Forum Replies Created
-
AuthorPosts
-
Billy_TParticipantCan’t find it yet online, but Maher really went after both companies last night on his show. It’s rare to see that. No holds barred.
I knew how evil Monsanto was, but didn’t know Bayer is right up with them too. A merger of despicables.
My ideal of great journalism is the no holds barred exposure of corporate/capitalist horrors, not just government. It needs to be both/and. Mostly we just get the low hanging fruit of government corruption, and that’s not in any way, shape or form deep enough. But we rarely hear about the capitalist side of things . . .
Is that the influence of right-libertarianism and its influence on “conservatism” more generally?
Rand Paul typifies this so often. He was asked by a reporter recently if it bothered him what Facebook is doing, giving customer info — and their friends’ info — to who knows what entities. He said he was much more concerned with government invasion of privacy. The corporate form of this doesn’t seem to faze him.
Both/and. Not either/or.
Billy_TParticipant“Talking down” to people about various intellectual matters? I may be missing something, but I can’t see how that leads to wars, environmental devastation, the surveillance state, the carceral state, mass inequality, etc. etc.
Simple. When you insult someone’s intelligence you eventually cause them to lose faith in your positions. That in turns causes them, knowingly or unknowingly, to support those who care far less about “wars, environmental devastation,…, and the mass inequality, than you or I do.
Well, again, I’m against “talking down” to other people, and against insulting their intelligence. But I don’t see that as something practiced only by “coastal elites” or liberals, or leftists, or Dems. And I think if people are honest, and come out of their tribal bubbles at least long enough to be honest, they’d admit they’ve experienced that from many different sources, and all over the country.
Even in the South. Even in heavily Republican areas.
I mentioned country clubs above. My experience working in one, with Republican members dominant, forced daily negotiations with “elitists” and all too frequent “talking down to” those of us on staff. The business owner/rich people form of that. Not the academic or professional classes, with rare exceptions.
Anyway . . . my very general observation is that Dems are just really, really bad at hiding their elitism, whereas Republicans are very good at it. Cowboy hats and pickup trucks — literally and metaphorically. They can pull that off. The Dems pretty much either never try or just can’t make it work.
(In this case, talking about the Dems, rather than “the left.” The two aren’t generally the same, at least not since the 1960s.)
Billy_TParticipantI believe the US government may have been negligent, but not actively involved.
The prime directive of the Bush admin assholes was regime change in Iraq which was supposed to debut a grand Americanization of the Middle East. We know this without doubt.
So…if the US government had a hand in this, the pilots would have been Iraqis. That just would have been very simple to do, and vastly more effective.
They weren’t. They inconveniently were mostly from countries allied with the US.
That’s another key, Zooey. What was it? Fifteen out of nineteen were Saudis?
There were far easier ways to ensure wet dreams for the PNAC crowd.
Billy_TParticipantAfter all these years, I dunno what to think about 9-11. I really dont. I dont trust the official version anymore, but i dont trust any of the alternative versions either. I ‘lean toward’ the official version but I am not totally convinced. I wish there were sources on this i could trust.
Another example of wv-ram not-knowing-somethin.
Anybody on this board a 9-11 agnostic, like me? Just curious. I know at one time Mack was, but then he moved toward the official theory. …where the hell is Mack, btw?
w
vI don’t trust the official story in this sense:
It didn’t really deal with government’s failure to prevent it, or its role in indirectly provoking it.
(Blowback)
I think they got who did it right. And I’ve never believed the Alex Jones bullshit about it being a false flag. It just never made any sense that the powers that be would blow up their own key installations, especially not major seats of economic, military and political power.
Not that the government is beyond major operations to provoke wars. But if they’re gonna do them, they’re gonna make sure it’s overseas and doesn’t result in major losses to their own key assets.
Plus, it’s really not that hard to persuade enough Americans that we need yet another war. Our history shows this. Why take all of that risk, blowing up key assets at home, in the centers of power, when there are so many other ways to start a war and get a buy-in?
Matt Taibbi wrote some really excellent pieces concerning the Truthers back in the day. He dealt with much of the above.
Billy_TParticipantFor me, the pursuit of knowledge, the creation of art, will always tower above the extraction and accumulation of wealth. It’s not even in the same universe, morally, ethically, spiritually, etc. etc.
