Reticulating Splines
OK, I’m getting real close to making some changes in Doug’s Darkworld. Basically this is going to turn into a more or less pure blog where all I write about is current events, politics, and whatever random weirdness inspires me as I chronicle our civilization’s slide into war, denial, insanity, and chaos as the plague of infantile thinking corrodes our social structures at their very core. Yes, lots of fun to be had there.
At the same time, a lot of the menu bar above is going to disappear as I launch a companion site where I will post my single topic articles on science, war, and history. And, tadaa, some of it is starting to take shape. My first post over there is ready for visitors: Earth’s Place in the Universe: Where the heck are we anyhow? Enjoy, comments can be left either there or here.
On the local front, not much happening. Oakland has made it to number three when it comes to crime ridden American cities. It’s a shame, but not surprising. The last few mayors have been pretty corrupt or ineffective, and the recession hasn’t helped. The only thing I would add for the out-of-towners to understand, is that most of Oakland is just a typical American city, the crime is taking place primarily in west and south Oakland. As long as one avoids those areas, Oakland is just another city. And if you do go to West Oakland or the bad parts of the Fruitvale district, go during the day, wear a white T-shirt, and don’t piss anyone off.
Nothing much else new. Health care reform is still a joke, by the time it passes, assuming it even passes, it’s going to be so filled with special caveats for industry and the like that it will be little more than symbolic. In fact there’s every chance it will actually make the situation worse, since there’s one thing our modern leaders in politics and industry seem to have in common: unlimited greed to matter what the cost to the country.
Israel is threatening to bomb Iran again, Iran is making a big deal out of wargames to practice defending against an Israeli attack. Both governments are equally cynical, Israel is always playing up “threats” to Israel to bolster its militaristic government and occupation policies, while Iran wants to dispel social unease at home by rallying folks around the flag. Both sides benefit from this, so I don’t think there’s much chance of real war breaking it, this is political theatre. Hope not at least, the world doesn’t need another war.
Sooner or later the world always gets a war though. This, this is why the aliens haven’t contacted us yet. Well, and the fact that they don’t exist. Details.
(The above image is public domain under US copyright law, courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration. It’s captioned: With her brother on her back a war weary Korean girl tiredly trudges by a stalled M-26 tank, at Haengju, Korea. (June 9, 1951) I just chose it because I thought it was an interesting picture, and to remind people that America’s overseas adventures have a human cost, something that seems to be overlooked frequently in our “debates” about foreign policy.)
“I’d have killed a thousand if I had bullets enough.”
Well, an army psychiatrist purportedly went off his rocker and shot a bunch of folks in Fort Hood, Texas. I say purportedly, because there is only one thing about this case we can be absolutely certain of. The army will lie. The US military is under absolutely no obligation to tell the truth about anything, has every incentive to lie, and has been caught in lie after lie after lie. All they have to do is flood the airwaves with their version of events, the media will dutifully parrot it, and people will believe it. Then later if the truth comes out, it will be buried in the back pages and most people won’t even hear about it, let alone believe it. Humans are funny that way, they will believe the first thing they hear, and pretty much never revisit the issue. I’m not of course saying there aren’t some fine honourable folks in the military, in fact some of the finest human beings I have ever known were career military. The modern US military is a business though, and their business is selling endless war. For the purpose of getting endless war spending and endless war contracts. And they do a fine job of it, aided and abetted by a lying media and lying government. Smedly Butler said it best, “War is a racket.”
Knowing this, it makes it hard to come to any real conclusions about the shooting itself. And as well, it’s going on very risky ground to draw any conclusions from a single incident. Some guy lost it and shot some people, hopefully there’s not much more to it than that. However, while the incident itself can’t tell us anything, the reaction to it can. And there it’s both interesting and depressing. A big deal will be made about the heroics of it all. It’s a pretty good bet that the alleged lone shooter survives, he won’t ever see the light of day again, let alone a civilian lawyer. It’s fascinating how quickly initial reports of multiple shooters and many friendly fire deaths almost instantly morphed into the lone shooter and heroic defence story. It’s almost uncanny how that always happens in incidents like this. Note previous paragraph about lies.
There will be a certain amount of Muslim bashing, that goes without saying. There will be a discussion about the combat stress our troops are suffering from, but all in a “support our troops context.” There won’t be a whole lot of discussion about why our troops are going halfway around the world to get their heads fucked up in wars to protect western corporate access to Asia’s oil and gas. That we won’t be discussing. It’s like watching doctors treating a man who has his hand stuck in a blender, but no one dares suggest it would be a lot easier to treat him if he would just pull his hand out of the blender. Basically a terrible tragedy that likely has some relation to our overseas wars will be used to justify same. Sigh.
