( – promoted by buhdydharma )
As our cities start to crumble,
And the towers fall around us,
The sun is slowly fading,
And it’s colder than the sea . . .
45,000 Americans died last year because they couldn’t get the medical care they needed, 45,000 more Americans will die this year, 45,000 Americans are going to die next year and the year after that and the year after that because corporate profit is more important than human lives, because money determines who receives medical care and who doesn’t, because the depravity of Republicans, the moral cowardice of Democrats, the craven propaganda peddling of the corporate media, and the back room deals of Barack Obama have turned an electoral mandate for health care reform into a Category Five Clusterfuck of co-ops that can’t compete, mandates that punish the powerless, and a public option trigger that will never be pulled.
Brace yourselves for three more years of change we can’t believe in, brace yourselves for more “bipartisan solutions”, brace yourselves for escalating establishment attacks on progressives, brace yourselves for more Republican outrages, more Republican threats, more Republican attacks. The truth is burning, crosses are burning, trillions of dollars are burning, Baucus and Conrad and Snowe have lit the funeral pyre of real change and we have Obama to thank for that, he’s the one who gave them the torches.
45,000 Americans are dying every year because they cannot get the medical care they need. America is suffering a Hurricane Katrina death toll every month. A 9/11 death toll every 30 days. More than 3,000 Americans died in January because they couldn’t get the medical care they needed, 3,000 more died in February, 3,000 more in March and April and May and June and July and August. A hurricane didn’t kill them. Muslim hijackers didn’t kill them. The corporate hijackers of America’s government killed them, the Muhammed Attas of K Street, the Bin Ladins of the Beltway, the Jihadists of Corporate Greed killed them. They were American citizens, they needed health care, they asked to be given medical treatment, but the profit driven health insurance industry gave them a death sentence instead.
Corporate greed has killed far more Americans than terrorists ever have, but there won’t be any Homeland Security warnings about the next corporate attack on America, there won’t be any National Cathedral memorial services for the victims, there won’t be any NSA wiretaps of Goldman Sachs or Bank of America or CIGNA, there won’t be any CIA drones circling over Wall Street armed with Hellfire missiles to take out high value threats to American national security. That’s not going to happen, that won’t ever happen because our leaders have decreed that killing Americans from an Afghan cave is terrorism and cannot be tolerated, while killing them from a fancy corporate office is a long standing tradition of free market capitalism only far left radicals would find objectionable.
Corporate greed is more lethal than Muslim extremism ever has been or ever will be, it’s destroying this country, it’s ripping equality away, it’s ripping human dignity away, it’s ripping America’s future away, it’s killing Americans at a frightening rate, it’s killing real reform, it’s torching real change and there’ll be nothing left but smoke and ashes if progressives don’t call out Obama and the Democrats for their posturing bullshit.
While Democrats posture and placate and offer concession after concession, the Jihadists of the GOP, the Holy Warriors of Profit, the Mullahs of the K Street Caliphate have gone on a rampage. They’ve sent their Taliban to every town hall in America, they deliver their fatwas from the Fed and the Treasury Department and the halls of Congress, they’re always locked and loaded, their fingers are always on the trigger, they fire their lies and reload, fire and reload, fire and reload. If you’re a progressive you’re a target, if you speak truth to power you’re a target, if you try to register low income voters you’re a target, if you try to organize a union you’re a target, if you warn about global warming you’re a target.
Rightwing madness is burning on TV screens across America, it’s burning in searing high definition clarity, it’s intensifying on Capitol Hill, the halfwits of Hannity, the birthers of Beck, the lunatics of Limbaugh are “not going to be silent anymore”, they’re going to liberate America from “big government” and cleanse it of “socialist fascist communists”, they’re going to “fight back” against the gays and liberals and racist minorities “who hate America”, they’re going to defend their God given right to be the stupidest fucking people on the face of the earth, they’re going to wave their flags and carry their crosses and “take their country back” . . .
Well I have news for them. I have news for their RePug leaders. I have news for the Blue Dogs and Blue Cross and Max Baucus and Barney Fife Obama. Real change is coming. It’s coming one way or another, it’s coming whether they like it or not, it’s coming from the Left and there’s nothing they can do to stop it. Delaying it, resisting it, obstructing it will only make them weaker and make us stronger, fighting it won’t empower them, it will discredit them and empower us.
The corruption, the treachery, the bickering and lying and posturing of politicians has to end. They aren’t leaders, they’re just walking shadows, pompous actors who strut and fret their hour upon the stage and then are heard no more. This health care reform spectacle has been a tale told by idiots, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Obama tells us it’s been “a healthy debate.” He wants to know if we’re fired up. He wants to know if we’re ready to go. Well the big drug companies are fired up. The big drug companies are ready to go. But 45,000 Americans who watched Obama campaign for the Presidency last year, who listened to his promises of real change aren’t fired up. They’re not ready to go. They’re dead.
They’re gone from this world, but maybe their deaths can teach Americans something. Maybe Americans will finally realize that health care reform is not a political issue. Maybe they’ll finally understand that it’s not an economic issue. It’s a moral issue. This is a fight for human dignity, this is about saving lives, this is about seeking a better future for our children, it’s about being worthy of their trust, it’s about learning to be better citizens, it’s about learning to be the change we seek, it’s about learning to be free.
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It is written from the desert,
To the mountains they shall lead us,
By the hand and by the heart,
They will comfort you and me,
In their innocence and trusting,
They will teach us to be free . . .
“news” cycles and “news” stories are co-ordinated as to their relevant and most profitable release times, right?
This kid does know the score.
Not who pays, who decides.
I feel like a kid on christmas morning.
Never disappointed either.
Great essay. Beautifully stated.
