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TechnoratiAmericans, Their Smiley-Face Facade, and Reality
Whenever I think of the smiley-face icon, I think of Wal-Mart because of its once-ubiquitous ad campaign. And when I think of Wal-Mart, I think of crappy wages and insecure employees who probably live paycheck to paycheck. That metaphor -- the happy face fronting a world of worry -- is the subject of a new book, Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking has Undermined America , by social commentator Barbara Ehrenreich.
Ehrenreich's bout with breast cancer and the cloying "pink ribbon culture" that surrounds this dreaded disease (she was urged to see her cancer as a "gift") made her explore our cultural obsession with being happy. The book's point is that realism is being elbowed out of the way by all the life coaches, self-help books and prosperity gospel preachers like Joel Osteen who tell us that a positive outlook will lead to success, riches and the fulfillment of all of life's desires. These heaping helpings of sunny optimism are subtly diverting us from grappling with serious social and economic issues in ways that can truly bring about change.
The Secret became a runaway best-seller by telling readers that they could have anything they wanted just by imagining it. The book was obviously unadulterated bunk, but it sold madly as people grasped at any chance to better their lives.
One has to wonder if such magical thinking would have been so popular if people felt they had temporal power to change the conditions of their work and prospects.
The reason that so many Americans have jobs that don't pay enough is not that they didn't channel enough positive energy into getting a better salary, but that wages have been stagnant for 30 years. And the reason that wages have barely budged is that America's wealthiest households just kept slicing themselves a larger piece of the income pie.
Between 1979 and 2007, the top 1 percent of American households saw their share of all pretax income nearly double, while the bottom 80 percent had their share fall by 7 percent. Ehrenreich quotes The New York Times , saying, "It's as if every household in the bottom 80 percent is writing a check for $7,000 every year and sending it to the top 1 percent."
Every working stiff in the bottom 80 percent should be outraged and politically motivated to force change. But if everyone is convinced of the convenient nostrum that our own attitude controls how much we are paid, then workers won't band together to demand a larger share of our national prosperity.
This positive-thinking message is a kind of opiate that has been particularly effective on the white-collar corporate workforce. Ehrenreich documents how corporations hire motivational speakers to convince laid-off workers that their job loss is "an opportunity for self-transformation." Somehow, she says, white-collar workers have accepted positive thinking as a "belief system" that says a person can be "infinitely powerful, if only they could master their own minds."
On the surface, prosperity gospels and positive-thinking companies appear harmless with their treacly "Successories products" of posters and coffee mugs, but they have subversively helped make each of us an island. They have convinced Americans that each individual has control and power over the conditions of their life, when that is largely not the case. Access to decent health care at a reasonable price is not a matter of individual effort. Neither is securing decent wages, pensions, safe working conditions or job security. Workers demanded those rights through collective action in the 20th century, and we are losing them now by taking an "every man for himself" approach to work.
The ultimate irony is that even with the booming positive-thinking industry, Americans are not among the happiest people.
International surveys put us behind places such as Denmark and Switzerland, where the social safety net is stronger.
It seems that happy thoughts don't alter the reality of American life, with all its attendant risks to middle-class living standards. Behind the smiley-face facade, we are privately worried, and we have reason to be.
130 Comments so far
Show AllHi everyone.
Check out this NY Times Article :
then think about the "chronic fatigue syndrome" so rampant - but also on the "upwardly mobile" dogma spread through and by american society ...comparing it with the "30 hour week" of europeans...and the ideas of
"Work to LIVE" as opposed to "live to WORK"..etc...
this is another example of how american society is in DENIAL and trying to make people just "smile" - rather than address fundamental misguided "norms" of society..especially when faced with what are in fact biological limitations and frailties such as humans and animals simply being naturally vulnerable to diseases or illnesses that a society that creates unnecessary pressures to 'achieve' (for WHOSE benefit really? we know it's for the powerful , rich few elites) only excerbates....
and THEN tells society "smile" .
========================
The New York Times
October 21, 2009
Op-Ed Contributor
A Case of Chronic Denial
By HILLARY JOHNSON
EARLIER this month, a study published in the journal Science answered a question that medical scientists had been asking since 2006, when they learned of a novel virus found in prostate tumors called xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus, or XMRV: Was it a human infection?
XMRV is a gammaretrovirus, one of a family of viruses long-studied in animals but not known to infect people. In animals, these retroviruses can cause horrendous neurological problems, immune deficiency, lymphoma and leukemia. The new study provided overwhelming evidence that XMRV is a human gammaretrovirus — the third human retrovirus (after H.I.V. and human lymphotropic viruses, which cause leukemia and lymphoma). Infection is permanent and, yes, it can spread from person to person (though it is not yet known how the virus is transmitted).
That would have been news enough, but there was more. XMRV had been discovered in people suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome, a malady whose very existence has been a subject of debate for 25 years. For sufferers of this disease, the news has offered enormous hope. Being seriously ill for years, even decades, is nightmarish enough, but patients are also the targets of ridicule and hostility that stem from the perception that it is all in their heads. In the study, 67 percent of the 101 patients with the disease were found to have XMRV in their cells. If further study finds that XMRV actually causes their condition, it may open the door to useful treatments. At least, it will be time to jettison the stigmatizing name chronic fatigue syndrome.
The illness became famous after an outbreak in 1984 around Lake Tahoe, in Nevada. Several hundred patients developed flu-like symptoms like fever, sore throat and headaches that led to neurological problems, including severe memory loss and inability to understand conversation. Most of them were infected with several viruses at once, including cytomegalovirus, Epstein-Barr and human herpesvirus 6. Their doctors were stumped. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the nation’s presumed bulwark against emerging infectious diseases, dismissed the epidemic and said the Tahoe doctors “had worked themselves into a frenzy.” The sufferers, a C.D.C. investigator told me at the time, were “not normal Americans.”
(article continued)
=========
When, by 1987, the supposed hysteria failed to evaporate and indeed continued erupting in other parts the country, the health agency orchestrated a jocular referendum by mail among a handful of academics to come up with a name for it. The group settled on “chronic fatigue syndrome” — the use of “syndrome” rather than “disease” suggested a psychiatric rather than physical origin and would thus discourage public panic and prevent insurers from having to make “chronic disbursements,” as one of the academics joked.
An 11th-hour plea by a nascent patient organization to call the disease by the scientific name used in Britain, myalgic encephalomyelitis, was rejected by the C.D.C. as “overly complicated and too confusing for many nonmedical persons.”
Had the agency done nothing in response to this epidemic, patients would now be better off. The name functioned as a kind of social punishment. Patients were branded malingerers by families, friends, journalists and insurance companies, and were denied medical care. (It’s no coincidence that suicide is among the three leading causes of death among sufferers.) Soon the malady came to be widely considered a personality disorder or something that sufferers brought upon themselves. A recent study financed by the C.D.C. suggested that childhood trauma or sexual abuse, combined with a genetic inability to handle stress, is a key risk factor for chronic fatigue syndrome.
Many people don’t realize how severe this illness can be. It is marked by memory and cognition problems, and physical collapse after any mental or physical exertion. The various co-infections that occur only make matters worse. Many patients are bedridden. And recovery is rare. A significant number of patients have been ill for more than two decades.
Dr. Nancy Klimas, an immunologist at the University of Miami School of Medicine who treats AIDS and chronic fatigue syndrome, remarked in The Times last week that if given the choice she would prefer to have AIDS: “My H.I.V. patients for the most part are hale and hearty,” she said, noting that billions of dollars have been spent on AIDS research. “Many of my C.F.S. patients, on the other hand, are terribly ill and unable to work or participate in the care of their families.”