As others have pointed out, the people who died in Texas won’t be counted as casualties of war. If war is such a great thing, why do we go to such great lengths to disguise and hide the true cost of it? I’d like to see a public debate on that some day. I’m pretty sure than when people act evasive, it means they have something to hide. God rest the souls of all the victims of these stupid wars, wherever they fell. War is bad, peace is good, how the hell did we ever forget that?
“War is a racket. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.”
—Smedley Butler
“The direct use of force is such a poor solution to any problem, it is generally employed only by small children and large nations.”
—David Friedman
“What a cruel thing is war: to separate and destroy families and friends, and mar the purest joys and happiness God has granted us in this world; to fill our hearts with hatred instead of love for our neighbors, and to devastate the fair face of this beautiful world.”
—Robert E. Lee, letter to his wife, 1864
(The above image is claimed as Fair Use under US copyright law. It’s not being used for profit, is central to illustrating the post, ands is arguably a historically important image. Credit and copyright: AP Photo. It’s a picture of Howard Unruh, modern America’s first mass shooter, the day after his shooting. On Sept 6 1949 Howard meticulously shot and killed 13 people. He too was a war veteran, though in his case it seems he was just crazy. Crazy people usually aren’t very dangerous, the exception being paranoid schizophrenics like Howard. He is quoted in the title of this post. My only point here, restated, is that killing people really is nuts … but using people’s senseless deaths to justify killing more people, now that’s not nuts, that’s evil. Welcome to the “war on sanity.”)
The New World Disorder, why I don’t worry about World Government
This is kind of a generalist conspiracy theory post. There’s conspiracy theories about an incipient USA police state, North American Union government, world government, or some combination of the three. And as I’ve said before, no one has a crystal ball, and human history has gone down all sorts of unexpected and unlikely paths before … so pretty much anything is possible. That being said, here are some of the general reasons why I don’t lose any sleep over any of these albeit alarming possibilities.
The first is the simple observation that global power and wealth is more concentrated than at any time in history, a tiny handful of families and corporations control the lion’s share of the world’s assetsd. Many of these families have been accumulating this wealth and power for centuries. When you are already King of the Hill, there’s no where else to go. IE the powers that be don’t need a police state to control us, they already control us through advertising and the “media.” This alone is the primary reason I don’t lose any sleep over incipient police states or such. It’s too late.
Secondly, there’s the problem of the essential practicality of such an undertaking. No matter how much technology the police state has at its disposal, sooner or that that information has to be filtered through human brains. IE there is a limit to what can be accomplished by trying to micromanage people’s lives from the centre somewhere. This is borne out by twentieth century experiments in same. The big three experiments along totalitarian lines, Nazi Germany, Mao’s China, and the USSR … all ended badly. That doesn’t mean someone won’t try, but even if they do, I think it’s doomed to failure. There is some limit to the size of a police state, and I don’t think it’s very high.
Thirdly, usually when someone wants to control the very lives of their subjects, it’s because there is ideology or personality involved. And by personality, I mean some central character with malignant narcissism like Hitler. Well, the powers that be in the west are diffuse enough that it seems unlikely that some single individual will be able to assume world wide (or even US wide) dictatorial powers. (The idea that Obama is going to be some sort of dictator doesn’t pass the laugh test.) And if there’s any real ideology to capitalism, I haven’t seen it. Greed, ambition, and lack of scruples isn’t an ideology. It’s a pathology, but I digress.
Lastly, I ‘ve been around for awhile. And I’ve been seeing the same recycled imminent police state theories since the mid seventies. Hell, they’ve been a literary genre since the end of World War Two. That alone should give people pause. It’s already 25 years after 1984, and there’s no world wide police state yet. It makes me think that a good argument can be made that this belief is part and parcel of the modern human experience, more myth than real possibility. The endless choices that face people in the modern world are bewildering, it’s not surprising that it’s easy to believe that some evil entity could control it all. Or some good entity, there is a striking morphological similarity between NWO conspiracy theories and belief in the second coming.
Which oddly enough leads me to the one situation where there is the possibility of an ideologically driven police state or even global police state. And that would be some sort of Evangelical Christian police state. Certainly not a new idea, it too as a conspiracy meme has been around since at least The Handmaid’s Tale. How likely is that? Damned if I know. I think my final observation, and again one I have made before under similar contexts, is that I think that people who worry about the unpleasant possibilities of a new world order are missing the point. We already have a very unpleasant situation where the rich are ever getting richer, let’s deal with the devil we have instead of the devil we might have.
Moving right along, I’ll post on the Ft. Sills massacre sometime soon, as is usually the case with something like this, I want to wait awhile for the facts to settle out of the dust. It’s pretty sickening though, both the act itself … and what some people have said in response. In fact the later is even more sickening in some ways. Jesus wept.
Have a great weekend everyone.