I find the former a great addition to the world and the latter a subtraction from it (at best).
So if I have to deal with “elitism” from either “camp,” I have that in the back of my mind.
Of course, it would be a thousand times better not to have elitism, period. A truly democratic spirit should permeate the arts and academia as well. Whitman comes to mind, as does Dewey. They weren’t “elitists” inside or outside the Humanities. And it’s just not a working formula for those of us left of center to even have the appearance of intellectual elitism. But it’s not really “dangerous” for a nation. Economic elitism, however, always is. Under the capitalist system, it tends to accelerate the creation of poverty, homelessness, inequality and wars well beyond the normal odious generation of those things.
“Talking down” to people about various intellectual matters? I may be missing something, but I can’t see how that leads to wars, environmental devastation, the surveillance state, the carceral state, mass inequality, etc. etc.
Billy_TParticipantI suppose my question is this: if “the issues are complex, and the reading level is too high for most Americans” why is it that on a percentage basis the Republicans have more of their constituency voting than the Democrats? And by a lot.
Good question.
My first armchair guess would be that older, whiter, more affluent voters are more likely to feel like they have a stake in the outcome whereas younger, minority, and poor people are more likely to feel like it doesn’t make much difference.
But I don’t know. Democrats should really figure this out, though. The lack of turnout for them to midterm elections and special elections is the reason that Republicans control the country disproportionately.
Yeah-I’m not sure either. But the Democratic leadership needs to focus on this turn out issue or were assured of more what we have now. I recently read Chris Matthews book on Bobby Kennedy. Granted this before the net and social media, etc. but he had a way of connecting to the individual so that the person thought he really cared about them. His older brother had some of that but not nearly as much as Bobby. When I’m around my Republican friends my wife says I talk down to them like I’m an elitist and it puts people off-so she says. She’s likely right.
To me, the whole “elitist” thing is nonsense, and a manufactured narrative designed to help Republicans. Not that it doesn’t exist. But saying it’s somehow exclusively the domain of Dems, liberals, leftists, the coasts, etc. is absurd.
The narrative basically narrows the concept down to one’s education or professional status only — just that — forgetting that economic elitism is far more devastating. And it’s not close. But it works for Republicans. It works to be an elitist, as long as you wear a cowboy hat and drive a pickup truck. The Dems don’t know how to make their own form work.
Obviously, exceptions occur all over the place, but, generally speaking, the Dems have placed their bets on the “elite” from professional ranks, who count on academic advancement, primarily, to gain the upper echelons of those ranks. Thomas Frank talks about the dark underside of this bet in his recent Listen, Liberal.
Republicans, OTOH, see business owners as their key constituency, and their rise up economic ladders via the ownership of businesses. Anyone who has ever spent any time working for others, dealing with CEOs, working, say, in country clubs, with an array of business owners and their families, knows that “elitism” is alive and well in that community too.
The Media want a horse race. They don’t want one party to dominate. So they concocted this nonsense to even the playing field. And, speaking of Chris Matthews, he’s in on the game too. He’s long ranted about Democratic Party elitism, and did so the other day on Morning Joe, saying he was actually rooting against the Dems because of it.
Personally, I find the economic form not only insulting but dangerous. The academic kind is much easier, IMO, to deal with.
June 7, 2018 at 2:20 pm in reply to: Trump invokes War of 1812 in testy call with Trudeau over tariffs #87146Billy_TParticipantThe problem with Trump’s comments to Trudeau is that British troops burned down the White House during the War of 1812. Historians note the British attack on Washington was in retaliation for the American attack on York, Ontario, in territory that eventually became Canada, which was then a British colony.
But, see, the difference was, America was just making the world safe for democracy.
The Canadians, in contrast (though admittedly they didn;t exist yet) were trying to take away our freedoms and impose sharia law.
If every American had a gun back then, none of this would have ever happened. Except of course the burning of Toronto (which at the time was mistakenly called “York”).
I had family in Toronto. They took me to Fort York when I visited. It’s still there now as it was then, for all the good it did.
__
Don’t forget, not just Sharia. But gay Sharia. And gay Marxist Sharia. Well, actually, it was gay, trans-gendered, Marxist Sharia.
