The banality of evil transcends the healthcare model, as we have seen since Reagan’s “welfare queen.” But I salute your conclusion that we must awaken empathy with powerful, emotional narratives that people can understand viscerally.

Thanks for your illuminating post.

This level of complicity is what colors the blood that runs in the veins of America. We have lost our moral compass,

It’s not just health care, It is things like “military service” which is seen as completely unquestioning of the mission and puts “service” to country above any moral commitment to humanity.

So much of america’s moral failing can be traced to the insidious incestuous relationship between capitalism and democracy.

Democracy lives on a high moral plane of rights and ethics.

Capitalism lives on a plane where profits rule and morals and ethics are impediments to the system.

We do need to tell our stories.

In every industrialized nation, the movement to reform health care has begun with stories about cruelty. The Canadians had stories like the 1946 Toronto Globe and Mail report of a woman in labor who was refused help by three successive physicians, apparently because of her inability to pay.

link

SanderO,
I don’t know that I would agree that it has much to do with capitalism or any ism at all, except maybe tribalism. I’m not sure that’s the right word.
When I moved to Ohio I asked someone what they thought about the Kent State killings.
“They deserved it,” she said matter-of-factly. “They should have known better.”

Glenn, what a profoundly wonderful clarity you are bringing to what is (too often) perceived as an implacable, complex and complicated issue.

And it all comes down to the banality of fearful small-mindedness.

Well done.

DW

Isn’t this one way to describe the American health care system and the resistance to reform? Don’t we keep many locked inside the burning building of a system that denies health care to millions? Don’t we coldly guarantee their ill health and death, because reform threatens some sort of ideological disorder?

Uhhh… That would be a yes, yes, and yes.

I just love these talking heads and politicians who coldly dismiss the fact that almost 50 million people don’t have access to health care in this country.

They do, of course, so sucks to be you.

Yes, it certainly is not limited to the health care model. That’s just an instance. Thanks so much for kind words.

Apologies Glenn, slightly O.T., but I made the most awfull mess downstairs which may spill over here. So I shall depart rather abruptly after….

Dear sweet adorable SanderO[number 2]

This level of complicity is what colors the blood that runs in the veins of America. We have lost our moral compass,

This is NOT a multiple choice test. (student must speak to all subject matter in order to receive full credit, thence only at professor’s discretion)

1. How DARE you!

2. Speak for yourself. PERIOD!

Signed, Compassionate Heathen

Schmitz clearly has a capacity for empathy. We see this in her reaction to great stories, by Chekov, Twain, and others. But that capacity was deadened by the Nazi state.

Maybe the Nazi’s forced her mind to compartmentalize this is fascinating the nature vs nurture argument I’m thinking both may be true.
But this helps the nurture side and suggests that even adults can change.
A person born with this condition I suspect would not be interested in the Great Novels.

Supervisor to Emergency Nurse: Does he have insurance?
“No.”
“Is he employed?”
“No.”

Note in Chart: “Presented w/chest pain. Pt. asked for no further care.”

Wow, thanks. Others in the thread are making the crucial point that this moral danger goes far beyond the health care debate, and, of course, they’re right.

In American culture, it’s also complicated understanding of the individual and society. For instance, Emerson is taken as a champion of the “individual,” but I think it is fairer to say he challenged the temptation to adopt cultural rules or beliefs as “truths” that alleviate natural human anxiety.

I know “The Reader” is set in Germany, but America has proven to be a great “laboratory” for this all-too-human trap. The look on the character Michael’s face could serve as a symbol of the American dilemma. His deep confusion is ours as well.

Glenn, thank you for this thoughful post and the powerful concept you share with us.

That is the failure of their imagination. And it is similar to Hannah’s failure.

Your post raises interesting points.
I wonder how beleiving that blocking health care reform is evil and living in a republic where reform is blocked leaves you.
Do you make the best of it or should you abandon hope for democracy?

I think SanderO is describing the reason why the Abu Graid guards did what they did they thought they were told to do what they did by people they were trained to obey.
I think the Army the CIA, Rummy did tell them such things and let them take the fall.
The other choice is that they randomly chose to act that way might still be possible but I doubt it.

but isn’t this precisely the problem with nearly all rethug policies these days? That their commitment to ideology — the religion that their god and “American values” demands mimimalist government, next-to-no taxes, an eschewing of compassion as a public value, and a commitment to a type of moral, ecclesiastical, cultural and probably ethnic absolutism –compels them to act against the interests of their country? It’s not just healthcare, it’s their entire party. The Taliban indeed.