(The above image of a swastika shaped building is from Google Earth and I’m claiming it as Fair Use under US copyright law. It’s not being used for profit and its use here in no conceivable way interferes with the copyright holder’s commercial use of the image. It’s the barracks for the navy Seals and as far as anyone can tell its shape was purely accidental. IE it’s a great shape to maximize window exposure and have some courtyards to boot, window exposure is important as it was built in the pre-air conditioner era in Coronado California. The Navy has taken so much criticism that they are going to spend over $600,000 to change the shape of the building so it no longer looks like a swastika from space. Yeah, that’s a good use of taxpayer’s money.)
Politically Charged Current Events Post
The feedback on my “letter to my readers” post has been useful so far, spartan, but useful. Current events posts do tend to be popular, and even better, they are relatively easy to write. On the other hand, as was pointed out, they tend to get stale rather quickly. On the gripping hand, they are often fun to write, so I do plan to keep them up.
So with no further ado, current events. The big news of course is that the recession is over. Yes, it’s official, even Obama hailed the good news. Now if everyone would just go out and start buying stuff again, we’ll be out of the woods in no time. Right. I’m pretty sure all they did was print up enough money and borrow against it to produce the illusion of recovery, and since the malignant economic structures that caused the problem in the first place haven’t been addressed, at best all this means is that some time has been bought. And in fact it means that when the crash does come it will be even worse. Who knows, maybe Obama will suffer LBJ’s fate. He’s the president who claimed we had won the Vietnam War in 1967. Turns out LBJ’s assessment was, shall we say, premature.
Speaking of wars, it’s uglier than ever in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and Iraq still has unspeakable violence. I suppose I should write about them more, but most people either don’t care, are painfully misinformed, or both. And “painfully misinformed” is being diplomatic at a world class level, at least when talking about Americans. I am going to be writing about our predator death squads soon, there’’s some lessons to be learnt there. Anyhow, Af/Pak, short version, don’t order your victory cakes yet, we’re light years away from “Mission Accomplished” in Afghanistan and Pakistan unless the mission was violence and war into the foreseeable future.
Which it might very well have been. My latest theory is that we are most afraid of dictators like Saddam and Ahmadinejad because a strong dictatorship is often where a modern effective nation state is forged. They may be ugly while they last, but the sense of national identity and purpose that they foster is the basis for the modern nation state. And the last thing the USA or Europe wants is modern nation states in ther Middle East and the third world. Colonial client puppet states are far more amenable to selling off their nations resources for a few chests of goodies for the people in charge. I mean, Saddam had this crazy idea that the oil profits from the oil in the Middle East should be used to benefit the people in the Middle East. Compared to that idea, the threat posed by Al Qaeda is trivial.
In domestic matters, in a fascinating display of human stupidity, some parents pretended that their kid had floated away in a home made balloon. Two points to be made here. The first, which everyone over the age of twelve should know, don’t mess with the Feds. You can mess with the local authorities, you can even joust with the state authorities, but only a fool or a crusader runs afoul of the federal government. As for their desire to use their hoax as a stunt to help them get a reality show, I’m pretty sure even in today’s Roman Circus world a reality show based on psychologically traumatizing your kids is going to be a hard sell. Let’s hope so at least.
In local news, part of a repair to the old Bay Bridge that is being rebuilt blew down during a windstorm. Three cars were damaged, one person was hurt. The bridge, the region’s main traffic artery, has been closed indefinitely. Sigh. This in so many ways is a microcosm of modern America. A project that in the first place didn’t need to be done, the old bridge was good for hundreds of years. Every step of the way has been marked by cost over runs and clearly deliberate attempts to chose the most expensive way forward possible. I mean., the scaffolding for this bridge is going to cost 600 million dollars, most countries could build the bridge for that kind of money. And now they are so goddamn incompetent that a little wind starts blowing the project apart.
You know, if the aliens ever invade, we’re hosed. Blackwater and Goldman-Sachs will make a profit right up to the very end though. As Alien armoured columns blast there way into Washington, there will be Obama on TV, telling America that all is well, the new secret weapons will save the day, even as flashes from alien ray guns increrasingly illuminate the Washington skyline behind him.
Have a great weekend everyone.
(The above image is claimed as Fair Use under US copyright law. It’s not being used for profit, it’s the only image available to illustrate the topic, and its use here in no conceivable way interferes with the copyright holder’s commercial use of the image. Credit and copyright: L.A.Marzulli. And I’m serious about the alien invasion movie where we lose in the end because spin and propaganda and corruption is no match for alien weaponry. Both conservatives and liberals could be skewered … Cheney goes down fighting with a shotgun in his hand, Michael Moore is captured and undergoes alien probing, and at the very end it’s revealed that all along Obama was one of them! He wasn’t born in Hawaii or Kenya, he wasn’t even born on Earth at all! Muahahahahaha!)