For some reason that reminds me of this (my brain works in mysterious ways these days):
-
This reply was modified 7 years, 9 months ago by
Billy_T.
Billy_TParticipantI’m partial to the music I grew up with. For the most part I stopped listening to new music sometime in the early 90’s.
There are some newer bands I like, but only because they have a retro style reminiscent of the music from my youth.
I like that there are young people who are drawn to older musical styles. Here’s a young blues artist I like doing a Sabbath cover.
Nittany,
As if Business Insider had read your post:
Billy_TParticipantHave you seen this article, WV?
Here’s your lie factory at work, in the private sector. Amazing that our gubmint lets them get away with this:
Billy_TParticipantAs a kind of antidote to the idea of decline after the 1960s, I think Tori Amos and Imogen Heap continue the tradition of beautiful sounds and sense.
Complex, tonally rich and diverse, intelligent lyrics — they have it all. I love their music. And Heap is protean. Few artists can sound so different, song to song:
Billy_TParticipantInteresting video, and it passes the old “smell test.”
I’d love to see a similar study done of trajectories within a musician’s career. I’m betting it would find that most of them tend to start out with greater musical diversity and complexity, and their lyrics were superior in the beginning as well.
Bruce Springsteen comes to mind right off the bat. His first two or three albums had far richer textures, tonal diversity and complexity than his later albums, and he took more chances with his lyrics. Strangely enough, they seemed more “mature” than many of his later offerings — at least to me.
U2 strikes me as having a similar trajectory and loss over time, though they had a pretty good run through the 1980s. Bad Company as well (in the 1970s), though it happened faster with them. Perhaps just one great album, and a descent into pop.
Some artists hung in there longer than others. In my view, Cat Stevens made four great albums before he basically lost it, but the first two on that list — Tea for the Tillerman and Teaser and the Firecat — were richer lyrically, while the last of the four, “Foreigner,” took the most chances musically.
That study might stumble upon a few who never fell. I’d place Van Morrison in that group. He seems never to have lost his innovation, complexity, intelligence, etc. From beginning to end.
June 4, 2018 at 12:41 pm in reply to: Trump lawyers sent bombshell memo to Mueller in January #87034Billy_TParticipantMy brother had that David Frye album, and I listened to it many times. Maybe that’s why I was ripe for mind-corrupting leftist thought.
He was really funny, and to a young kid, seemed “in the know” at the same time. That was important for me. Even back then — at least I tell myself now — I think I had a pretty good BS detector. That always altered my view of artists, singers, comics, writers, etc. etc.
June 4, 2018 at 11:56 am in reply to: Trump lawyers sent bombshell memo to Mueller in January #87026Billy_TParticipantI loved Cosby comedy in the 1960s. Just a brilliant, one of a kind guy at the time. And Flip Wilson, too. Carlin was amazing for decades, though I think he hit a rough patch for a bit and then overcame it. Before and after that, genius. During that rough patch, I thought he was being a bit self-indulgent, with long riffs on pretty trivial stuff.
Just going purely on weakened memory here, but kinda like, “Ever notice there are no purple fruits? We have red and blue and orange, but no purple fruits.”
But that was brief, and then he went back to dead-on funny stuff, that was also edgy and relevant.
I bought several David Frye albums when I was a kid. Thought it was an amazing impressionist and good comic:
June 3, 2018 at 10:13 pm in reply to: Trump lawyers sent bombshell memo to Mueller in January #87010Billy_TParticipant<
WV, you’re an actual lawyer, and I haven’t even played one on TV . . . but are you saying that if you were Trump’s lawyer, and you knew he’s innocent,
. . . .
—
=============Well wv-brain could not
1 imagine being trumps lawyer,
and
2 imagine Trump being innocent.My brain just wont go there.
Not even with a jug of Ayahuasca, and a basket of mushrooms.
w
v;>)
Well, I’ve long thought you missed your true calling. You should have been WV-standup-comic. I think you would have done at least as well as Seinfeld, with perhaps a dash of Lenny Bruce.
Nicely done, Esquire!
Billy_TParticipantI disagree. Yes an innocent person would send that 🙂 Its just lawyer stuff, Billy. His lawyers did it, not him. There’s no downside to arguing every possible angle on a legal issue. They are just throwing everything including the kitchen sink at him.