Congress has appropriated money for research on chronic fatigue syndrome, too, though in far smaller amounts, but the C.D.C. has seemed unwilling to spend it productively. A decade ago, investigations by the inspector general for the Department of Health and Human Services and what was then called the General Accounting Office revealed that for years government scientists had been funneling millions meant for research on this disease into other pet projects.
As public health officials focused on psychiatric explanations, the virus apparently spread widely. In the new study, active XMRV infections were found in 3.7 percent of the healthy controls tested. Roughly the same degree of infection in healthy people has been found in the prostate research. If this is representative of the United States as a whole, then as many as 10 million Americans may carry the retrovirus.
It is estimated that more than a million Americans are seriously ill with the disease. (Not everyone infected with XMRV will necessarily get chronic fatigue syndrome — in the same way that not all of the 1.1 million Americans infected with H.I.V. will get AIDS.)
Hints that a retroviral infection might play a role in chronic fatigue syndrome have been present from the beginning. In 1991, Dr. Elaine DeFreitas, a virologist at the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia, found retroviral DNA in 80 percent of 30 chronic fatigue patients. The C.D.C. went so far as to try to replicate her effort, but refused to follow her exacting methods for finding the virus. In addition, the centers’ blood samples became contaminated, and some people at the agency said that administrators ended the research prematurely. Rather than admit any such failure, the C.D.C. publicly criticized Dr. DeFreitas’s findings.
That episode had a chilling effect on other researchers in the field, and the search for the cause was largely abandoned for 20 years.
Now, Judy Mikovits, the retrovirus expert at the Whittemore Peterson Institute, in Reno, Nev., who led the recent study, has revisited the cold case. Not surprisingly, the institute is private, created by the parents of a woman who suffers from chronic fatigue syndrome. But Dr. Mikovits collaborated with scientists at the National Cancer Institute and the Cleveland Clinic.
When she began her work on this disease in 2006, Dr. Mikovits, a 22-year veteran of the National Cancer Institute, knew little about chronic fatigue syndrome. But she was intrigued that an unusually high number of patients being followed by a Nevada doctor were suffering rare lymphomas and leukemias; at least one had died. And she was also impressed that the doctor, Dan Peterson, had built an extraordinary repository of more than 8,000 chronic fatigue syndrome tissue samples going back as far as 1984.
“My hypothesis was, ‘This is a retrovirus,’ and I was going to use that repository to find it,” Dr. Mikovits told me.
What she found was live, or replicating, XMRV in both frozen and fresh blood and plasma, as well as saliva. She has found the virus in samples going back to 1984 and in nearly all the patients who developed cancer. She expects the positivity rate will be close to 100 percent in the disease.
“It’s amazing to me that anyone could look at these patients and not see that this is an infectious disease that has ruined lives,” Dr. Mikovits said. She has also given the disease a properly scientific new name: X-associated neuroimmune disease.
For patients who have been abandoned to quackish theories and harsh ideologies about their illness for 25 years, the dismantling of “chronic fatigue syndrome” can’t come soon enough.
Hillary Johnson is the author of “Osler’s Web: Inside the Labyrinth of the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Epidemic.”
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company
with that article as an example :
I have always found it ironic that where american society tends to things like preaching to itself "SMILEY-FACE" OBEDIENCE to systemic and structural FLAWS in the society (such as over-work, suppressed wages for 90 percent of the population, tolerated "unemployment" as "desirable for the markets", and so many more matters) that wreak havoc on individuals and then society as a whole.....and where americans are told to behave as if these are not matters to be ALARMED about as a society and for the future and that of their own children , DESPITE its being so ENDEMIC and so WIDESPREAD like an epidemic ...and undermines and destroys society - like a self-created "terrorism" of its own ...leading right up to a Police Surveillance state (Ex: can even be, at work: "are you SMILEY ENOUGH?" - be "well-behaved and be SMILEY , it;'s the PROFESSIONAL thing to do , or we;ll WRITE YOU UP and you'll be suspended without PAY"...on TOP of other unreasonable pressures to "achieve" for the "sake of the company")
americans are meanwhile - so EASY to BOTHER and make fearful and REALLY get upset - because a RARE occurence appears:
a 9/11 which was blowback for the american "way of doing things"
or the Swine Flu - giving reason to impose a kind of Police State "mandated" vaccination - without knowing what the consequences are...
and it's all related to fears, fears, fears of "monsters about to get US"....
but when it comes to AMERICAN MADE , self-induced problems and paranoias -- americans are THEN taught to "SMILE".
they are taught to SMILE through the lifestyle that has LED the world towards the brink of global warming disaster that might not be fixed as the price EVERYONE must pay for this "prosperity and achievement"....
they are taught to SMILE through the lifestyle that produces so little compassion , but lots of profiteering , for the very real human frailties such as succumbing to illness because the nation's National Philosophy teaches that "health care is for PROFIT"...and so "bear your cancer with DIGNITY and GRATITUDE as the way to FIGHT because we aren't going to hospitalize you under a singlepayer system...it's TOO expensive to CARE ABOUT YOU".....
Well said.
The USA, where Hobbes and Malthus combine to make the new Sparta. Next they'll have dedicated hillsides to leave our "undesirable" citizens to "die with dignity" so that we can live with greed.
If there's one thing about Americans is that they loooooove to avoid reality by whatever the means: drugs, alcohol, religion, pornography, sports, TV, don't worry be happy brain-washing type therapy whatever it takes as long as they don't have to face the world.
For a refreshing smiley face that de-masks beautifully:
see
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2l6vwAIAqNU
Matangacita as I wash the dishes, let the cat in and the dog out, and think of how similar political rallies and motivational speaker events are, I was also thinking that we are indeed a nation of junkies. What will happen when we have no choice but to go cold turkey? It's going to happen, and I wonder what sort of nation we will be after we go, kicking and screaming, though our dark night of the soul?
Yes, I don't think that there is any question but that "adversity", I'll call it "heartache", breaks open the heart. Motivational speakers, like Prozac, work the same way as aspirin does for physical pain: It may not hurt so much, but nothing has been done to get in touch with the cause of the pain. Only the brave dare go through the dark night of the soul.
Thanks to the commenters mentioning TR Reid's call to conscience around health care and Buffy St.Marie's "Magic Is Afoot" and the use of the word, "we". I ask my inner Howard Beale what is to be done today, throw the I Ching, compulsively read CD for a sign of paradigm shifting, prepare for another day of healing without the money I'm told in countless ways would accelerate it if only I had it. The cat on my bed purrs with cat thoughts, not worries about capitalism, animating his ears as he dreams. Maybe today I'll fake it til I make it by slapping on my best 'happy' face, or not. Maybe my last months spent on crutches will make me more empathetic and ready to reach out a hand to someone in need, or not. Maybe I'll have more patience and compassion today than yesterday, or not. There IS 'magic' afoot. I retrace my steps to find it when it's right in front of me, then laugh if I can. Happiness is maybe to be found in adversity and the way adversity breaks open the heart? Not that I wish heartbreak on anyone... I'm just sayin.
"They have convinced Americans that each individual has control and power over the conditions of their life, when that is largely not the case." -- Robyn Blumner
The latest "be happy" campaign serves to keep the masses "dumbed-down" in their endless pursuit of hollow and self-centered "happiness".
Be it by "eastern" Bhuddist or Indian meditation practices or "western" Judeao-Christian looking after and loving your brother,happiness can be equally assured. Do the techniques taught in "The Secret" assure happiness without the above?....Doubtful
Can a capitalist system evolve if it places a priority on the above?.... Perhaps.
