The Entertainment Value of Snuffing Grandma (Joe Bageant)

[Tace]

Joe Bageant -- World News Trust

Aug. 19, 2009 -- Every day I get letters asking me to weigh in on the health care fracas. As if a redneck writer armed with a keyboard, a pack of smokes and all the misinformation and vitriol available on the Internet could contribute anything to the crap storm already in progress. Besides that, my unreasoned but noisy take on this issue is often about as welcome as a fart in a spacesuit. None of which has ever stopped me from making a fool of myself in the past. So here goes.

There ain't any healthcare debate going on, Bubba. What is going on are mob negotiations about insurance, and which mob gets the biggest chunk of the dough, be it our taxpayer dough or the geet that isn’t in ole Jim's impoverished purse. The hoo-ha is about the insurance racket, not the delivery of health care to human beings. It's simply another form of extorting the people regarding a fundamental need -- health.

Unfortunately, the people have been mesmerized by our theater state's purposefully distracting and dramatic media productions for so long they've been mutated toward helplessness. Consequently, they are incapable of asking themselves a simple question: If insurance corporation profits are one third of the cost of health care, and all insurance corporations do is deliver our money to health care providers for us (or actually, do everything in their power to keep the money for themselves), why do we need insurance companies at all?

Answer: Because Wall Street gets a big piece of the action. And nobody messes with the Wall Street Mob (as the bailout extortion money proved). Better (and worse) presidents have tried. Some made a genuine effort to push it through Congress. Others expressed the desire publicly, but after getting privately muscled by the healthcare industry, decided to back off from the idea. For instance:

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http://worldnewstrust.com/commentary/3591-the-entertainment-value-of-snuffing-grandma-joe-bageant

[babylonsister]

1. Crusty ole goat, isn't he. I like it! Rec'd. nt

[DCKit]

3. He git's it, alright. Cuts right through the B.S.. n/t

[abq e streeter]

2. Brilliant, and so sad to know it's true

[MuseRider]

4. I like this guy.

I read something else of his not too long ago, liked it too. Thanks.

[NC_Nurse]

5. He's absolutely right. Ideology has run amok. Cable news is delusional.

I wish I didn't agree with him. :(

[The Doctor.]

6. A tragic truth. Let's hope the awakening comes sooner than later.

Otherwise we really are doomed to Idiocracy.

[depakid]

7. Pretty much tells it like is

Ideology has utterly triumphed. It has separated us from ourselves and built itself a home inside our consciousness, from whence it operates now as our reality. There is no going back, only forward. Given that we are a nation of children who prefer to close our eyes and make a hopeful wish with Tinkerbelle, rather than give hope the piss test, then let us hope to high hell. We may as well go for broke. So let us hope that, in going forward, new and unforeseen developments in the national consciousness occur. Developments that offer an escape from this one so deeply colonized by the corpo-political machinery we created -- and which in turn recreated us. One that will break us loose from enthrallment. Maybe collision with a giant asteroid. Or that Garth Brooks will be barred from making a fifth comeback tour. That’s one hope. A consciousness shattering event by American standards.

Another hope is for an absolute and total collapse of the system."

No need to "hope" for collapse of the system- that's the inevitable result of the current dynamic.

As systems scientist Karl Deutsch noted- nations (political/economic systems) that have lost their steering mechanisms can no longer respond in a timely and appropriate manner to feedback decline over time.