Its an awful argument, of course.
w
vWV, you’re an actual lawyer, and I haven’t even played one on TV . . . but are you saying that if you were Trump’s lawyer, and you knew he’s innocent, you’d threaten the special counsel like that? You’d claim that your client has the Constitutional authority to shut down the investigation into your client’s campaign, and any other investigation he so chooses? You’d go out of your way, write up a memo, and send it to the prosecutors, telling them your client can shut them down any time he wants to?
. . . .
I’ve been rereading the Constitution today, and can’t find any language to support his claim. There is no mention whatsoever of law enforcement, criminal investigations, prosecutions, even relevant departments, in the section on presidential powers. And even if one accepts the premise — I don’t — that once something falls under the Executive, then the president has full operational control of it, there’s no supporting language for that, either. No evidence from absence, from the unsaid, just absence of evidence, etc.
Anyway, hope all is well —
June 3, 2018 at 11:28 am in reply to: Trump lawyers sent bombshell memo to Mueller in January #86993Billy_TParticipantTrump wants to turn the US into the same sort of autocracy that his hero, Putin, presides over.
And nearly half the country is cheering him on.
Hamilton’s Grand Experiment in democracy is boiling over the edge of the beaker and burning holes in the bench top.
Putin is supposedly worth roughly 200 billion. I may be mistaken, but I don’t think Putin has ever held a job outside the Russian public sector. He accrued all of his money while supposedly being a “public servant.”
My gut tells me Trump went into the election thinking he’d likely lose, but that he’d gain an edge along those lines, either way . . . . and a win would mean ginormous additional powers to add billions to his coffers. It was worth the risk. We’ve already seen umpteen examples of this, with the latest being his saving of ZTE in exchange for half a billion dollars.
And now we learn his lawyers are seeding the idea that he’s above the law, controls the law, controls all investigations, including the one into his own campaign.
He’s already gone beyond Nixon when it comes to a power grab, and I’m guessing he has a much better chance to get away with it, tragically.
Billy_TParticipantSo, 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.
==========================
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
vThing 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 7 years, 9 months ago by Billy_T.
June 3, 2018 at 10:17 am in reply to: Trump lawyers sent bombshell memo to Mueller in January #86985Billy_TParticipantHopefully, our resident lawyers can help on this one, but I couldn’t find any mention in the Constitution of the president’s supposed control over all criminal prosecutions, etc. etc. And it certainly doesn’t say anything about the Justice Department, cuz that didn’t even exist until 1870.
It was, according to Wikipedia, put in place primarily (during the Grant administration) to fight domestic terrorist groups like the Ku Klux Klan and to protect Civil Rights. Judging from their early prosecutions, that appears to be at least one valid rationale.
The claims of “Constitutionally supported” X, Y and Z, I’ve noticed, all too often lack any support whatsoever when we read the actual document. Again, I hope our lawyers here can add context and analysis, but it strikes me that all too many of those claims are BS. Like the radically inflated “rights” now associated with the 2nd Amendment. They’re just not in the BOR or the Constitution. They don’t exist anywhere, other than subsequent “rulings” that in turn lack any actual connection to the founding document itself.
Same thing happened with “corporate personhood,” for another example. It’s not in the Constitution.
As the young kids used to ask, What’s up with that?!
Billy_TParticipantA slightly different take on this from the Washington Post:
by Rosalind S. Helderman June 2 at 7:14 PM Email the author
Lawyers for President Trump argued in a secret memo submitted to special counsel Robert S. Mueller III in January that Trump could not have obstructed the FBI’s probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election in part because, as president, he holds complete control over federal investigations.
The president has the power to “order the termination of an investigation by the Justice Department or FBI at any time and for any reason,” Trump lawyers John Dowd and Jay Sekulow argued in the letter to Mueller, which was published Saturday by the New York Times.
As the nation’s chief law enforcement officer, Trump could “even exercise his power to pardon if he so desired,” they argued. A person familiar with the letter confirmed its authenticity.
The 20-page letter offered a sweeping assertion of the powers of the presidency as well as a detailed and robust defense of Trump’s actions in dealing with the unfolding Russia probe, including his firing of FBI Director James B. Comey in May 2017. It concluded that Trump’s actions were in keeping with the expansive powers of the presidency and could not constitute crimes.
