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Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Another inevitability
Why do you suppose our fearless leaders can’t bring themselves to do things that they will inevitably be forced to do? For instance, we have nearly 50 million people in this country without health care because they can’t afford insurance. We have another very large number of people who have lousy health care because the insurance they can afford is basically a rip off.
So ask yourself, ‘are we going to allow people to die of treatable diseases on the doorstep of the hospital?’. The answer is obviously, no. That means we’re going to have health care for everyone, whether they can afford it or not. The only question is; how’s the best way to do it?
Because our leaders won’t face up to the above stated reality, we are relegated to suffering the worst, stupidest universal health care system imaginable. The fact is, everyone in this country has access to health care. Our present system calls for treating those who can’t afford to pay at our emergency rooms when their illnesses reach crisis proportions. That way we wind up maximizing the suffering of poor individuals and insuring that they receive the most expensive possible treatment but only after allowing the illness a chance to get as serious as it possibly can! The unpaid bill gets forwarded to the rest of us who can afford insurance (for a while longer we hope) and, one assumes, the only party to go home happy is the insurance company. Surely we can do better than this and for my money it’s high time we insisted on it.
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Inevitabilities
The older I get the more it becomes apparent to me that an awful lot of life is inevitable. Once you’re born, you will grow up, go to work, seek (and in most cases find) relationship(s) with the opposite sex, generate offspring (or successfully avoid generating same), grow old, decline and die. Somewhere along that line you will come to grips with the meaning of life (or lack thereof). As a result of that epiphany you will then relate yourself to whatever deity, moral code, and/or metaphysical system that appeals to you.
The choices we get to make are involved only with the details of life. (Which job/career, which spouse/significant other, kids, no kids, adopted kids, Christian, Muslim, Jew, first church of what’s happening right now, etc.) If you look at life that way the details can be a lot of fun to pick out and the stress of the whole exercise is much lessened because the over all outcome is, well, inevitable.
Oh, that our fearless leaders could look at our social policy that way! Take my field, hunger, for instance. There is an ongoing struggle to find ways of insuring that all the poor people (35 million by recent count) are fed. This debate has gone on for all of my 28 years in hunger work and we are no closer to finding a solution than we were when we started. The bickering, back biting, posturing and bloviating that goes on between liberal and conservative, Democrat and Republican, is enough to tax the patience of Job.
If you just look at the inevitability of the situation, the solution can’t be that hard to find. Here’s the thing. Are we going to stand idly by while people starve to death in America? No, of course not. Well then Senator, Governor or whoever, that means we’re going to feed them. Inevitably. The only question is how is the best, most effective way to do that. Finding the answer to that question won’t be all that hard for a nation who can send a man to the moon. It might even be a fun and rewarding thing to do.
Oh yeah, and Merry Christmas.
Wednesday, December 05, 2007
In praise of newspapers
Everyone has an opinion, especially on politics and religion. In addition, it appears that most everyone is willing to share their opinion. In many cases this is unfortunate. It is unfortunate because there seems to be a widely held belief out there amongst the ‘opinion havers’, that their opinions are not merely opinions, but “truth”. This misconception is fueled by a veritable avalanche of books, web sites and magazines that serve to reinforce virtually any opinion you may have, on any subject that interests you.
There are political and religious web sites that will tell conservatives (ad nauseam) how right they are, and others that do the same for liberals. Books catering to the left and right poles in religion and politics are equally prolific. Most ‘opinion havers’ tend to read those books and visit those web sites that reinforce their own opinions. This, it strikes me, is an excellent way to breed a nation of opinionated idiots.
It would be much better, and we’d be much better informed, if we would read both (or all) sides of most major questions before forming an opinion. As far as I know newspaper editorial and op-ed pages are the only places where we are regularly confronted with differing views on a common issue. Come to think of it, the popularity of tunnel vision political and religious talk show dummies may be the result of decreased readership of our great newspapers.
At any rate, it seems to me that a disciplined reading of all sides of any issues should precede our voicing of opinions. Were we to adopt this strategy we would come to a much more balanced view of the world, and the solution to many of our problems would, I believe, become obvious. This is because the world is not black and white, or even red and blue. The problems we face every day come in varying shades of grey, and that means that their solutions will inevitably be some shade of purple.