Buddhist monks and practitioners of TM are happier people because they're also in a community of same. Scandinavians are happier because they too have created a communal system that looks after their brothers (and sisters). Walmart has some work to do.
"Buddhist monks and practitioners of TM are happier people because they're also in a community of same."
What is happening in Tibet? Meditation can only get you so far. At some point, right action must come into play. While I don't fully subscribe to the "opiate of the masses" theory, there is some truth to it. Buddhism as either a philosophy or religion is no exception.
"Can a capitalist system evolve if it places a priority on the above?.... Perhaps."
Don't kid yourself. You almost sound like a corporate fascist apologist. Putting any hope in an exploitative, self-serving system like capitalism is a fool's errand.
When the American feel-good industry tells you to "be positive", it's actually telling you to accept your misery with a smile on your face. Accept $4 an hour and be happy about it. Accept that America murders innocent civilians overseas but be happy about it. The industry's doing a service for the top 1% the same way the banking and health industries are.
The most damaging aspect of the book The Secret is that it actually keeps people from achieving great things. To sit in your couch and think positive achieve absolutely NOTHING.
EXACTLY!
this is the uniquely american character of "innovation"...turning something -- national distress - into something like a product - for yet another way of telling people to swallow their misery with a smile...it's really vicious.
Happiness is a mental condition that forms part of the training of Buddist monks. It is clear from the experiences related by Dr Jill Bolte Taylor that it derives from the right brain. She relates that a stroke in her left brain resulted in her conciousness shifting from normal reality to a sense of “at one with the universe.”
Many people take drugs in an attempt to achieve this level of peace and tranquillity, but it is not necessary since anyone trained in the appropriate techniques can approach some level of this nirvana.
By contrast the "feel good" industry is just another pathetic commercial enterprise.
While there is no question that one's happiness can be greatly influenced by one's circumstances and environment, it remains true that money does not and never has bought happiness. Happiness lies inside the mind.
URGENT: google control fraud theory
click on googles "encyclopedia of
white collar crime; you can buy it for 32.50
through alibris ($75 book, 2006) by jurg gerber
and eric jensen. on the google preview you
will see all you need to know. It makes sept
2001 into an relatively insignificant detail.
I did a review for google. peace and justice
Matt taibbi 10/ 14/09 rolling stone is the
ultimate paradigm shifter
Humans need magic. As a former flower child, I know somewhat of magic. But the crap being sold to Americans urging them to think positively is not magic. It's a conjurer's trick, a slight of hand, a con game to sell books and money making methods and other such trash, and, judging from its popularity on TV, Americans are buying it by the ton. If you want to know about magic, here are the lyrics to Buffy Sainte-Marie song 'God is afoot, Magic is Alive'.
God is alive; Magic is afoot
God is alive; Magic is afoot
God is afoot; Magic is alive
Alive is afoot.....
Magic never died.
God never sickened;
many poor men lied
many sick men lied
Magic never weakened
Magic never hid
Magic always ruled
God is afoot
God never died.
God was ruler
though his funeral lengthened
Though his mourners thickened
Magic never fled
Though his shrouds were hoisted
the naked God did live
Though his words were twisted
the naked Magic thrived
Though his death was published
round and round the world
the heart did not believe
Many hurt men wondered
many struck men bled
Magic never faltered
Magic always led.
Many stones were rolled
but God would not lie down
Many wild men lied
many fat men listened
Though they offered stones
Magic still was fed
Though they locked their coffers
God was always served.
2..
Magic is afoot. God rules.
Alive is afoot. Alive is in command.
Many weak men hungered
Many strong men thrived
Though they boasted solitude
God was at their side
Nor the dreamer in his cell
nor the captain on the hill
Magic is alive
Though his death was pardoned
round and round the world
the heart did not believe.
Though laws were carved in marble
they could not shelter men
Though altars built in parliaments
they could not order men
Police arrested Magic
and Magic went with them,
for Magic loves the hungry.
But Magic would not tarry
it moves from arm to arm
it would not stay with them
Magic is afoot
it cannot come to harm
it rests in an empty palm
it spawns in an empty mind
but Magic is no instrument
Magic is the end.
Many men drove Magic
but Magic stayed behind
Many strong men lied
they only passed through Magic
and out the other side
Many weak men lied
they came to God in secret
and though they left him nourished
they would not say who healed
Though mountains danced before them
they said that God was dead
Though his shrouds were hoisted
the naked God did live
3...
This I mean to whisper to my mind
This I mean to laugh with in my mind
This I mean my mind to serve 'til
service is but Magic
moving through the world
and mind itself is Magic
coursing through the flesh
and flesh itself is Magic
dancing on a clock
and time itself the magic length of God
the "feel good" industry seems to be another of these uniquely american concoctions - served up as something like a behavioral social science (just like the dogma that capitalism and the free market as inevitable and necessary is served up as something "logical" and a science of economics even if it's really a kind of faith-based religion and doctrine) .
it's similar to the very american idea of "innovation" as if by mere innovativeness (also another pillar of capitalism's never-ending need to find a "market", regardless of usefulness) it takes on a real, intrinsic value.
while it's part of the human experience to be compassionate and give succor to those in pain...this kind of "feel good" socio-psychology is really another form - also a very uniquely american one - of inducing CONFORMITY under guise of "individual awareness" : conformity towards accepting things - not so much because they are painful experiences - but because the "american way" is to NEVER blame society for one's failures or pain.
NEVER blame the fact that one is in pain from cancer because one has a job that doesn't offer insurance and can't go to the doctor..
NEVER blame the fact that the US system leaves you out to find your "positive self" - if you can pay for the regular "positiveness sessions"...
NEVER blame the fact that society has ANYTHING to do with your biology or that you are left defenseless ..
so : BE POSITIVE . it's the american way.
no job? BE POSITIVE
have job but can't afford rent? BE POSITIVE
can't really stand for long because your feet are aching from years of lifting boxes at work? BE POSITIVE
just got home from Afghanistan with no limbs? BE POSITIVE
negativity ? something is wrong with you , coz in america...we're POSITIVE. and...it's SO upsetting to show negativity ....
what are people going to SAY? goodness gracious!! you're SUCH a WHINER!! this is america, darn it, we're RUGGED INDIVIDUALS and we're always POSITIVE!!
Sioux Rose
TEDDY: We view the world with similar eyes. Great post!
yeah i'm pretty sure that's Leonard Cohens lyrics tho, from his novel Beautiful Losers. there's a lot to like about it, written or sung. On the other hand i have a problem with people who speak of god with a capital letter. That almost always means the ornery, punishing Jehovah, held in such high esteem in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. That "holy" being is about as credible as Santa Claus, and is another example of useless self help promos
When Buffy (or Leonard Cohen) used the word God, with or without caps, you can be pretty sure they didn't mean 'that holy being'.
"Behind the smiley-face facade, we are privately worried, and we have reason to be"
The facade created by the feel-good self-empowerment industry is reminiscent of other facades created in the USA for money. In particular, the facades created when people put on business suites and ties to go behave like street thugs in office buildings. We can lump in with class hierarchy this fakery and facade-building in our collection of the banes of society. Many of us have recognized these banes all along and have been frustrated as our fellow citizens, more and more, fell for the siren songs, put on the suits and ties and facades and marched in the elite parade for gold. Now this gilded age beats the last one in the early 20th century. The gini coef is very low and USans are unhappy. The only reason we haven't rebelled is the petro-opiates and the funny munny. The funny munny may dry up soon, though the petro-opiate pipeline may be pumping for another couple of decades. During that time, expect more of the suits and ties and facades, though they are on decline.