The most generous way of seeing this, IMO, if one is still unwilling to just say he’s guilty: Trump really does want sweeping, autocratic powers, and he thinks he has legal support for them.
We the people need to force our government to pass laws to check the power of the Executive — and Congress too — with real teeth. Trump has proven that “norms and traditions” only work when the relevant powers agree to these completely voluntary, abstract ideas. It looks like they’ve agreed not to agree with them.
Billy_TParticipantthing that still baffles me is why so many people trust Trump and the GOP. I understand perfectly saying FU to the Dems. But it’s just not logical to choose Trump and the GOP as a champion of truth and anti-corruption. If the issue is a lack of trust for any political party, shouldn’t it be both of the majors? Or, if it’s “government” in general, both parties too?
=====================
Well, i guess at some point people just decide to believe in something. I mean, how in the world do people believe Alex Jones? How do people believe in Lizard-People? How do people believe Trump? Hitler? On and on.
I think Lie-Factories and Dirty-Rotten-Systems just…damage people. And damaged-people are prone to latch on to anything, Fascism, Trumpism, anything. Humans iz dangerous.
w
vTrump is restoring “white” to its proper place at the top of the social/economic hierarchy.
All other considerations are secondary to that.
Not that it wasn’t already there. It’s always been there. His supporters just think it wasn’t. They view equality as oppression.
That’s true. I think sometimes we try too hard to figure this all out — I’m definitely guilty of that. Too many surveys about Trump voters make this very clear. It’s about the fear of lost white privilege, and that didn’t just start with Trump either. The GOP has been courting that vote aggressively since at least the 1960s. It’s just that Trump has dropped all the public pretenses about this and has gone full-fascist playbook.
(Find a “volk.” Endlessly smear and scapegoat minorities, immigrants, women, the poor, “the left,” unions, etc. etc.; whip that volk into a frenzy of hatred and fear for all of those various “Others” and pose as the champion of that volk. It’s classic far-right bamboozlement.)
Bannon should have been honest in 2014 when he came up with the slogan, MAGA. It should have read MAWA all along.
Billy_TParticipantBoth major parties, corporate America, the intel community, the Pentagon, etc. I’m just not really seeing how this is all that different from, or worse than . . . 50 years ago, with one caveat:
I think corporate lying has gotten far more sophisticated (and coordinated), and since the early 1970s,..
===============
Well the corporate component of the system is huge, I’d say. And I think its gotten worse as the Media has come under the control of fewer and fewer Corpse.
I also think the new technologies have helped the lie-factory. Except for the internet. And thats why, of course, the internet is coming under control of the Lie-Factory. At least they are trying. I wouldnt bet against them.
w
vThat makes sense. Fewer and fewer media companies, but far bigger and more powerful than ever before. They’ve become “too big to fail,” basically.
And now Sinclair has bought up almost every local news channel, and they’ve been caught recently spreading government propaganda about drinking water, the environment, covering for Scott Pruitt, etc. etc.
That’s dangerous because a lot of people, for some reason, tend to trust their local news folks but not the Networks.
I don’t trust any of them without corroboration, etc. etc. Which is where the Internet can really help.
Trust, lies. The thing that still baffles me is why so many people trust Trump and the GOP. I understand perfectly saying FU to the Dems. But it’s just not logical to choose Trump and the GOP as a champion of truth and anti-corruption. If the issue is a lack of trust for any political party, shouldn’t it be both of the majors? Or, if it’s “government” in general, both parties too?
-
This reply was modified 7 years, 9 months ago by Billy_T.
Billy_TParticipantI 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.
That was funny. Python was a miracle.
I do want the impossible, and I fully realize it’s the impossible. Going back — not sure the ideal century, or the ideal place — before mass production, before the Industrial Revolution, before capitalism took over. But, with all the civilizational knowledge we’ve accrued up to now.
Start over. Simplify. Get back to craftsmanship, artisanship.
Was thinking about that, oddly enough, while watching Billions, a very good series on Showtime. One of the leads has more money than he knows what to do with, and is always searching for more, but does spend it on the “finer things,” whenever possible. Exotic, one of a kind things. And I watch this and think, the finer things to me would be no plastics, no synthetic components, no cheap metals used in any item. Just the basics. The handcrafted basics for everything. If I could afford it. And I’d want everyone to be able to afford that.