This also applies to the current ignorance surrounding right wing support of torture. Letting people die from lack of health care is a passive evil. Cutting a man’s genitals and keeping him locked in sewage definitely can’t be described as passive. Of course both of those things are horribly sadistic, and quite contrary to the doctrines of the Christian religion which the Republican party has used as leverage for so long.

And it’s looking a lot like there won’t be any way to fund health care reform. I work full time. I pay my taxes. I pay my bills. I don’t have health insurance, but I do have a terminal disease. Would it surprise anyone that I can’t even afford the medicine I need, much less doctor’s visits? I didn’t think it would.

I’ve had a good life. I just hope it will be better for my son. I wouldn’t want anyone’s children to suffer like the GOP has made poor people suffer.

Indeed, this moral danger, is ubiquitous.

The question is; will it be the final ‘definition’ of our society?

Society being simply the way individual people treat (or behave) toward other individuals.

A society without a genuine ’social contract’ and the understanding of what such a contract means, cannot, long, remain intact or viable.

During World War II, an ordinary battalion of German soldiers “cleansed” Poland as part of the Final Solution. How could the average, ordinary man, one who wasn’t an ardent Nazis, be capable of such horrors?

The conclusion Christopher R. Browning reaches in his book, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, is disturbing on more than one level. His closing sentence is chilling: “If the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 could become killers under such circumstances, what group of men cannot?”

http://german-history.suite101…..dinary_men

Wow. Just wow, Glenn.

Not sure I have the wherewithal right now to see this film, but I deeply appreciate your overview, analysis and dot-connecting.

Awareness of moral implications seem so often to come long after the fact. Too long. The Holocaust. Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The primitive and cruel treatment of the mentally ill. Iraq. Abu Ghraib.

We seem rooted in a society steeped in the now-cliche’d, “It is easier to ask for forgiveness than for permission.” Cheap forgiveness, sometimes.

“I’m sorry” is not enough. How to interject forward-looking focus on moral implications. There are no do-overs for dead or nearly dead.

So where is that moral compass that we’ve lost? Just asking.

Doc, based on your comments on many other posts here, I am really flattered that this little post found favor with someone who thinks deeply and compassionately about these matters. Thanks so much.

(((lesserdevil)))

Thanks for a calm, rational reply. I have a hard time with some who would paint with such a broad brush. Even worse is on previous thread.
I’m going to go calm down myself and avoid the situation past this point. I’m appreciate your checking his long list on previous, some time, to see what you think. No need to reply. Thanks. – A.

nothing illustrates this mentality better than therecent fiasco in Saudi Arabia where the religious police pushing school girls back into their burning school because they didn’t have time to properly cover themselves while attempting to escape the collapsing building. The children died, but orthodoxy was conserved. This is your society on rethug values.

I am not sure whether America has been the laboratory or that place where the techniques reach for fruition. Over and over we keep seeing the awful consequences of group think and the damnation of those who dare to oppose. As a society we need to evolve to a point where contrary viewpoints are welcomed and eschewed.

Hmm, I see my parenthesis did not include ‘toward’ (oops).

Because this mindset is about the self they only care about their very narrow selfish interests and not the commons. So they want no interference in their lives and want no contribution to the commons are have to be burdened by the commons. Republican philosophy is the expression of greed and a political party and philosophy.

previous at 53

so called rethug values are a contradiction ,say one thing do the other

That’s a huge question. When one’s society is engaged in immorality, does one abandon, or remain implicated in the immorality by failing to change it? Or does the effort to promote change, however difficult, lift one above the guilt? You know, the life of Martin Luther King Jr. may be the most illuminating. He struggled mightily with it during the dark and dangerous early years of the civil rights movement. I think he’s shown us the way.

I’ve heard people say “let them pay for their own health care like I pay for mine.”
What if we let everyone pay for their own military? If we pay for our mercenaries, the neighbor can pay for his, right?
But we understand the threat there, we can see it, so we fund a national military.
Disease is an unseen threat for the most part.

Really important point.

But this helps the nurture side and suggests that even adults can change.

You are exactly right. And people will change, their brains will change, their thinking will change, their hearts will change, and their behavior will change, when that nurturant mode, is, well, nurtured. That is our challenge.