A Letter To My Readers
Botanical Gardens in Bucharest, Roumania
Never fear, this is actually good news for a change. I am making good progress on a companion web site to Doug’s Darkworld, where much of my writing will be available in a more organized and coherent fashion. This will both simplify this site and allow me to concentrate more on what I do best, which is writing. Some of which I hope to sell, which will give me even more time to write. Muahahahaha. Sorry, I digress. Being a starving artist may have its youthful romantic appeal, but past fifty, the appeal dims rapidly. You can quote me on that.
Resuming, what I want to ask my readers, is this. Are there any posts and/or topics on Doug’s Darkworld that you have particularly enjoyed? What topics would you like to see in the future? My reader’s suggestions will help me what to put on the companion site, and will in fact guide me in selecting what future posts to write about. And maybe I suppose what topics to avoid. All comments appreciated, I always read the comments and try to reply to them on a regular basis even. And yes, I’m well aware that a few promised posts haven’t materialized yet. Remind me about those too. The wheels may grind slowly at Doug’s Darkworld, but they grind exceedingly fine.
Thanks in advance. On Wednesday another post will appear here, and with luck I can keep up at least three posts a week going forward. There’s been fascinating developments in space exploration, the American Empire is in free fall, Obama has shown his true colours, the health care debate continues, swine flu explodes, and the Antichrist was spotted in Cleveland. Meanwhile the mainstream media continues twenty four hour coverage of hoaxes, corporate talking points, and rehashed White House propaganda. Yes, the world goes on, stay tuned.
The picture above sure is beautiful, isn’t it? I sent it to my Romanian sweetie to impress her, then discovered later it’s actually a picture of Butchart Gardens in Canada. My wild talent for unimpressing girls could be a topic for a blog itself, but I don’t think I’ll run with it. Tomorrow, giant mysterious “thing” spotted in deep space.
Regards
Doug Stych
PS: Thanks for all the comments and input in the past.
“Right-wingers are telling children to skip school as a protest against Obama’s encouragement of students to stay in school”
The title pretty much says it all, we have gone from beyond partisan politics into some strange new world where no matter what Obama suggests, it must be some nefarious socialist plot. Yes, Obama is “indoctrinating” our kids, just for starters, but it gets worse. Terms like brainwashing, communist China, and Hiter Youth have been tossed out already. Here, for the record, is what the president proposes to tell America’s youth:
“President Obama announced that on September 8 — the first day of school for many children across America — he will deliver a national address directly to students on the importance of education. The President will challenge students to work hard, set educational goals, and take responsibility for their learning. He will also call for a shared responsibility and commitment on the part of students, parents and educators to ensure that every child in every school receives the best education possible so they can compete in the global economy for good jobs and live rewarding and productive lives as American citizens.”
To characterize this as some sort of nefarious plot, is, well, silly. If a Bush or Reagan had addressed America’s youth with a message like this, the Republicans would be parading in the streets and waving flags. Instead, because a “liberal” is telling kids to stay in school and get an education, it must be part of some sort of liberal conspiracy to brainwash our children. It used to be that right wing pundits railed against stuff they didn’t like, now they rail against anything that didn’t originate from one of their own. And as well there’s also been a growing trend for years for them to characterize anyone or anything they disagree with as being stupid. I find this all very disturbing. Yes, I’m not thrilled with some of the stuff that liberal extremists say, but there isn’t a coterie of liberal media pundits making the same sort of, well, hate speech, every time a Republican leader makes any sort of proposal.
What bothers me here is that the right wing pundits and their fans aren’t getting it, Obama was elected. That alone says the average American is pretty liberal, and I mean liberal in the sense they are reasonably open minded about things like skin colour, and that they are tired of the endless negativity and scare-mongering from the Republicans. And now urging kids to get an education is something to be afraid of? Give me a break, I’m no Obama fan as readers may recall, but this is ridiculous. No wonder so many real conservatives fled to Ron Paul.
In other news, the unemployment rate just hit a 26 year high.
Brave new world insert, when I first copied the above link an hour ago the title of the story was just that: “Unemployment Rate Hits 26 Year High.” And now the story at the link is titled “Job losses ebb, but unemployment up.” I’ve heard about stuff like this before, amazing to see it in action. Could there be any more proof that the mainstream media is complicit in administration/corporate spin on the economy? Someone should start a website where they track these sudden watering down changes in mainstream news article, because it happens more often than one would think. — Doug
Well, I’m not surprised about the economy. As I have said before, the economy tanked because basing an economy on the upward transfer of wealth and consumerism can only go so far before the whole rotten edifice collapses. And instead of letting the gangrenous parts of the economy die, both Obama and Bush simply redoubled efforts to transfer wealth upwards. Bush at least knew he was passing the whole mess off on his successor, I don’t think Obama is going to be able to keep robbing the public to pay the bankers for four years, but sure looks like he’s going to try.