If I’m stuck in this time, though, and happen to be as rich as this guy? I buy a medieval village and a hire/train people to build everything possible from scratch, using the old ways, the pre-industrial ways, stone, cloth, wood, iron, steel, glass. I’d have them build everything that way for me, from the house, to the horse carriage, to clothes, to glasses, utensils — everything. I’d pay them more than well. But I’d surround myself with one of a kind things built by hand.
. . . .
Dreaming of another world, another life, etc. etc.
Billy_TParticipantI 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.
;>)
Billy_TParticipantThe conspiracy stuff drives me crazy. The political right has promoted some truly sick examples for generations, but some parts of “the left” are echoing these today and that needs to stopa…
——————-
Ok, but ask yourself how and why the conspiracy stuff has just taken off recently.
(or has it? seems like it has to me, but i dunno the history)Seems to me, so many people are susceptible to conspiracy-stuff BECAUSE they have figured out they are being LIED to so much and so often by the official powers-that-BE.
To me, the conspiracy stuff is a SYMPTOM of something large and ugly that is wrong with the Corporotocracy.
A related issue is the anti-science stuff that is common now. People dont trust science-news.
Add it all up and eventually, it could mean the end of the biosphere as we know it.
Which would be a shame. It’d be a shame to lose the Orcas and Tapirs. If only we could just get rid of the humans.
w
vWV,
You and I agree about the lying. But I think we may differ a bit regarding its recent acceleration. I don’t see that, really. I see the same forces spinning their BS, just like always. Both major parties, corporate America, the intel community, the Pentagon, etc. I’m just not really seeing how this is all that different from, or worse than . . . 50 years ago, with one caveat:
I think corporate lying has gotten far more sophisticated (and coordinated), and since the early 1970s, they’ve been supported to the nth degree by both parties. I’d say their lying has become a part of the woodwork so that Americans don’t even see it anymore, and with the collapse of “the left,” or a left that thinks in terms of class analysis, especially, there is almost no exposure of this any longer. We don’t have a modern day Frankfurt School, basically, going after this part of the nexus.
Which means our focus is almost entirely on political parties, government, intel, the FBI, etc. etc. And mostly just Dem versus Republican. Dumb versus Dumber.
The above is a thousand times necessary, of course, but I think we need to expand our view to include class, the economic system, how it actually owns the two parties, and needs to be held to account along with them.
(I’m not saying you. You’ve seen the Big Picture stuff for decades, likely well before I started to)
But, yeah. We need to keep the tapirs and the orcas.
Billy_TParticipantThe conspiracy stuff drives me crazy. The political right has promoted some truly sick examples for generations, but some parts of “the left” are echoing these today and that needs to stop.
The “spygate” bullshit is one example, and it’s ensnared people like Glenn Greenwald. Here’s a fellow Intercept author’s take on it and it strikes me as far more credible than GG’s take:
https://theintercept.com/2018/05/31/spygate-trump-russia-fbi-informants/
No one should be aiding and abetting Trump right now, especially in his usage of new political physics, which posits some kind of magical “embedding inside” a campaign by a person who never gets remotely close to it.
As in, if asking three people whom Trump has said were unimportant, peripheral people in his campaign — Clovis, Page and Papadopoulos — just asking them questions, places that person magically inside a campaign, then why not say all salespersons, reporters, IT guys, caterers, telemarketers, etc. etc. . . are suddenly “inside” a campaign too?
(No one gave him a job. No one invited him into any campaign meetings. He was never, ever “inside” it.)
Boiled down, Trump and Clinton seem to have caused mass insanity in America, left, center and right. It’s time to give a big old FU to both of them and move on.
Billy_TParticipant“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.
Waterfield,
A Single Payer system won’t take doctors away from patients. Quite the opposite. It will ensure they can continue to see them, while private insurance company after private insurance company says no to their claims.
And, no, we’re not born “selfish.” 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. Kids will loudly insist that toys and food are shared equally, and they actually have been observed getting angry when this is not the case.
