Fear and Loathing in America

The Luddites of the early 19th Century went about smashing machines in protest against the coming revolution: that revolution was the industrial revolution that brought the western world fully out of the middle ages and into modernity. The Luddites won a few battles but ultimately lost the war. Ironically, the Luddites were operating in England, of all places, the same country that today has both socialized medicine and a monarch. Go figure.
In America and throughout the world, the current global recession that was brought about by the biggest poker game ever played, namely a version of Blind Man’s Bluff with derivatives, mortgage-backed securities, and variable rate mortgages as the currency. Wall Street turned into a casino for young Turks who played this game night and day until the bluff was called and the operating delusion was finally debunked: real estate values, it turns out, do not always go up.
Today a large portion of America is fearful, not hopeful. When people are fearful, they hang on to what they have rather than risk trying something new. They grasp at straws rather than try to grab the brass ring. If their government offers them something new, they are skeptical and fearful that it will go bad.
America has been conditioned to believe in private enterprise through advertizing. People wear hats and t-shirts sporting everything from cereal brands to motor oil. Americans are taught, even by their currency to trust in God, but they are most rigorously taught to trust in Lipitor, Viagra, Budweiser, and Celebrex. No one runs around with a U.S. Government t-shirt or Federal Reserve baseball cap. Private enterprise has taught us to believe in corporate name brands above all else.
It is no wonder, then, that the little guy or small businessman sees himself on the side of huge insurance companies and believes that free enterprise, no matter how un-free it might be, is better than any government intervention even in the face of the recent failures of GM, Chrysler, Lehman Brothers, and Merrill Lynch. America has been so brainwashed by corporate America that it actually believes that big business and they are on the same side. It does not occur to many Americans that it is the size, power, and influence of corporate America that has brought us to the economic crisis as a whole and the health care crisis as a specific manifestation of the larger problem.
America has to wake up to the fact that corporate America is the enemy of small business and the little guy, not the model of success or the solution to our woes. The fact is there is not enough competition in the market place to allow the little guy to compete. The bulk of every segment of our economy is controlled by an oligarchy of companies. The only obvious exception is the auto industry where Japanese and German firms have been able to out-market American companies to the point that two of the three American brands (GM and Chrysler) came crawling to Congress for a bailout.
Another factor in the current fear-mongering is the legacy of the Cold War. As the paranoid victors in that battle, we remain skeptical of anything that has the word “social” in it or anything that gets labeled ‘socialized.” If it is “socialized,” it can’t possibly contain anything good. We’ll throw that baby out with the bathwater no matter what. Critics point to the coming crises facing Social Security and Medicare and insist that any government option for health care is doomed to bankrupt the country. I would remind America that its military is a government agency and stands far above any other military organization in the world. You can’t say all government agencies don’t’ work. It’s a matter of priorities and financing. Where we put our tax dollars tells us who we are, and we can certainly afford to take care of ourselves AND keep the world safe for democracy.
If America wants to continue to concentrate its wealth in the hands of the few at the expense of the many, then we should stay the current course. If, on the other hand, it wants to do the greatest good for the greatest number, a hybrid health care program just might be a good start. After all, even the car companies have seen the wisdom of the hybrid as a bridge toward greater economy and a reduction in carbon emissions, thanks to government legislation that has encouraged that evolution.