Moving right along, in other historic news, Neil Armstrong recently said at a press conference:
“It only took a few hastily written paragraphs published by this passionate denier of mankind’s so-called ‘greatest technological achievement’ for me to realize I had been living a lie, ” said a visibly emotional Armstrong, addressing reporters at his home. “It has become painfully clear to me that on July 20, 1969, the Lunar Module under the control of my crew did not in fact travel 250,000 miles over eight days, touch down on the moon, and perform various experiments, ushering in a new era for humanity. Instead, the entire thing was filmed on a soundstage, most likely in New Mexico.”
Neil Armstrong admits the Moon landings were hoaxed? Of course not! The above appeared in The Onion, a satirical and spoof newspaper that prints all sorts of completely made up stories. The only reason I mention it is that two papers in Bangladesh mistakenly reprinted the story as fact. Um, oops.
And just because it’s been a long depressing week, here’s a few more fun stories from The Onion: “Heroic PETA Commandos Kill 49, Save Rabbit” and “Christ Kills Two, Injures Seven In Abortion-Clinic Attack.” And of course “Nation’s Unemployment Outlook Improves Drastically After Fifth Beer.”
Have a great weekend everyone.
(The above image is claimed as Fair Use under US copyright law. It’s not being used for profit, and since it’s illustrating a link to itself, by definition it is the only image that will suffice. Lastly, my use of the image here in no conceivable way interferes with the copyright holder’s commercial use of the image, arguably the opposite. Credit and copyright: The Onion. And thanks to this article for inspiring me to run The Onion links. Wait, what is the picture above? It’s from The Onion News in Photos: Dye Pack Foils Art Thief.)
The first thing we do, lets kill all the investment bankers.
Well, I recently read a few interesting articles: Californians Lose $1 Billion From Unconstitutional Bond Sales and The Looting of America: How Wall Street Fleeced Millions from Wisconsin Schools. Even if one doesn’t have the time and inclination to read them, note that one is from an unabashedly liberal site, while Bloomberg.com is owned by the eighth richest man in America. To summarize both of these articles, it seems that Wall Street investment bankers targeted the billions of dollars of investments that school boards across the country held, and talked these people into buying into really sketchy investment schemes.
I have some big problems with this. Public moneys held in trust, and it’s hard to imagine anything much more public than educational funds, should be placed in the safest most secure investments possible. Instead, because school boards knew nothing about these complicated derivative schemes, and even the sellers in some cases didn’t know much, they invested their money in ways that only made money if the economy and national real estate prices kept rising. If the economy and especially real estate prices took a downturn, they would lose it all. This is a pretty risky thing to do with money for schools, and while the school boards “should” have known better, that doesn’t change the fact that a lot of fancy investment bankers that did know better bamboozled them into making these poor investments. Because no matter what, the investment banking houses (an oxymoron nowadays) that sold these goods made a fortune in fees, and their profits in the deal were guaranteed.
I also found this interview with the author of the book: Q&A with Les Leopold. It was illustrative too, he reiterates the greater point that most people still don’t get. Yes, the US economy grew by leaps and bounds after World War Two, and the middle class prospered right along with it. Then, in the mid seventies, it all started to change. The rich kept right on getting richer, but the middle class stalled. And the gap has continued to grow since then. And a huge part of this is that the money that should have been re-invested in the basic nuts and bolts economy (the way the Free Market advocates like to claim is the “natural” result of deregulation, snort) instead was invested in this giant fantasy investment market. So the financial sector of the economy kept right on growing, but the rest of us were left to fend for ourselves.
Or, as in the case of the above mentioned school boards, people were robbed blind by these financial “wizards.” We let the bankers make up the rules, and the results were predictable. Imagine playing a game of Monopoly, where the player who was the banker was allowed to make up and enforce whatever rules he/she wanted? How would the game end? The banker would get all the money and all the property every time of course, and there would be nothing the other players could do about it. And that, in essence, is the story of the past 30 years in the USA and the roots of our current economic problems. (Some would date it to 1913 and the creation of the Federal Reserve.)
And I don’t use the word robbed lightly either, these predatory investment bankers knew exactly what they were doing, and they had the power of the law behind them. Because the authorities have been co-opted into a crime doesn’t make it less of a crime. It makes me angry and frustrated. Angry because the greatest theft in history has taken place before my eyes, and frustrated because not only can’t I do anything about it, I don’t even have any good ideas.
Except blog about it of course. And throw in things like firing squads to get people’s attention. I’m not seriously suggesting putting investment bankers up against a wall and shooting them. Still, their crimes are very much crimes of premeditation and deliberation. And while I am not a big advocate of the death penalty, mainly because it won’t deter the sorts of crime people want to use it for, if we put a few bankers up against the wall and shot them for stealing billions from children’s schools … it might have a very salutary effect on the rest of them.
I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I do know that we can’t all be rich investment bankers, so something is going to have to give sooner or later. Only so much wealth can be transferred upward before there’s no wealth left to transfer. When that day happens, we’re in for some fun.