This is later beaten out of us via propaganda from above that it’s a dog eat dog world and that we must compete to survive. But that’s just cover for the tiny percentage of humanity that truly is “born selfish” and acts on that. And let’s not forget, locked as we are in a Eurocentric, capitalist mindset, that for our first 300,000 years on this planet, we lived communally, cooperatively, shared pretty much everything. This lasted in some parts of the world well into the 20th century too.
Btw, babies are born helpless and with the instinct for survival. Of course they’re gonna call for attention and nourishment. Selfishness? No. That’s just the will to survive and the almost instantaneous realization of helplessness and dependency. “Gimme gimme gimme” means “I want to live!”
Billy_TParticipantMy chemo is a bit less than 30K a session now. In fifteen years, as far as I can tell, no delivery-side costs have fallen. None. They’ve mostly gone up and up and up, as has my insurance premium.
That went up $500 per month from 2017 to 2018, and is expected to nearly double in 2019.
I’ll need to figure out something else, because I’ll be priced out of the exchanges next year if that occurs.
It’s coming to a head, folks.
We need to go to tax-funded delivery side medicine, and tax-funded insurance options. Both. Not just Single Payer . . . though that would be a massive, life-saving improvement over what we have now. It would literally save tens of thousands of lives a year. But Single Payer, too, will hit a wall, if we don’t do something about radically lowering delivery costs. To me, the best way to go is to update the old ways:
Towns used to hire their own doctors and nurses, and no one paid for their visits unless they wanted to bring them a chicken or something. It was just part of the deal when you lived in this or that town.
Update this for 2018 and beyond. Have Single Payer for backup costs and certain kinds of long-term or specialty care.
We’re just flat out not going to be able to afford for-profit medicine in this country, for the non-rich, if we don’t de-commodify.
Billy_TParticipantThe problem is complicated, of course, and more than just on the insurance side . . .
I went in for labs today and was told a request for a PET Scan had been turned down by my insurance company. This is rather important, as it was supposed to give the oncologist the best map for the remainder of my treatments. A good PET Scan could mean ending the full blast chemo and perhaps going to a maintenance regimen instead. A bad PET Scan would mean extending the full blast stuff, perhaps through July — which is taking its toll. I’ve been violently ill after the last two rounds.
(Ironically, the PET scan could save the insurance company money.)
But I don’t think the insurance companies are the only problem here. As long as our health care is subject to a for-profit model, anywhere in the process, there will always been massive conflicts of interest. For instance, on the delivery side — and I’ve heard doctors talk in these terms — they’re going to basically ask for as much as they can get away with. When I’ve expressed concerns about total costs, doctors have as much as said, Why worry? Insurance will pick it up.
An insurance company can act as a check on this, saying, We’ll pay X amount, but not X+++. Or it can deny coverage altogether. Either way, there is no win/win scenario, especially for the patient.
As I’ve mentioned before, I think we should have an all non-profit economic system, for everything, but well shy of that, we should at least carve out certain areas that can no be commodified.
Education and health care strike me as immediately logical candidates — and I mean womb to tomb/cradle to grave, not just a certain chunk of time.
Billy_TParticipantThe failure in Vermont didn’t have anything to do with costs. How could it? Single Payer is cheaper in every way. It cuts overhead by at least 30%.
Too many Americans need to take a refresher in math.
If product or service X requires ___ amount of both taxation and private sector spending, all that matter is the total cost. If our taxes go up, but the total goes down, we get a better deal.
It’s just math.
So, yeah, in European countries they pay higher taxes, but they get more for their money. Everyone is covered. Out of pocket costs are almost non-existent. And their total bill for health care is half what we pay.
You could do a thought experiment with pretty much 99% of the things we buy, and you’d come out the same. If our public sector were allowed to be truly public and all non-profit, there is virtually NOTHING it couldn’t offer for less than the private sector — and do it sooner, and distribute it more widely.
The private sector will always have to charge more, if for no other reason than its overhead is always more, plus you have to make a profit, pay shareholders and huge executive salaries.
The ONLY Americans that benefit from the system we currently have are rich Americans. Everyone else pays far more for far less, because of the capitalist system . . . . and rank and file workers will always be paid less because of capitalism as well.
-
This reply was modified 7 years, 9 months ago by
-
AuthorPosts