Here is a positive thought for conservatives:
When you're done destroying the country, liberals won't do to you what you would do to them.
pointless comment deleted by author
Barbara Ehrenreich is a true national treasure!
I look forward to reading this latest work, as I have so many other books of hers. In my opinion she has done about as much as any single person in this country to try to wake up her somnolent compatriots to the truly deplorable, and still disintegrating, living and working conditions of its huge working, unemployed, impoverished, and increasingly, even "middle," classes.
And a good part of why there is so little public outrage, even now, when the federal government, and our entire economy itself, have been hijacked by a few financial oligarchs, who have enriched themselves beyond imagining, and are continuing to do so even now, at the direct expense of every other American citizen and taxpayer, so many of whom are struggling 60 to 70 hours a week just to keep themselves and their families alive, is precisely because, due to internalizing these ridiculous American mantras that "you create your own reality," and that "one simply has to think success to be a success," etc., so many of those who have been most victimized by a capitalist system that is so stacked against them that their only real chance of "getting ahead" is the one in a hundred million shot they have of hitting the lottery, are so ashamed of their lack of economic progress over the years that they have come to blame the victim, themselves, rather than turn their quite justified rage outward toward the system that is oppressing them, and, by linking up with the many of millions who, through no fault of their own, find themselves in equally dire circumstances, organize as best they can, under such non-propitious conditions, to debunk such dis-empowering self-conceptions and regain their pride and courage to struggle against such manifest injustice.
As I said Barbara Ehrenreich is a nation treasure. I think they ought to do one of those PBS "American Masters" programs on her. One on the late Molly Ivins would also be very much in order in my book!
It is a relief for someone to say that you do not have to run around all upbeat all the time no matter what is happening around you. Years ago I read "For Her Own Good". It validated the questioning contrarian in me. "Nickle and Dimed" was a genius project on behalf of so many under-reported women like my own mother who do not have the time or leisure or education to write for themselves.
It is rare for someone to bother to tell the truth about the boring working poor. I agree with you fusfield that Barbara Ehrenreich is a national treasure.
Joe
Same here.
If the private conversations of most of the CEOs of our corporations could be listened to by the populace when said CEOs are negotiating a deal or "counseling" and employee, the idea of greater success going with greater happiness would be crushed in a week. Ironically, the life of a poor person fighting for every scrap and feigning an "attitude" on the street in order to survive is comparable, at least at the workplace, with the CEOs. We have a miserable society. And that's because people are saner than all the PR bullshit which attempts to force them into a happy face while they eat shit. People can see the pig through the lipstick.
"It's as if every household in the bottom 80 percent is writing a check for $7,000 every year and sending it to the top 1 percent."
Many USans just think of it as a raffle. USans are taught to pursue joining the ranks of the elite themselves someday. So if they did not contribute to the elite "fund" while still poor, there would be a smaller prize for them to later win. They've heard that making a life of gambling is wrong, but who wants to be poor? A better question is: How about the fact that on the income scale, happiness peaks at one to two times the poverty level? Look into it. Maybe that will persuade you to keep your $7k/yr for yourself and your family, and deny the elites any/all support, e.g. deny them your vote (vote third party instead), and you can show your disrespect/distrust for their ideas openly in public, with full confidence. Avoid taking their jobs, and avoid buying their warez or anything they had a hand in producing/distributing. Just do business with and work with the people in your local community. Now THAT's a huge step up.
Ehrenreich documents how corporations hire motivational speakers to convince laid-off workers that their job loss is "an opportunity for self-transformation."
I had that exact thing done to me when I was outsourced from my former company after working there for well over 20 years. I think they bring in these motivational speakers to hopefully prevent someone from going postal. In a previous layoff at this company one of the people that had been let go actually committed suicide.
But from someone who has gone through it I can tell you it's ALL B/S folks. Actually so much of what goes on in corporate America is such B/S that it is frightening.
State re-employment services, generally known as the "Job Service" division in local unemployment offices, scrambled to re-invent themselves this century as the traditional manufacturing base evaporated. At least in Pennsylvania, the agency's approach of partnering with local manufacturing businesses to refer clients became obsolete when the businesses dried up.
Instead, unemployment benefit services were consigned to the electronic-sweatshop Hell of call-centers, Job Services became "Career Links", and managers were given other pastimes to justify the agency's existence. One pastime involved coordinating with various motivational groups to speak to unemployed persons. (The meetings were mandatory for those receiving unemployment benefits.)
A friend of mine who was a manager commented to me once that ALL of the motivational groups were founded and staffed by people who'd been thrown out of work themselves. OK, that's not such a radical concept-- it's like rehab programs being staffed by recovering addicts.
But his point is that they would basically give pep talks to, say, ex-steelworkers to seek retraining in the health care field and other service-based employment. But the REAL money was to be made in founding a motivational group that qualified for "workforce development" grants and funding, and making a new career out of preaching to the newly unhappy.
He found it ironic that, in effect, preaching the "smiley-face" doctrine was the refuge of the redundant. So did I.
· Yr Obd't Servant
"American optimism"–the 'smiley face' decal embossed on the fuselage of a Predator drone missile as it descends on yet another Afghan wedding celebration. That's even more American than Wal-Mart. Think positive. Think death. 24-7. A small price to pay for delivering the 'goods.'
–The conflation Of Wal-Mart and the Pentagon is not a contradiction in terms; they are both commingled in a symbiotic marriage. This is not transparently obvious, but in truth, both modes are part of the American 'killing fields.' This is the conceptual meta continuum whose product is death.
Death is everywhere in America. The largest 'umbrellas,' both the Pentagon and Wal-Mart, radiate influence to all the social functions they subsume under them like a viral influenza. As many things in America, one cannot exist without the other. This strange conjunction may not be a literal equivalence, but one feels it intuitively through the concept of dread.
"Our business is killing and business is good." –(Inscription on American attack helicopter, Vietnam, circa 1968).
One may ask what exactly does Wal-Mart "kill?" But one also knows it does kill something. Who has not felt dread when entering or even seeing a Wal-Mart store? Perhaps even a free floating anxiety or a delirious nausea? Perhaps the death of the spirit and of all hope.
The economy of dread that is the Pentagon budget and the building itself spews death everywhere even when it is not literally doing so. It inspires only hopelessness in its morbid permanence incarnating a spiritual vacuity. A totemic monolith of death. A symbol of a dead people... An emanation of foreboding and malice.
As a business model, Wal-mart accomplishes much the same. It is both a concept and a death site or installation of death. It has a latent morbidity. A terminus of hopelessness. Both institutions are twin diasporas of American dread and toxicity which have come to dominate the entire culture.
Will Wal-Mart one day be selling Predator drone models as toys?
–(Jill Bains)
Sioux Rose
AMFORTAS: Powerful post. As for the visceral revulsion experienced upon entry into the neighborhood Wallmart store, killing can be tied to the death of ecosystems. For to produce so much junk at such enormous levels requires the blood of animals, the lost land tracks of nesting birds, the redirection of water sources that would otherwise support ecosystems and 'marvelously diversified communities. THAT is the blood on their hands that your instincts sense upon entering those lesser gates of Mammon's temple. Were you aware of the Wallmart being constructed just outside the sacred pyramids near Mexico City? The complaints of archaeologists that artifacts would be dug up and tossed aside irreverently were ignored.
Walmart is the result of a system that puts quantity sales against quality production. Its smiley face is there to cover up for all the harmful side effects it has no regards for such as lower wages, labor abuse, damage to the environment, etc ...
