Military Misspending

We too often hear about military misspending, cost overruns, lobbying for weapons programs and a host of other malfeasances at a horrendous cost to all of us. This isn't strictly a Pentagon/Department of Defense problem, but a problem of who is in charge of military spending. That responsibility belongs to our Congress, but Congress belongs to big business that lobbies our representatives to spend for their products and services. It's the power of the private sector that is the greatest problem in overspending. The weapons manufacturers are all private, profit-making corporations. They have a vested interest in selling weapons, and the best market for selling weapons is in wars. The weapon-makers are warmongers. They're in bed with the military. Why should we allow this? Fortunately, there's a simple solution for military spending: mandate that the military manufacture all weapons of mass destruction at cost. Forbid private manufacture of weapons of mass destruction. Hunting and other personal defense firearms manufacturers would be allowed to operate. If the military needs workers beyond their own personnel to manufacture weapons they can hire civilians at market rates.

The military is a public function that belongs to all of us. It should not be held in thrall to private interests; that is a violation of the public interest and common good.

PRESIDENT OBAMA'S PROBLEM

President Obama does have a problem. He's a mainstream, centrist liberal, not a progressive. That means he's about 50 years out of date. I think he's an essentially a good man; he's smart, a constitutional scholar, his heart is in the right place, but his thinking isn't. He is also tied to neoliberal principles, those vestiges of cold war thinking that are not so much different from neoconservatism. That ideology makes us a dominant and interfering power in the politics of other nations and earns us their disrespect. These are major reasons why Obama is having such a hard time solving our current problems.

The old liberalism should be dead. No ideology can last in the face of unpredictable social changes. The Republicans took advantage of liberalism's decline, but with little evolution of conservative policies, only repackaged. These ideas have run aground. But liberalism didn't die; it has evolved into a progressive ideology that is a major critique of the old liberalism, yet preserves its spirit. Many Americans seem to understand this, but the Democrats in charge don't understand this. They are too tied to the status quo and the support of large corporate and other special interests.

It's hard for him and the Democrats to fight against the Republican ideologies: rampant, unregulated capitalism, a gambling economy based in the stock market, privatization of social concerns. The supposed wisdom of markets, capitalism and profit must be questioned. Corporate and other institutional political powers should be curtailed and placed under the will of the people to serve us, otherwise they are rogue institutions acting in self-interest for the benefit of a few to undermine the well-being of the nation. This may be the only way to restore the responsibility of government.

For many decades it appears that our presidents have been puppets of the controlling corporate and government institutional powers. They can't be fully independent. Obama isn't an exception. His power relies on their agendas, not the agendas of the people. A president must act only on the support of the people.

I'm not sure how to restore the independence of the presidency or whether we should allow an executive independence from the wishes of the people. Shouldn't he be dependent on the wishes of all the people and encourage us to deliberate issues and devise a better national agenda so that he might help us to achieve it? Shouldn't the president represent the will of the people and be the spokesman to implement it?

Obama wants to be be the representative of all the people, but it is impossible to achieve total agreement among Americans. We operate by majoritarian democracy. G. W. Bush tried to be a ruler and failed. But Obama needs to reach out to us as a leader and be more persuasive for the causes that would make our nation a better place for everyone. He should also be willing to offer critiques of policies that haven't worked and can't work. He must be able to promote a comprehensive ideology for major social change toward greater fairness and political equality. He still hasn't presented us with a coherent set of reasons to make broad social changes, so his opposition can too easily pick away at him. Sadly, he isn't a visionary who can inspire us.

Progressives must find better ways to influence president Obama and push him toward these more humane and equitable principles. I think he might be amenable to changing his mind when he sees the reasoning underlying what the people need, but he will need a large, committed support base. It would be easier to influence this one single man than the many representatives in Congress, with their intertwining connections to special interest powers. Then, if progressives had his pulpit it would be easier for us to influence the Congress on a state by state basis.

To Your Health

The primary reason that our healthcare system is broken is that it is a for profit system. The incentives to make money from suffering are intense, but immoral. We are captives of that system because we need it and must value it highly, however those who control the system have control over our lives. That is a grave mistake. Medicine need not be a for profit endeavor. It was originally conceived as a spiritual healing art for the benefit of everyone, for the well-being of society. The Hippocratic Oath that all doctors swear upon states, “First, do no harm.” Medical personnel have pursued often many years of expensive education and training, so they deserve to be remunerated at a rate commensurate with that time spent and skills learned. But those who invest in medicine as a business model just to make profit push the prices higher and cause other unintended consequences that further increase medical costs. Medical insurance is a gambling ripoff. Drug companies have incentives only to produce drugs that are profitable, not what are needed to solve broad social ills, and their profits are often unreasonably high; drug prices are horribly inflated. For profit healthcare is overvalued.

Most medical personnel go into their profession to be of service and expect to be remunerated at a worthwhile rate for their valuable service. Only a small number of medical personnel are in the business just to make money. A public healthcare system would weed out these people and encourage them to pursue less crucial, but more lucrative professions. I do not suggest that all medical personnel should be employed by government; they could still be independent, privately employed individuals.

