(Published by NYT, 23 July 2009)
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The talking heads in the media have whined. Not enough "folksy anecdotes" in the analysis of health care during Obama's conference on health care, for them? So they claim.
There is a deeper problem. And that is that enforced stupidity has become an instrument of deliberate oppression.
Talking heads in the media and their public have learned to be like children: they want to be told bed time stories, so that their tired little minds can go to sleep.
They cannot handle culture and logic, they are not trained for it. All what appeals to them is what would appeal to little children talking to each other, little anecdotes with a strong imaginary component.
As the Roman republic went down, culture and art went down, and they went down well ahead of the military and economic capabilities. Rome became idiotic first, and then , several decades later, it became completely incapacitated in all ways. Only then did the Huns moved in, from distant Mongolia.
Why did Rome become idiotic? Because the Roman republic had been kidnapped by the hyper rich "Senatorial" class. The hyper rich quickly learned that they ruled best over dummies, and bleating sheep. During the transition to generalized idiocy, those who refused to cooperate were killed. The philosopher and Consul Cicero, saw the hands he was writing with chopped off, and nailed to the Senate door. And that is not an imaginary anecdote a la Reagan. This atrocity was meant to impress those too willing to keep on writing down smart, progressive thoughts.
Finally the plutocracy mixed up with the theocrats, and any knowledge or thinking was denounced as an insult to "God". This episode is now called the Dark Ages. But it started with the rise of the stupid, paid by the hyper rich to extinguish c ulture and intelligence.
This is exactly what is going in the media today. The venality and stupidity of the "debate" on health care is deliberate, it is made to encourage stupidity, it teaches stupidity, it celebrates stupidity.
In truth, if anything should escape the profit motive, it is compassion. The obsession with profits and costs (not just the profits and costs of a financial, but also those of a legal, business, or marketing character) perverts the entire health care system in the USA. And not just for medical decisions.
For example, a peer reviewed article in Science Magazine explains that fewer and fewer drugs are brought to market (down to less than 30 from a peak triple this twenty years ago), because pharmaceutical companies are playing Wall Street. In truth MILLIONS of drugs could be brought to market, from natural products alone, says Science.
And so on. The health care insurance industry exists in a country such as France (with the best health care according to the WHO), but it does not insure the life threatening conditions' basic treatments. That is automatic (even for sick or hurt Americans who would happen to pass through France). Private health care in France insures only added comfort or plastic surgery type treatments. The moral position that an industry can thrive according to the modus operandi:"Your money, or your life!" is untenable in this civilization, and has been rejected in all advanced countries, except the USA.
At this point the extravagant portion of GDP given to those who profit financially from the bad health of others has become a strategic threat to the USA.
Wisely, Obama is gambling that he can defeat the stupidity head on, by rising the mental level of the debate. If he fails, the USA will keep on collapsing mentally, and the rest will follow. After all, the financial crisis, and the way it was solved (replenishing with20public money, the private perpetrators themselves, without any strings attached) is the sort of idiocy that history shows change the fate of civilizations, and not for the best.
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Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
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