I've been thinking for a while that maybe there might be a way to convince one another to take pride in going local despite the initial hassles. It may take more work and products can be a little more expensive but how about an honest long term smile for putting quality before quantity and making it last longer? There must be some way to infuse the lessons of long term happiness into the way we choose to do business.
That's a great idea but anyone owning a small business locally has to be on the lookout for predatory competition from the big guys ready to bait and switch the gullible to steal the competition. Preparing to face all sorts of weird competition is the key to success.
Well, it is not just a country run by subversives who control the msm, the economy, the government so they can use emotions, as the church does, to confuse and abuse those that don't really know how they are being used by those who benefit from 'those' who are msm clueless, by that best dressed and coiffed, singing god bless america and wearing the american flag topped off by the biggest and shiniest toothy smile charlatan, but a country that demands that money separates humans from other humans but also nature/environment.
The way to happiness is obviously to write a preachy "help yourself and feel good about it" book. Then we can all get a guest spot on each other's talk shows.
I have a friend who was recently fired from the architect's office where she works. Her husband also works there. She is six months pregnant with their second child, and she is in hysterics because she has been looking for a job for two months and no one will hire a pregnant woman. Her family will be below the poverty level for a family of four when her second child is born, so she's hoping they will be able to get some help then. Her husband graduated as an architect and has been working for this company for a few years now, but his salary is inadequate for supporting a family. What took one wage-earner years ago now takes two. Both parents have to work in middle class families, there is no "luxury" of staying home to raise the children. Everything is eroding.
Architects no longer make wages above poverty level!?!? Shudder.
That's if you can find a job. A good friend of mine is an architect/urban planner and has been looking for almost a year. He has had to take on handy man work in order to make ends meet. just barely. Tough times and I don't know what the solution might be for the unfortunate millions who are beginning to show up at homeless shelters and food banks.
It's a bloodbath out there. The shelter at the Salvation Army near my house is chock full.
and soon - what it "took" TWO wage earners - will take at least four.
already that is the case with many families, for sure...which can be seen in how teens are now becoming "part earners" for their families. it's called "work for it" as they say -- but in reality - is a case of earnings in the family no longer really being enough from just one earner - or two.
from the article:
Behind the smiley-face facade, we are privately worried, and we have reason to be.
the word private, as in privately worried, is profoundly apropos, as the word private, as in private property, is the problem...
As long as property is privately owned, it is only available to those with the ability to pay, or those willing to take and hold by force...that is fundamentally wrong...air and water and food and shelter are inherent rights, and should not require money or violence to access...
until private property is abolished, we should be worried, both privately and publicly...and preparing for violence...
i know I have to read up some more =-- but i believe - on the history of "private property" as a legal pillar of society , which we are talking about what is accepted today worldwide based on western legal thought - it was in england that it was first codified as something of a right...by demarcating , with fences, what a private property was..and that this was also due in part to the way the powerful people just willy-nilly told people to leave a plot . but mostly - it was codified as result of the King of England abusing upon the Nobility who themselves had demarcater their "private land" (peopled with serfs) .
and that was part of how the famous Magna Carta was codified. it was, i believe , originally a "gentleman's" demand upon the king to give freedom of a sort , or respect for "property rights". i hope i can learn more about it as i find time to read.
but generally, although powerful people - when they could gather enough "enforcers" - by of course partly manipulating societies to accept laws in a certain way - and become "chiefs", or Kings, nobles, rich traders that wield influence - have abused ordinary people like this, and also ordinary people probably also would od the same to others...
generally - it seems that societies - by some "common" tacit understanding or instinct maybe - just left people alone on what they lived on ..with the tacit knowledge that no matter how "long one has lived" on a certain land - it is really just 'temporary' for everyone.
that the COMMONS - as this is to be called - belongs ONLY to the EARTH and
we all - commons and private - are only , in fact, truly borrowing and therefore "renting" from the Earth.
Yes, dubet
Private property . . .
http://www.theyorkshirelad.ca/New.Nanaimo.Center/new.nanaimo.center.html
. . . and it was no accident!
"The reason that so many Americans have jobs that don't pay enough is not that they didn't channel enough positive energy into getting a better salary, but that wages have been stagnant for 30 years."
Not necessarily the whole story - workers also became stagnant for 30 years - they stopped fighting 'to the death' for rights and fair pay, and once Big Everything realized they had 'us' on the mat, they just started kicking and eye-gouging until we cried Uncle.
Then they started in with the clubs and maces...
Today, 'we're' still flat on the mat taking blows 2 at a time, but each State has, like, 30 instant Lottery scratchers now, so, really, 'happy' is just a few rubs with that last nickle away...
Everybody knows those lottery odds are too great. You're better off of wishing for a spot on reality TV. Besides, I've got this balloon...........
It's time for the average American to get over his/her fright of 'socialism' as it exists in Western Europe; our rich may not be as rich as their American cousins, but at least our poor are not as poor as theirs. Our systems here aren't perfect, but there's some kernel of humanity in them, giving most of us a chance to live a life without constantly worrying. All we do to achieve this, is paying lots of taxes that are ploughed back into society, and not into tax-cuts for the rich, empire-building and colonial wars.
"It's time for the average American to get over his/her fright of 'socialism' ..." –(Har Davids)
–It is also time for the "average American" to get over his love of fascism. But that will not happen voluntarily. Nor will it happen by an epiphanic moment when the heaven's suddenly part and Karl Marx is the new avatar of the future and Socialism is embraced.
What I'm saying is that Socialism in America will not be a matter of choice. It will have to be imposed. Nor will fascism be a choice which has actually already arrived in the benign normalcy of a standard operating procedure. That too is not a matter of choice in America as it happens by default. And if it didn't happen in this almost self-automated manner it would be brutally imposed as it is elsewhere.
The genuine genius of American politics is that fascism does not have to be imposed, since it is already normalized. Even liberals and many progressives, when given the choice in a real legitimation crisis, will collaborate with fascism against real left opposition if one actually developed. The pro war liberal wing of the Democratic party is ample evidence of this.
If the time ever came when an American in a position of power or influence said something like what Mao Tse-Tung famously said: "Communism is not love. Communism is a hammer which we use to crush the enemy," todays liberals and progressives would scurry to the fascist side without thinking twice.
–(Jill Bains)
Har Davids, thank you for your accurate assessment of Americans' fear of "socialism" as a word. I think if we got past the brainwashing from our government-owned mainstream media that the majority of people would realize that humanity and freedom from worry are what is most important. Tax money going to society as opposed to the super rich and endless war, I think, is what most people want. It is the "getting there" that seems to be the problem. I still think Dennis Kucinich is a viable choice for President in 2012 for an end to war, and end to NAFTA and WTO, environmental and corporate regulations and a new direction, not just for the U.S. but the world.
Pretending that we are happy when we aren't has no power to make our lives better. True happiness is a by-product of goodness, and cannot be achieved any other way than by opening up our hearts to the needs of others. "Every man for himself", is a recipe for misery. It is a fact that, if we are sincere in our efforts, every thing that we do for others' benefit, lifts us up too. I think that the perfect relationship is to put the beloved other ahead of our own needs. If both do this, then happiness is assured. In my own experience, I am happiest when serving others, but the happiness must be the by-product, and not the aim of our actions.
"I am happiest when serving others, but the happiness must be the by-product, and not the aim of our actions."
Like Jerry Springer would always say "Take care of yourself and each other."
All the troubles in the world come from the idea that we are separate from each other. We are all the same, we only have what we give.
Sioux Rose
GENIE: If you live that way then your heart is blessed and you are INDEED a blessing for others!