Read the links, see what you think:
Californians Lose $1 Billion From Unconstitutional Bond Sales
The Looting of America: How Wall Street Fleeced Millions from Wisconsin Schools
(The above image is a Soviet infiltrator being executed by a Finnish firing squad during World War Two. It is public domain under Finnish copyright law. As far as I know it’s real, at the very least it was a real moment in time. That alone never ceases to amaze me about old photographs. As for the title: “The first thing we do, lets kill all the lawyers.” is from Shakespeare’s Henry VI, part 1.)
Health Care, Shmealth Care, what’s all the fuss about?
Health Care. OK, this seems to be a touchy topic, so what the hell, I’ll wade right in. My last basically throwaway post sure got a lot of comments, I’ll see what we can generate this time. For today’s post, I’m going to proceed from the general to the specific. IE I will make some general observations about health care in the USA, then discuss the Obama plan. And this will definitely be generalized and only scratch the surface. I’d say you could write a book about the Obama plan alone, but that would be an understatement since the plan itself is a book, over 1000 pages long.
My first point is that there is a fabulous amount of misinformation being bandied about regarding the topic of health care. As far as I can tell, most Americans are pretty much unaware of how our own system works, and completely utterly misinformed about how health care works in other countries. It’s not that they don’t know about other countries, it’s that they are firmly convinced of things about them that just aren’t so. As a Canadian, it’s shocking to me how badly the Canadian system is misrepresented in the USA. I’ve only ever known one Canadian who complained about the Canadian system, and she was someone who could charitably be described as a filthy rich snob. Average Canadians for the most part are perfectly happy with a system, sure, there’s some kvetching, there’s always kvetching anywhere.
The second point is that most Americans seem to be under the impression that our health care system works. And is some ways it does, it’s certainly better than the health care system in virtually all the non-industrialized world. Which isn’t saying much, nu? There are some major problems, problems that need to be addressed. For one thing we spend a huge amount of money on health care, and the costs have been rising faster than inflation for decades. We spend more money per capita than any other country on health care, that alone is shocking, especially considering that millions of people have little access to care. And as much of a third of that money is wasted, all sorts of extra tests and necessary medications are administered because doctors are afraid of malpractice. just for starters. Medical bills are the number one cause of bankruptcy in the USA, that alone is a national disgrace. And yeah, for those who say that the uninsured can just “go to county hospitals.” Yes, in fact they can go to any ER and get treatment. Of course having people go to an emergency room for treatment is the most fabulously expensive way to provide people with health care, another reason our health care costs are astronomical. Then there’s the problem that the average American spends more money on health care in the last year of their life than in their entire previous life. And while this makes sense in some cases, a huge chunk of this is dying senior citizens having their life extended for a few months by heroic care … often against their express wishes! Sigh. I could go on, but this article seems to cover many of the problems with the US system in a reasonably neutral way.
Point three. We would all benefit from cradle to grave health care. I know that sounds simple, but again and again I hear Calvinist arguments that “people should just buy their own health insurance, if they don’t, tough. ” The problem with this argument is that while it may have a certain “holier than thou” appeal, in practise it means that the uninsured cost the taxpayer far more money for health care than if we simply insured them. First off, the direct cost of having people wait till they are sick enough for a visit to the ER. And a second cost because of all the productivity lost (let alone lives lost) because of the unavailability of health care. When workers don’t show up at work because they are sick, that increases costs to business … that are simply passed on to us. Lastly, and one would think obviously, do people want the person who sat down at that table in MacDonald’s before them and their family to be treated for their communicable illnesses or not? Apparently with some people the answer is no, we want our families to be exposed to sick people in the streets.
In any event, we come to the Obama system. First off, as a commenter helpfully showed yesterday, there’s a fabulous amount of lies and dis-information being spread about Obama’s plan. Some of it makes my jaw drop, there’s people with a straight face claiming this bill will result in seniors being “euthanized” as the government decides what care they should get. Right. More than 22,000 people die every single year in the USA for lack of health coverage, a problem the Obama mitigates, but people would rather let these people die because some spam email told them the plan was going to kill people? I don’t think I can even debate with people so partisan that anything Obama proposes must be opposed, because that’s where a lot of this”outrage” appears to be coming from.
In any event, the main criticism of the Obama plan is how much it will cost. I’ve seen estimates as high as one and a half trillion over the next decade. That is a lot of money, no doubt about it. And while the plan does propose to rein in rising health care costs by addressing some (but not all) of the problems in the current system, no one thinks it will add up to a trillion and a half dollars in savings. Two points here. I can see an easy way to save that much or more over the next decade. Let’s pull out of Afghanistan and Iraq tomorrow. That will save far more than a trillion and a half dollars, both in direct savings, and in indirect savings because Americans won’t be getting maimed and psychologically scarred in foreign wars. And in any event, we’ve given trillions of dollars to the banks just this past year, apparently to save executive bonuses. What the hell is wrong with spending a trillion and a half dollars over ten years if it provides millions of American with health care? I mean if it’s the government’s job to protect Americans, health care is the front line since disease and injury kills more Americans ever year than all the wars and terrorist attacks in US history combined.