Disease is an unseen threat for the most part.

And sometimes a threat to the whole population at large, if not treated in the first few carriers of a pathogen.

it’s ok to have a socialized military, police, firemen etc.
socialized medicine forget about it

Thank you Glenn.

My god. I was not familiar with that tragedy. It is a desperately sad illustration.

speaking of healthcare debacles…the compromise on the jobs bill cut the provisions that would have benefited long-term unemployed with regard to health care.
They were cost free on COBRA. Cut were these: if you were 55 and older or on the job for 10+ years, you could buy into COBRA until Medicare.

Separately, the bill did nothing for the long-term unemployed. No further extension of unemployment for people who run out after 52 weeks and COBRA subsidy only for those out of work since september 2009.

People who lost jobs early in the recession get double screwed.

Previous thread 53 SanderO a rant I mostly agree with I’m not seeing whats wrong in this thread SanderO is throwing out a theory as to a reason why.
Feel free to disagree with the facts presented and/or put up an alternate theory.
But I don’t see what was so objectionable about what was said.

Disease is an unseen threat for the most part.

And if the highly educated/informed prognosticators are correct, there is almost certainly a pandemic looming. We’ve only seen the tip of the triage iceberg.

Any Biological or Psychological studies on this?

Yes, and even in the 19th Century Tocqueville (and others) worried that America might devolve into the mad pursuit of millions of completely private interests. And capitalists were quite aware of the possibility. They have, it seems obvious to say, exploited it very well.

Please explain further a plague is to National Healthcare as an another 9/11 is to the GOP its a gamechanger that could give us political victory.
Only unlike the GOP we don’t have to worry about Blackwater getting caught.

Which is precisely why articulate, graspable, and desirable progressive visions need to be widely shared with those whose visions of the present AND the future are filled (often deliberately) with fearful, destructive, and desperately limited imagery …

We have not arrived at the place where we find ourselves by mere accident.

This is an interesting point and a suggestion I have made in the past.

When you file you tax return you get to decide how say… 50% of your tax dollars are allocated. So if you are into the arts you can have your 50% of your taxes spent on the arts.

What would happen is that the congress only gets control of 50% of the budget and the people get to control half the country’s spending and there would be little for the MIC and lots for health care, education and SS and so forth.

at heart, rethugs are communalists and tribalists. Their utopia is a bunch of likeminded, self-righteous, homogenous, intolerant toughs barricaded from the hostile (diverse) outside world in a medeival castle, behind a moat filled with gators. The world outside can die as far as they’re concerned. They apply this model at all scales – a country, a neighborhood, even their owned walled-compounds in Palm Beach.

Lakoff, of course. Your point is his point. Also, Marco Iacoboni’s book, “Mirroring People: The New Science of How We Connect With Others,” is smart and compelling. He discusses the social implications of reawakening empathy. Mark Johnson’s work, “The Meaning of the Body,” gets to a similar place.

You know, there’s an entire American tradition that heads this direction. William James and John Dewey, as well as others, tell us this. Judith M. Green, in her book, “Pragmatism and Social Hope: Deepening Democracy in Global Contexts,” explores this.

Thanks for taking notice of the improvements that could have been included, but sadly were not.

It would indeed be a game-changer, but at what price? 9/11 was a game-changer. Does that help in any way mitigate against those painful losses? How long do we have to sacrifice human lives, and in what numbers, to precipitate change? Where is the pro-active strategy, the up-front moral compass, that says, “This is wrong!” and, among other things, prepares for plague. Are you willing to die to make this point? Am I? What’s called for here is systemic change, which takes lots of time, and the clock is ticking loudly right now.

But the media controls the message and not only that SHAPES and writes the message.

Capitalists long ago in the name of Edward Bernays understood how to manufacture consent through advertising and “public relations” and this began in the first part of the 20th century,

Now we have a population which is largely uneducated politically, doesn’t understand economics or even their own rights, is confused about what patriotism is and is completely invested in the self and consumerism. We have become a nation of idiots who think we are the cat’s meow (American exceptionalism).

Even if the media were given to the truth sayers tomorrow, the truths would not be believed. The nation is mind numbed and brainwashed … well at least 40% I would guess and certainly the solid 28% who supported W to the end. You’re talking 100,000,000 dysfunctional people in this country.