Amen indeed! It's so easy. Just do it. Even if you are going through the motions, happiness will come to you, and then you will realize that happiness is not an end, but part of the means. But falling into greed is easy too. It seem to be the broader path.
Amen! Brothers and Sisters.
Setting aside the obvious potential disconnects between "happiness" and "financial wellbeing", and reflecting the fact that most of the posts relate to distribution of wealth, to what do you attribute the simple fact that, from top to bottom, Americans of the past 30 years have been the MOST PROSPEROUS people in ALL OF HUMAN HISTORY!
dpjr (10/20/09 2:01 pm) tells us -- with a straight face, I suppose -- that "Americans of the past 30 years have been the MOST PROSPEROUS people in ALL OF HUMAN HISTORY."
This is a typical example of what needs to be called the religion of America, the Greatest Country in the World. It is time to throw that religion into the dustbin of history, along with Hollywood, Disneyland, McDonald's, Las Vegas, and the rest of the trash culture.
"Americans of the past 30 years have been the MOST PROSPEROUS people in ALL OF HUMAN HISTORY!"
I don't think you read the article junior. Income of the bottom 80% has fallen 7 percent in the last 30 years. Perhaps you meant: WEALTHY Americans of the past 30 years have been the MOST PROSPEROUS people in ALL OF HUMAN HISTORY! Perhaps I can recommend some other sites that would better suit your intellect. Drudge Report or National Review Online would be nice fits.
Unless you've been living in a cave on Mars you must know that wages have been falling (for most Americans), the "1 worker" family is a rarity where it was once the norm, some parents work 2 jobs, and, most important, this "prosperity" is largely built on household and national debt. Some prosperity!
"Falling wages" is a relative term; relative to the times compared. I am suggesting that, while wages have been falling recently (the nanosecond of time that is the last 10, 20, or 30 years-depending on data source), personal prosperity at the individual level, top to bottom, is the highest it has been in human history! This is a fact unrefuted by economists! As for 2 workers per household, my wife and I, like my father and mother, have chosen to maintain a one worker household and raise our children according to our family tradition. Our lifestyle is similar to that of our parents because we have also rejected the societal trend toward consumerism which also defines our two worker society (and is a change from the society of my parents). We, like our parents, buy used vehicles, pass down clothing, shop at garage sales; in a phrase, we budget; like my mom and dad. It is a matter of personal choice. Please, at least leave me that!
10, 20, or 30 years is not a "nanosecond of time" in one's productive working life, or overall lifespan.
Compared to what those in the upper crust are stealing of what is rightfully the hoi polloi's possession, this great "personal prosperity" you're asserting for the bottom 80-90% is disgustingly thin gruel.
I suppose what we - The Great Unwashed - really deserve is living in thatched mud huts, serfing for the aristocracy as in medieval days, praying to our pagan gods that if we behave and keep toiling hard, we won't feel the sting of our manorlord's whip? Or perhaps going back to caves and being grateful that we have a stinking animal hide to wear, a fire to gather around, and a few semi-rancid bones to gnaw on?
Well, that's where many people are at today in the US and rest of the world. It's just a modern version.
Prosperity? Yes, it's all relative.
Good for you, dpjr. That's the way I live too. Our car is a 1994 Ford Escort, for example. I'd like to have traded it in like most Americans recently did, but couldn't find a decent electric plug in. But the fact is, I've have to work harder and I got less for it. And it is harder to find work. But there is a lot to buy, though it's all made in China and Mexico by wage slaves and is poor quality. I'm 68 and have seen life deteriorating in this country, both in economic terms and in moral terms. By moral I mean being selfless, doing unto others, etc. And it's true that we go to war for profit instead of necessity--profit for the arms dealers, oil producers and such, that is. I think it's a truism that War creates a lack of morality. I don't know, ask the returning Iraq vet who has to live with collateral damage and somehow finds the good old American values he or she's been given as a reason to fight not as convincing as they used to be. And it is true that the wealthy are getting wealthier, and the rest of us are getting screwed. Can't you feel that pain in the back of your body, dpjr, right where your legs meet?
I know a lady who works 12-14 hour days and brings work home. Every 12 months or so she has to take medical leave for nervous exhaustion.
On top of all the work she is expected to do every quarter she and her entire department has to 'boost morale' by putting on a play, musical show, or other demonstration to show how much they love their work.
Considering her work load and responsibilities she earns a paltry salary.
She hates her work but like her co-workers, she can't seem to admit it to herself.
One would think she is living in a country like China. You could see this happening over there. I remember reading of the facade that was the Bejing Olympics.
An excellent companion read to Barbara Ehrenreich's "Bright-Sided" is Chris Hedges "Empire of Illusion".
Poet
The author writes:
"It's as if every household in the bottom 80 percent is writing a check for $7,000 every year and sending it to the top 1 percent."
Every working stiff in the bottom 80 percent should be outraged and politically motivated to force change.
..."
-----------------
Instead, many in the bottom 80% have the obligatory "Life Is Good" spare tire cover on their SUVs.
The mind control seems to be working.
Happiness is a byproduct of the way we live. Sitting in our cubicle year after year, toiling, disconnected, marginalized, alienated, in debt, fearful, angry. That makes for interesting "byproduct".
This really dovetails nicely into the "Brink of Extinction" thread. You still see a lot of people in complete denial about society and the concept that there really are bigger forces at work. Many people still can only see the personal aspect of the situation. It does not occur to them that we can not only change ourselves but we can change the larger institutions of society to more reflect our personal values and the values of people as whole. These institutions are failing us mightily today. Many have been hijacked by narrow self-interest and are driven by basic instincts of greed and avarice.
Wal-mart is a prime example of this. Take away shelf space from US producers, force US companies to move to China or lose space. This in turn costs us American jobs but Wal-mart's profit margins went up nicely. More importantly, the average American's choice to buy American has been taken away from him as US companies are bankrupt and their workers let go. You have no choice anymore. Buy China or do without.
The electric car is another example. The large corporations have dragged their feet for 35 years. The choice was never given to you.
Coal is another one. The electric companies will never invest in solar or wind in a significant way because the coal profits are there for the picking. They will make token gestures but our CO2 output is still rising today. They will talk about coal scrubbers. Closure of coal plants is only a dream. Mountains are being leveled as we type.
The individual is supposed to create shelf space at Wal-mart for American made products? The individual is supposed to force electric companies to invest in solar? The individual is supposed to force Ford into developing an affordable electric auto? We can not do this at the individual level.
Billions and trillions of dollars in profits are at stake and these corporations are not going to risk those profits without a serious fight. Only by the collective will we be able to make this a serious fight. While personal change is good and commendable, it is not the full answer. We need to fight this battle at both the personal and collective level. Anything short of that will result in failure.
Ehrenreich's bout with breast cancer and the cloying "pink ribbon culture" that surrounds this dreaded disease (she was urged to see her cancer as a "gift") made her explore our cultural obsession with being happy.
My girlfriend has been fighting breast cancer now for three years. While the various forms of chemotherapy have kept her alive, to call the disease a "gift" is as gross an insult as the existence of George Wanker Bush who inflicted the cancer of his greatness on all our lives. If you consider nausea, extreme ongoing exhaustion, neuropathy, diarrhea, fighting with insurance companies and the recurring bouts of "my life is coming to an end" thinking are "gifts", you need your head thoroughly and exhaustively examined.
Matthew & Mordechai;My sister and sister-in-law both are living with breast cancer,sister is 74 and you cant slow her down and my sis-in-law is 60 something.the one thing is that neither had is the insurance problems at first which was about 3 years ago but now there is a problem with sis-in-law with the price of meds which she still has to take.Anyway wrote this for my sis-in-law as my sis already had one.Matthew get well and stay well and Mordechai may your lady beat the cancer and the blues.Tony
WHICH WILL SUFFICE?