Ive been talking a bit with my Babes (cyber friends Ive known for 6+ years) about HCR, just a little. (We have sort of an unspoken rule, like my husband’s family has: no politics, no religion and we stay Happy Family). So to even get into it is pushing, but its okay, and I have my allies. And the one Canadian girl, and some Brits. Anyway, I may copy/paste some bits of this to them, if thats all right with you, kind sir.
The Republicans can collectively go do a Dick Cheney for all I care. I want Universal Health Care at an affordable price. I want the Bill of Rights back. I want the rule of law back.
Fuck bipartisanship. It’s a fantasy anyway. Doesn’t exist.
Then again, I could be wrong once more. There are the Blue Dogs. For now.
I cry for democracy
This is wonderful, Rusty. I feel about this diary the same way you said you felt about my “Strange Taboos” poem. This is so powerful and deeply felt. The passion flows from the heart of what is really true.
Thanks Rusty for this moving statement.
it’s really difficult to determine accurately how many people die from lack of health care each year.
Well into five digits is a good solid guess, though.
Our current health care system is structured terribly, though. Over 100,000 die from medical errors each year.
What we need is basic, non-aggressive, guaranteed health care for all. That means you don’t get tested for everything every six months, you don’t look for trouble. You don’t run unnecessary risks from testing errors (false positives), and you don’t run unnecessary risks from unnecessary hospitalization, including surgery.
But if you have a problem, you don’t have to worry and wait because you know any kind of doctor bills will bankrupt you. You don’t have delay until you faint or the pain gets too bad, and then go to the emergency room.
We need more general practitioners, and those where people can easily reach them. And we need a health care system that isn’t profit-driven, that isn’t malpractice-driven, where the docs won’t be herding you into unnecessary treatment out of fear or greed.
We need to demystify medicine. We need databases available online, no charge, of ALL clinical trials, cross-referenced by all other data available. Last I read, these clinical trials, filed with the FDA, weren’t even computerized.
We need medical journals to be able to publish honest, unskewed data without fear of having ads pulled by the pharmaceutical companies.
And that’s just off the top of my head.
Thanks, Rusty, for the beautiful essay.
They need to be taken out of the profit driven model they are currently enjoying, to the detriment of so many tens of thousands. By being profit driven, and by the fact that natural (herbal) treatments can’t be patented, pharmaceutical companies are denying the American people a vast and very effective medical apothecary.
Big pharma spends tens of millions, if not billions, discrediting natural treatments, all because some, if not most, of their patented crap doesn’t perform as well. This might sound rather hypocritical in view of my own experience, as related in my comment to Lady Libertine above, yet I stand by it. It is only after the fact that I have been exposed to the world of natural medicine. It would have been nice to have had some of the information I have now, then. I might have my left lung still.
Warning, somewhat graphic medical babble to follow.
One of the major medicines not readily available or known about is marijuana. I would not have my bladder at this point if it were not for marijuana. Long story short, I quit smoking pot in August 05, I was tired of being a dull and forgetful person, I wanted the clarity that comes with not smoking pot. Ten months later I was diagnosed with lung cancer, was treated with conventional chemo and surgery. The oncologists said it was an old tumor that exploded in growth for “some unknown reason”. Two years later, after reading several studies about the ability of pot to suppress and kill cancer of many types, I started smoking again. I didn’t want to, but the “cosmos wanted me to”, in that a lot of my friends started offering me tokes, thinking I had started smoking again. Also after throwing the I Ching (an old and valued friend and mentor), I got the hexagram “Work on what has been spoiled” with the individual changing lines almost like a slap on my face telling me to take my medicine. That wasn’t enough advice, so my final arbiter came into play, I flipped a coin, heads yes tails no, best 2 out of 3, I had to do it 3 times, lol, because the first 2 out of 3 told me to start smoking again, and I didn’t want to smoke pot again.
I’m trying to keep this short, I typed up my medical story for a diary, and it ran way way too long. I babble way too much.
So I started smoking pot again, and with-in 2-3 weeks I felt and saw a wooden match head sized dark reddish black hunk of something as I urinated. Immediate WTF? A couple days later same thing, this time I grabbed it and it was dead flesh, which got me into the doctor’s office sooner than later and the subsequent successful treatment for bladder cancer. I sincerely do not believe I would have discovered the cancer in time to save my bladder if I had not started smoking pot again, as in my very strong opinion it was the pot killing off some of the cancer that caused the chunks of dead flesh to be expelled. Nor do I think that the lung cancer would have exploded if I had continued to smoke pot.
BTW, when I quit smoking cigarettes in January of 99, I was smoking 3 1/2 packs of Humps, Camel non filters, a day. And, interestingly, bladder cancer’s primary cause is cigarettes.
Back on topic, if big pharma were to be nationalized, and medical research relaxed back to true research, instead of natural substances being demonized, preventative medicine would take a much larger role in our lives. That, along with a sound, nutritionally healthy diet, and the costs of national health care would plummet.
Be well.
I think there is something very specific about American political culture today that really distinguishes it from other apparently democratic societies in which all human and civil rights are seen to be best determined by market forces. My family and friends in Canada are not all uniformly progressive and even the most conservative of them really scratch theirs heads about the health care situation here.
This allows people to think in terms of deserving and undeserving with respect to issues like access to health care. That eliminates it being framed as a human rights issue. And those 45,000 people conveniently died which means they were more efficiently dispatched in market terms. If you don’t exist you can’t fight the system which is exactly what insurance companies want.
Steve Jobs got a new liver( or some other important organ) in Memphis. Although there is intensive screening for all transplants to find the right match, would he have gotten it if he was poor and uninsured or homeless? Why is he more important than a homeless person: the market decided that.