www.msnbc.com/craig-melvin/watch/nine-year-old-raises-thousands-of-dollars-at-lemonade-stand-to-help-pay-brother-s-medical-bills-1245541955642

wv wrote:

nittany ram wrote:

So, msnbc has a story about a boy who raised $6000.00 with his lemonade stand to pay for his terminally ill brother’s medical bills. They reported it as an inspirational story.

However, the story’s not inspirational. It’s a tragedy and should be reported as such. It’s a tragedy because a family has to figure out a way to pay for the medical bills of a dying child. The horrible grief isn’t a big enough price to pay.

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Yup. And that kind of story/dynamic is repeated on the corporate news, NON-STOP 24 hours a day, seven days a week. That kind of story/angle. Nonstop.

And YOU are a leftist. Leftists notice that instantly. Libruls dont see it.

w
v

Thing is, most Americans are one bad accident away from that kind of situation. I’m very lucky that I established excellent credit over the decades, or I’d be selling lemonade too. Most Americans aren’t so lucky.

But all of that could change easily next year. Deductibles go back to dollar one, and max yearly payout too. All bets are off if serious health issues continue into 2019.

It doesn’t get much attention in the MSM, but literally tens of millions of Americans are close to the edge right now (43% of the country, according to the United Way), and neither party is doing what’s necessary to fix it, to put it all too nicely.

• This reply was modified 6 years, 5 months ago by Billy_T.