FOR KAZ
Let us start with the self: for nothing follows if not for all that is within ones self.
Faith: Here is the base where all of the self begins; Do you believe in a higher power, is it yourself, something else? It is ever a choice for you.
Hope: This is a path that can be taken and can lead to much help to the self and yet, yet will it be short without the faith to shore it up and this is ever true.
Courage: How can one live without some of this stuff? This, in faith, with a sprinkling of hope can take you to the N th degree of whatever confronts the self.
Love: How wonderful to have the love of those who know you and not just family and friends, for that is no chore. You gather in love to the heart and just like the heart, pass it back out. What a wondrous treasure.
Family: Ah! Where it all begins, good, bad, ugly, beautiful, some or all and in some way it matters not for the journey determines and to make family friends brings much that,for you, will reassure.
Friends: A neighbor, a person met, someone to talk to, to write to, dance with (even Joe), run into (not with a car!), anyway you get the idea. Just be yourself.
This comes with much love and is there anything more or better?
For all of the above is the many ways of love
Love to all, Sandy and Tony
Mordechai,
I am deeply sorry to learn of your girlfriend's misfortune. May she recover her health soon!
The talk of cancer as a gift is so twisted and perverted as to leave one speechless. It is yet another manifestation of the inverted and disturbed world we live in.
matthew loughran
sorry to hear about your gf mordechai. i hope she is able to beat it. i hope you and both your families stand and help her to get better.
without a doubt our healthcare system is shit in the US and too many women without insurance or even with insurance can be be bankrupted by breast cancer. of course scummy insurance companies jerking you both around makes everything more difficult.
i had testicular cancer back in 2004. i had surgery to remove one nut and i went through 4 weeks of radiation treatment. i also went through all of the followup tests, scans and xrays over the next 5 years until this year. luckily it did not spread or come back. over most a fair amount of that time i was only working part time and did not have the income to pay for all if it. UTMB Galveston had an indigent program for people with certain incomes. i payed what i could and the hospital covered the rest.
if we had a real healthcare system in our dick country all of it may have been prevented had i been able to see a gp doctor. he could have caught it very early and maybe i would not have had to go through all of the expense and surgery.
I had colon cancer in 2004 and chemo for six months. Then in 2005 my oncologists were sure the cancer had spread to my right lung and I had a second surgery to remove a cyst there which turned out to be benign. Like you, I had the followup tests for five years afterwards at the urging of my oncologists. I feel somewhat uncomfortable to admit this, but part of the reason I gave into my oncologists every time even though I suspected they were overtreating me was that it was a way to stick it to my insurance company. That was the one silver lining of the entire dark episode, the one source of comfort. I wonder how many other people agree to what they believe may be unnecessary tests and procedures because they want to stick it to the GD insurance companies.
Sioux Rose
KIVALS: I, for one, am VERY glad you're still with us! May your health remain steadfast for many fulfilling years to come. Hey, WE need you for the great fight, between the darkness and the light, betwixt what's morally wrong, and spiritually of the light, financially fair opposed to might makes right, etc. (My "inner rap artist" just came out for a moment.)
Sioux Rose,
Just saw your comment. You probably will never see this, but I must reply by saying that you are such a treasure! We sometimes do not agree, but you are such a warm person I always feel like I am on your side.
I'm so sorry to hear of your stories Mordechai and Mathew.
it is all so wrong.
we all are human and our frailties eventually arrive - but it is cruel for a wealthy nation to leave its people with so little to take care of themselves without further pain than what life or our biology will give us.
nations and societies and governments are supposed to help provide a means for all so that individuals do not have to face the ravages of living beyond their control or abilities - alone or with such limited means.
they are supposed to be the conduit of the collective power of societies to help its individuals if they need help.
even ants and bees are better than this.
i recently came across a handwritten note - by a former worker - pleading with her former workmates :
she works fulltime somewhere else - but has no insurance. neither does her husband . they are relatively young in their 40s - she has to undergo tests and chemo for her cancer and hospitalization ...and her mom before retirement was a head nurse but can't cover them..
it is unbelievable what is being allowed to happen to ordinary americans....these are HUMAN BEINGS, for goodness' sake! they are the very blood of "america". and yet in their pain and suffering
PROFIT is the only thing that matters still.
what kind of "great" nation is this?
It would be interesting to see what works Charles Dickens would be producing today if he were currently alive and writing in modern America.
Sioux Rose
RANDB: I often DO think of Dickens when so many clones of Ebineezer seem to be running the US treasury and its budgetary determinations. They all need a crash course, like spending a week at a haunted house where Disney-style animation forces a near-death encounter with the ghosts of Christmas present and past! Maybe that would convert them, or bring forth the necessary epiphany so many of us await! Imagine if a "return of the Messiah" was Hollywood-assisted!
matthew,
I am sorry to hear of your cancer and pray for the remainder of your life to be cancer free.
UTMB Galveston, as you likely know, is a non-profit organization and as such did NOT pay for your medical care. Of course, the cost of your care was passed along to those of us who could and can pay, both our insurance premiums and our medical bills. WE wound up paying MORE for OUR care in order that YOU could receive YOUR care. Universal care in some form is a laudable goal, but reasonable care and attention must be given to the source of the funding. The tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars for care like you received must come from somewhere; more precisely, from someone or some group. To whom should that responsibility fall?
"WE wound up paying MORE for OUR care in order that YOU could receive YOUR care."
Sorry to be critical but it appears that you resent having to contribute to the well being of others.
"To whom should that responsibility fall?"
The responsibility for caring for others falls on all of us. The treatments that people receive for care are developed and funded by society as a whole, therefore everybody should be entitled to receive them. This responsibility should be assumed on a sliding type scale, with those who have benefitted by our type of society the most (the very wealthy and corporations whose use of resouces belonging to everybody have allowed them the most) paying the most. A single payer health care system would do just that through progressive taxation. The cost to individuals would be reduced by putting the entire population in the same risk pool where both sick and healthy would be parts thereof, thereby dividing the risk among the entire population. This alone would reduce much of the cost to everybody. In addition, the administrative costs of adminstering the insurance would be reduced by reducing the filing process to a single paying entity, the federal government, as well as eliminating the grossly excessive CEO salaries currently paid by for profit insurance.
Health insurance companies directly avoid paying their fair share of the costs of both treatment and innovation by passing them on to their "customers" in the form of higher premiums. That make them parasitical. They contribute nothing to actual health care other than being a "middle man" who skims money off of the system by creating unnecessay "work." Perhaps those in the health insurance industry, whose jobs are basically figuring out how to deny claims to their own financial supporters, could have their unemployment benefits extended after their parasitical industry is replaced by a health coverage plan that actually benefits its recipients.
I too wish the best for those who have had to battle cancer. I have had both a past girlfriend and aunt who battled breast cancer. Both survived and lead healthy lives now thanks to the medical personnel who cared, not the insurance industry who merely makes money from the misfortunes of others.
Very well said.
Sioux Rose
MORDECHAI: I am sorry for your girlfriend's health issue. Please make sure she's getting some VITAL foods. Do you have a juicer? If you can get organic produce and juice it, it would help her body rebuild. I hope it works out WELL for both of you. My college roommate is on chemo now, too.
In 1911, the great Joe Hill wrote 'The Preacher and the Slave'. That was almost 100 years ago.