But of course the US government, both factions of it, don’t give a rat’s ass about saving American lives. It’s about saving corporate profits (and subsequent campaign financing,) and foreign wars and sick Americans are a source of almost mind-numbing profit. So sadly, I fully expect Obama’s plan will be shot down, or so gutted as to be simply yet another layer of bureaucracy designed to make Americans think we are being cared for … when in fact they government is just performing yet another wallet drain and moneyectomy on lower and middle class Americans.
(The above image is public domain under US copyright law as it was created around 1528. Credit: Hans von Gersdorff. Der verwundete Mann. Feldtbůch der Wundartzney (Strasburg, 1528). Field book of surgery. The wounded man. Yes, I would definitely say he has been seriously wounded. Of course he should have waited until his suit of armour came back from the cleaners before running around a battlefield.)
Goliath, meet David.
What a week. I had a crisis at work so was unable to process various posts I am working on. I will spare my readers the details, but a former client and I had a billing dispute. I charge well below market value as it is, so it was really annoying to have my very modest charges challenged. And she can’t use the economy as an excuse, she still managed to go on a cruise while I was working. Her loss, I’ve saved her a pile of money through the years. Sometimes the people in charge don’t really understand where their wealth is coming from, a common human failing suppose.
Moving right along, the USA national budget is going to run at a staggering deficit this year, nearly two trillion dollars in new red ink. For all practical purposes, the government is literally printing money in an attempt to spend our way out of the depression. (And yes, this is a segue from the previous paragraph.) I’m pretty sure this isn’t going to work, but at least think I understand it better. Our economy ultimately depends on growth to generate corporate/financier/investment profit, so the powers that be are desperately trying to jump-start the economy by pouring a huge infusion of cash into it. This is sensible from one perspective, but completely avoids the core issue, does it make sense to have an economy where growth is a structural element? An economy where if growth stops for whatever reason, the whole economy is crippled? This is a question that rarely gets asked.
And oddly enough in other areas we have these public debates about important issues, but avoid actually debating the core issues. The current debate about prisoner abuse photos is a case in point. There’s debate about the wisdom of releasing these photos, which I won’t go into, because a case can be made either way. What is rarely pointed out is that gee, wouldn’t it be easier to simply not abuse and torture prisoners in the first place? Then the issue wouldn’t even arise. And while there is some debate about the merits of torturing and abusing prisoners, the even deeper issue underlaying that is hardly ever debated, why are America forces going around the world and imprisoning people anyhow?
Which leads into our current foreign policy. More troops to Central Asia, as Pakistan starts to dissolve. And this is hardly questioned. Since Gulf War One American troops have been present in the Middle East, and after 9/11 American armies have been actively crusading in the Middle East and Central Asia. And I use the word crusade very deliberately, because that’s exactly what these wars are. They are no different than the crusades in the Middle Ages, even some of the same justifications are used. Western armies, convinced of their cultural and religious superiority, are marching through heathen lands to teach these people the benefits of western civilization. We call it nation-building now, but it’s the same old invade and loot it always was. Now our guys ride in armoured tanks instead of armoured horses, and the loot is oil instead of gold, but otherwise it’s the Middle Ages all over again.
Even the term nation-building is delicious, becasue we’re not nation-building at all. In Afghanistan and Iraq, and now spreading into Pakistan, millions of people have been forced from their homes, millions killed and injured, the infrastructure and economy of both nations still shattered years after we “liberated” them. Even in reasonably healthy well established nation-states like post-war Japan and Germany, this kind of damage takes a decade (or longer) of peace to fix. In Iraq Af-Pak we are not dealing with established nation states, and not only are they not a peace, the situation is still getting worse. This isn’t going to end well.
And I don’t mean that this is going to end with the Taliban getting nuclear weapons, though that may eventually happen one way or the other. What I mean is that America’s crusades are going to end the way so many have before, in disaster. A recent study just came out, I read about it in the New Yorker. Simply put, political scientist Ivan Arreguín-Toft studied every war in the past 200 years where one side had at least a 10-1 advantage over the other. How often did the underdog win? Nearly 30% of the time. That should be a sobering statistic to those who think war is the solution to so many problems, though I doubt they will see it that way. The point being that the underdog always has a chance, usually by changing the rules and not fighting the way the stronger side expected. Will I write about this further in future posts? To quote a recently famous political personage: “You betcha.”
And speaking of Ivan Arreguín-Toft, Germany’s High Court just ruled that double-hyphenated last names would not be allowed. One Frieda Rosemarie Thalheim wanted to take the last name of her husband, Hans Peter Kunz-Hallstein, to become Frieda Rosemarie Thalheim-Kunz-Hallstein! Well, God only knows what terrible fate would befall German civilization if this was allowed, and the judges put a stop to this madness. I suppose this is why I am told that to travel in Germany, a tourist only needs to be able to read and understand one German word: Verboten.