No, we are not here by accident. We’ve been driven here by a long and brutal campaign of psychological violence and selfish exploitation by those whose only desire is to stand atop the heap, even as their efforts condemn the heap and they find themselves in charge of a boneyard.

Hmmm. Just read what I said. I guess we’re screwed.

A study of does viewing Fox News reduce ones empathy for others would be interesting. It might not be ruled an ethical study but the reasons for a denial would certainly make news.

Agreed we should act before we are forced too.

FOX is there telling authoritarian stories in a populist mode. It works with some, but not all, and it’s really interesting that there are many who cannot tolerate it, not necessarily for political reasons, but because it creates conflict inside them. Nonetheless, it’s a powerful authoritarian forum. I haven’t seen such a study, but it would be interesting.

There was an excellent presentation on Link TV which featured Joe Conason, Namoi Klien, Naomi Wolf and Chris Hedges. See it.

Ian is upstairs….

The power elite use the masses for their power but despise them. The pander to religion but are not church goers or religious people. They are cynical hypocrites who manipulate and manage the consent by misinformation and appeal to primitive urgings like protection of the self and family and the goodness of god. YUCK.

Link.

I agree with your overall assessment, Sander (as I’m certain you know).

Which suggests, to me at least, that the remaining 60% of us need to insist that reason, compassion and humanity require that we, as a society, deliberately and intentionally do things ‘differently’.

One way would be to change the paradigm of always asking ‘what’ might a more reasonable, compassionate and humane world might ‘look’ like into the question of ‘what’ it would ‘feel’ like.

That is the visceral point where almost anyone, capable of thought and even minimal ‘reflection’ might, possibly, be reached.

If ‘we can’t reach ‘them’, then we shall have to go ahead and do what is needful, anyway. (As we must, in any case.)

Our greatest obstacle to give serious rise to ‘doubt’, is the obstacle of our own doubt.

Which is rather akin to FDR’s point about fear, don’t you suspect?

“Why, she’s asked, didn’t you let them out? Her answer, a terrifying one, is that she couldn’t. The prisoners might escape. “There would be chaos,” she said.”

Let’s look at the flip side of this statement, the side we ironically are facing at this moment of our history. War criminals like bush, cheney, rumsfeld, et al will likely never face legal action in this country, nor serve time for their atrocities. The rationale? Why, we are asked, don’t you lock them up? Our answer, a terrifying one, is that we can’t. “There would be chaos,” we say.

Hmm, looks like there might be one too many might(s) in the third sentence.

Does anyone else miss the ‘edit’ function?

;~P

You get the big BINGO!, for the thread, Annie.

DW

It’s the very argument used to appoint Bush president back in 2000. Democracy was made secondary to the need for order. Your point is very, very well taken. Thanks.

If we locked them all in the same place, that place would surely come to ruin.

Ah, the ‘precedent’ that wasn’t.

‘Twas merely, it would seem,(America’s signal) banality (business) as usual.

Glenn, I’m thinking you’ve fairly earned a number of gold stars for this post.

DW

DWBartoo, thanks, thanks, thanks.

It’s possible to get candidates for 2010 to promise to support progressive healthcare reform in their first 100 days; so it’s possible to influence the incumbents now to support progressive reform. They feel the blog wrath and they fear it. Plus Mister President has recognized blogs as officially as possible.

If there is anyone or anything that is banal in the U.S. it is the Republican Party and their braindead minions.

TomThumb wrote:

Supervisor to Emergency Nurse: Does he have insurance?
“No.”
“Is he employed?”
“No.”

Note in Chart: “Presented w/chest pain. Pt. asked for no further care.”

1. That is against the law.
2. It doesn’t happen that way in real life.
3. I suspect you have no clue what you are talking about and just making this up based on your perverse view of the world.

It’s so ironic that “Equal Protection” was used to install a President, yet, somehow, it is not extended to something like health care.

We all deserve equal protection under the law. This translates to equal access to health care, whether it be that insurers are forced to insure the “uninsureable” at the same rates as others, or that we have a universal system.

Anything else is not Equal Protection Under the Law.

Health care has been sold as a value. It is provided for profit and is capitalism in action, despite the millions of uninsured. The uninsured have the opportunity to live the American dream, and buy their own insurance if they succeed. The disparity is unfortunate, but to embrace European style universality would be un-American, anti-capitalistic, and although likely something Jesus would have endorsed, no patriotic rich Christian could possibly accept such a solution.