Some institutions in societies should never be private nor allowed to make profit because they promote a healthy society; they are required for everyone, equally, regardless of social status, income, political beliefs and associations and all other distinctions that make us individuals. The many activities and agencies of government fit this distinction; nonprofit services needed by most of the people and paid for by taxes.

A society needs a basic healthcare system for society to be healthy. In the case of epidemics and pandemics, relying only on a private healthcare system could mean massive spread of disease and social dysfunction, economic collapse, famine, etc. Health shouldn't be a special interest issue.

That a public healthcare option is “off the table” in Congress is only because the private, for profit business institutions fear losing billions of dollars and their political power. They have inordinate power to unfairly lobby Congress against the wishes of the people. They don't care about the health of society or for poor, sick individuals. Immediate monetary gain is the bottom line, not health, although this thinking could eventually lead to their demise along with millions of other innocents dependent on these failed policies.

Only a single-payer system, one large group policy that covers all citizens from birth to the grave, could be cost-effective and humane. When profit incentives are removed many costs are naturally reduced all across the board. And when “We, the People” are encouraged to cooperate with and care for each other all our individual lives will be improved. Our well-being is dependent on everyone else, and that is a very powerful position.

Rationing is the scary buzzword that opponents of fair healthcare throw around to derail public healthcare. Any healthcare system rations available care: Triage based on the severity of injury on the battlefield or in disasters and epidemics. Ours rations it severely according to income and/or employment, which buys insurance. Certainly, very expensive interventions for an elderly or very sick patient that might not extend life or even potentially kill a fragile patient should be evaluated for rationing. We shouldn't waste medical resources. These evaluations take place all the time even in the current, broken system.

The current healthcare system is based on fixing broken bodies, not prevention and maintaining health. Costs are inflated by this out-of-control approach. In our economy, the more sick there are, the more money is made by a few people, but at a high cost to the nation. A preventive healthcare maintenance model that can identify potential problems before they happen is far more cost effective. Nor should a public healthcare system pay for vanity surgeries or unnecessary procedures just because an individual wants them. There should still be private medical services available to those who can pay for them.

Revaluing healthcare costs is what we need now. Obviously, our lives and health are priceless. What is it worth to us in monetary terms? Do we overvalue doctors and other medical personnel? In many developed countries doctors and other medical professionals are paid reasonably high salaries or wages, but not as high as in America. Doctors love these high salaries and the social status they create, but they should remember that medicine is a service and a responsibility to the community.

A Nation of Psychopaths

Are we becoming a nation of psychopaths? A psychopath has no feelings for others or understanding of others feelings, a serious emotional dysfunction. Because they are often very calculating and manipulative, they can appear to have feelings for others, but they can kill without remorse. It appears that this pathology is growing in our population. We can see how this plays out in social and political discourse.

Recently, the Republicans have begun to attack empathy; why? It's too crazy to believe that this criticism could be acceptable to anyone. Is it because they have none and are afraid of it? It seems to me that many of the most crackpot right wingnuts fear empathy because deep down beneath their almost nonexistent rational minds they realize if they had any they wouldn't be able to believe their ideology. They say that empathy is personal, emotional and irrational so it has no place in politics and social policy. Yet this belief has a strong dysfunctional emotional attachment. This thought may be one of the most irrational beliefs ever. It is how the Nazi holocaust and all other genocidal politics operates. However, emotions aren't irrational. We have them as a sensory protection, to understand others and to determine what we want. We couldn't survive without them or have functioning families and society. They are what make us human. Certainly, emotions can be driven by irrational urges and programmed by dysfunctional experiences, but that doesn't mean that emotional response is in itself is irrational, only that bad input will produce bad output. And this is what has become of Republican politics – bad input and even worse output. Ours is a very sick country.

Empathy causes us to feel what another human is feeling, a valuable sense to promote understanding among us. When empathy dies only cold psychopathology remains. Anything may be done to serve selfish ends without remorse and responsibility. Individuals become egotistic islands unto themselves, unable to act together for the common good. We see this in the so-called conservative beliefs that wish to drastically reduce the power of government and privatize all social institutions. Nothing is left of a “We, the People”, a common society to which we all belong that supports all human endeavor. It is the beginning of the “War of all against all.”, the death of society. In reality, it is the old justification of authoritarian social status, elites and tyranny of the few “superior” beings who wish to live as they wish off the exploitation and enslavement of the masses.

Republicans are facing the end of their beliefs, beliefs that never could function as a guide to a civil society. It is a fundamental and fundamentalist wrong. If they lose that they lose their identities as human beings as they have known it. This can only be interpreted as a death, not only of the individual, but of society, humanity and all concepts of the right and good. It is the apocalypse, but without salvation.

The right strongly fears their loss of power, both financial and political. They have only been capable of creating a political ideology that is bereft of empathy, therefore inhumane. The instigation of their philosophy at this time is only to exacerbate the growing environmental problems that would most likely lead to the death of human civilization. They appear to know that to save the human race they must lose, but they are unwilling to do that, being primarily concerned with short-term profitable results, black and white fundamentalist thinking or in denial of the harsh realities we face.

This condition is stark raving madness, insanity, spiritual disease. Are we sane enough to stop it? It will take a vast rethinking of the psychological elements of politics and society and realizing that societies can be sick, and if so, can also be healed.