Have a great weekend everyone.
(The above image is public domain under US copyright law as it predates 1927. It’s a colour lithograph by Osmar Schindler (1869-1927): David und Goliath, 1888. As always I chose it because it’s a interesting picture from several perspectives, and it illustrates, at least in my fevered thinking, some of the points in the post.)
Obama, Iraq, Af-Pak, history, French prostitutes win a battle, and other random and insightful thoughts
There have been a few posts getting some comments back and forth. Maybe there is some way I can include this in a sidebar, but for now I’ll just mention them here. The first is the “1 shot 2 kills” post and the other is the “World’s First Eyewitness” post. Join the discussion if you dare. Another reader recently asked if Doug’s Darkworld was my hobby. I never really thought about it, but I suppose it is. At least until someone sponsors me and I can devote myself to it full time. All reasonable offers considered.
Moving right along, in recent news, Obama made a surprise visit to Baghdad to praise the troops for their remarkable achievement. It’s a little unclear to me what, exactly, that achievement is. Iraq is still one of the world’s top ten failed states, was that the plan from the beginning? He also pressured the Iraqi government to “take responsibility” for Iraq. I’m sure more than few jaws dropped in Iraq at that one, I mean, how arrogant and patronizing can one get?
He’s also massively expanding the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan, which is making my jaw drop. Does anyone really think we can “win” the war against Islamic extremists by destabilizing yet another Muslim country? Half a million people have already fled Pakistan’s border regions because of US and Pakistani military actions there, that’s half a million potential recruits for Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Hmm.
Robert Gates just announced a “massive overhaul” of military spending. Yes, six years after we got involved in a massive counterinsurgency, we are going to start re-organizing our military to fight more counterinsurgencies. While I certainly can’t argue against the cancellation of leftover Cold War weapons programs, re-organizing a military years after the fact is pretty symptomatic of a military completely out of touch with the times. I wish I could find the words to make people see that the US military is a byzantine bureaucratic corrupt organization bloated beyond all reason and decades behind the times in almost every respect. If we ever have to fight a real war again, we’re all in big trouble. And oddly enough, the “new” budget calls for yet another increase in military spending. Sigh.
While on the topic of belligerent foreign policy, I see North Korea thumbed their nose at us and launched their missile anyways. Since there was zero chance they would cancel the launch, I really can’t imagine why we would set ourself up to be ignored. Are we trying to generate a casus belli for attacking North Korea? Colour me mystified.
Moving right along, I read an interesting article pointing out that the collapse of the world’s economy is almost certainly going to create a huge increase in world crime. I can’t really argue, hell, look what’s going on just over the border in Mexico. As tens of millions of desperately poor people the world over lose their jobs, some of them will turn to whatever jobs are available. In other words, it’s a golden age for finding recruits for criminal syndicates. And as more governments fail and more failed states are created, this problem is just going to get worse.
And as these and other economic collapse related problems get worse, we can expect governments to take ever more repressive steps to control their populations. I dunno, but one of my visions for the future is a world where much of the third world has reverted to local control, while the increasingly repressive “modern” western and Asian governments start to fight among themselves for their share of the ever shrinking global economic pie. And I’m not the only one starting to think this way. Interesting times indeed.
On a related note, I think I’m finally beginning to understand why leaders keep repeating the exact same mistakes throughout history. It’s simple, historians almost never get into positions of power. So I propose that governments set up a “Department of History” on par with other government departments. Then any time the government comes up with some great “new” idea, they can ask the Secretary of History if the idea has ever worked before? If he/she says “no, in fact it’s always made things worse,” back to the drawing board.
Yes, I’m a dreamer. And yes, the idea is flawed because leaders for the most part aren’t trying to effectively and efficiently run their countries, they are trying to promote the political and financial interests of themselves and their cronies. Does that makes me a cynical dreamer? Or a realist?
Coming soon, posts on great military blunders in history. First will be the Battle of Castillion, where the British saw a cloud of dust made by a fleeing bevy of prostitutes, and concluded that the French army was running away. So they immediately charged the now “abandoned” French positions, only to discover belatedly that the French fortified line was packed with French soldiers, guns, and cannons. Oops. And that was the ignominious end of the Hundred Years War.
(The above image is public domain under US copyright law since it was executed in the ninetenth century. It’s a painting of the Battle of Castillon by the French painter Charles-Philippe Larivière (1798-1876). It depicts the English leader, John Talbot, the 1st Earl of Shewsberry, having his horse shot out from under him. The Earl was trapped under his horse, and a French soldier named Michel Perunin recogised him and achieved footnote status in history by hacking him to death with his axe. Isn’t war glorious?)