Long-haired preachers come out every night,
Try to tell you what's wrong and what's right;
But when asked how 'bout something to eat
They will answer in voices so sweet
Chorus:
You will eat, bye and bye,
In that glorious land above the sky;
Work and pray, live on hay,
You'll get pie in the sky when you die
And the Starvation Army they play,
And they sing and they clap and they pray,
Till they get all your coin on the drum,
Then they tell you when you're on the bum
Holy Rollers and Jumpers come out
And they holler, they jump and they shout
Give your money to Jesus, they say,
He will cure all diseases today
If you fight hard for children and wife-
Try to get something good in this life-
You're a sinner and bad man, they tell,
When you die you will sure go to hell.
Workingmen of all countries, unite
Side by side we for freedom will fight
When the world and its wealth we have gained
To the grafters we'll sing this refrain
Final Chorus:
You will eat, bye and bye,
When you've learned how to cook and how to fry;
Chop some wood, 'twill do you good
Then you'll eat in the sweet bye and bye
I find it ironic that this article came from Salt Lake City.
"Together, with the local, diocesan Catholic Charities affiliates, Catholic Charities is the second largest social service provider in the United States and it is only surpassed by the US Federal Government." In its various forms, Catholic Charities is also the largest charitable organization on the planet. Coincidentally, it is also one of the lowest cost providers with some of the lowest salary bases in the charitable industry. Religious giving in the United states represented over 1/3 of all charitable giving in 2008 (of a total of over $200bn). And there is no one within the organized Catholic church who is getting rich from this giving (outside of frauds), particularly the "preachers".
Othripper
What Joe Hill wrote is reminiscent of some of the lyrics in Les McCann's classic song from 1969 Compared to What [from the Swiss Movement album]:
Church on Sunday, sleep and nod,
Tryin' to duck the wrath of God.
Preachers filling us with fright,
They're all trying to teach us what they think is right.
They really got to be some kind of nut!
Everybody now,
Try to make it real compared to what?
alittle more of Les
Nobody gives us a rhyme or reason
half of one doubt they call it treason
Looks like we always end up in a rut!
Try to make it real compared to what!?
I recall in one of Aldous Huxley's distopia novels, maybe Brave New World, everyone was urged to repeat the phrase, "The sky is blue, inside of you," as their lives were totally controlled by whatever combine was running things.
Now variations on that anti-mantra bombard the populace day and night from the all-powerful boobtoob.
That's right. USAns can always convince themselves they're happy as long as the TV is on or they have a cell phone slapped to their ears.
Good piece! And, what is most remarkable is that it appeared in the Salt Lake Tribune. Those Salt Lake City Mormmons practically invented the hyper individualized, smiley-face-positive-thinking-in-service-to-capitalism culture.
The New York Times
October 20, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist
Safety Nets for the Rich
By BOB HERBERT
The headlines that ran side by side on the front page of Saturday’s New York Times summed up, inadvertently, the terrible fix that we’ve allowed our country to fall into.
The lead headline, in the upper right-hand corner, said: “U.S. Deficit Rises to $1.4 Trillion; Biggest Since ’45.”
The headline next to it said: “Bailout Helps Revive Banks, And Bonuses.”
We’ve spent the last few decades shoveling money at the rich like there was no tomorrow. We abandoned the poor, put an economic stranglehold on the middle class and all but bankrupted the federal government — while giving the banks and megacorporations and the rest of the swells at the top of the economic pyramid just about everything they’ve wanted.
And we still don’t seem to have learned the proper lessons. We’ve allowed so many people to fall into the terrible abyss of unemployment that no one — not the Obama administration, not the labor unions and most certainly no one in the Republican Party — has a clue about how to put them back to work.
Meanwhile, Wall Street is living it up. I’m amazed at how passive the population has remained in the face of this sustained outrage.
Even as tens of millions of working Americans are struggling to hang onto their jobs and keep a roof over their families’ heads, the wise guys of Wall Street are licking their fat-cat chops over yet another round of obscene multibillion-dollar bonuses — this time thanks to the bailout billions that were sent their way by Uncle Sam, with very little in the way of strings attached.
Nevermind that the economy remains deeply troubled. As The Times pointed out on Saturday, much of Wall Street “is minting money.”
Call it déjà voodoo. I wrote a column that ran three days before Christmas in 2007 that focused on the deeply disturbing disconnect between Wall Streeters harvesting a record crop of bonuses — billions on top of billions — while working families were having a very hard time making ends meet.
We would later learn that December 2007 was the very month that the Great Recession began. I wrote in that column: “Even as the Wall Streeters are high-fiving and ordering up record shipments of Champagne and caviar, the American dream is on life support.”
So we had an orgy of bonuses just as the recession was taking hold and now another orgy (with taxpayers as the enablers) that is nothing short of an arrogantly pointed finger in the eye of everyone who suffered, and continues to suffer, in this downturn.
Whether P.T. Barnum actually said it or not, there is a sucker born every minute. American taxpayers might want to take a look in the mirror. If the epithet fits...
We need to make some fundamental changes in the way we do things in this country. The gamblers and con artists of the financial sector, the very same clowns who did so much to bring the economy down in the first place, are howling self-righteously over the prospect of regulations aimed at curbing the worst aspects of their excessively risky behavior and preventing them from causing yet another economic meltdown.
We should be going even further. We’ve institutionalized the idea that there are firms that are too big to fail and, therefore, “we, the people” are obliged to see that they don’t — even if that means bankrupting the national treasury and undermining the living standards of ordinary people. What sense does that make?
If some company is too big to fail, then it’s too big to exist. Break it up.
Why should the general public have to constantly worry that a misstep by the high-wire artists at Goldman Sachs (to take the most obvious example) would put the entire economy in peril? These financial acrobats get the extraordinary benefits of their outlandish risk-taking — multimillion-dollar paychecks, homes the size of castles — but the public has to be there to absorb the worst of the pain when they take a terrible fall.
Enough! Goldman Sachs is thriving while the combined rates of unemployment and underemployment are creeping toward a mind-boggling 20 percent. Two-thirds of all the income gains from the years 2002 to 2007 — two-thirds! — went to the top 1 percent of Americans.
We cannot continue transferring the nation’s wealth to those at the apex of the economic pyramid — which is what we have been doing for the past three decades or so — while hoping that someday, maybe, the benefits of that transfer will trickle down in the form of steady employment and improved living standards for the many millions of families struggling to make it from day to day.
That money is never going to trickle down. It’s a fairy tale. We’re crazy to continue believing it.
Sioux Rose
TEDDY: I don't know if you were familiar with an obnoxious American comedian named Alan King, but he had a routine which was a spoof on "this THEY thing." He'd ask, "Who are they"? I relate this as while there are many good points revealed in the quotes in your post, the use of the word WE presumes a consensus where none exists.
I had this thought the other night about Reverend Sun-Moon and his "UNIFICATION" Church. (This "leader" is friendly with the BUsh family as you probably know.) The presumption generated by this idea of "unification" is that many diverse perspectives come together in UNITY. Of course Reverend S-M is a very strict authoritarian who subsumes all independent voices into his own, and then makes it very clear (down to who is allowed to marry whom) what his "followers" may or may not do. Therefore he may use the term "WE" but it's just propagating the "I" premise and directing it at thousands.
In America where both parties have been subsumed into one representative voice in favor of corporate profits chiefly, what does WE have to do with it? Where is the WE in our representation that would make us responsible for the policies of wonton destruction and/or class warfare?
WE is as much an illusion as is the HAPPINESS mandate that corporations are making use of to convince disgruntled employees that the only thing missing is the proverbial inside job. We live in a consumer climate of so many manufactured convenient fictions. Truth is becoming conspicuous BY its absence from all meaningful discourse.