You will notice that abortion is not on the list. That’s a problem for one woman at a time, and
the best way to handle it is to just leave them to it. Guns are not on the list. Addressing some of the problems that are on
the list would go a long way to eliminating the gun problem. Gay marriage?
That’s not a problem, and you know it.
The ACA, Bengazi, Obama’s birth certificate, video games, Hip-Hop . . .
no, no, no, no and no.
This is a list of REAL problems, problems that have the
power to create negative outcomes for the entire nation, if not the world. Some already have. Some are natural; some are man-made; and some
lie somewhere in between.
Which one is your favorite?
Problems:
1. The Permanent
Emergency. Franklin Delano Roosevelt declared
a state of emergency in 1940, and it has existed continuously ever since. It allowed him to gear up for the coming war,
with massive increases in military spending and the institution of a
draft. After the war, the emergency was transferred
to the Soviets; after the Soviets it was transferred to “Terrorism.” There was a small interregnum between the
Soviets and Terrorism, but the state of emergency persisted. This is why we still have ridiculously high
levels of military spending and a national security state;
2. The Shadow Executive.
The executive branch of the government includes the Federal
agencies. By now it effectively includes
the military as well. It includes all of
the national security agencies, like the CIA, the NSA and others, no doubt,
that we are still unaware of. That’s a
huge amount of manpower, on a career basis, completely unelected. Does anyone think that it matters anymore who
is the president? Can you imagine two
more different people than George Bush the Lesser and Barack Obama? Any new president, on his first day,
discovers his situation when it is explained to him by this unelected
bureaucracy;
3. Militarized Police
Forces. The police forces of any large
urban center are unrecognizable from the quaint police of my childhood. They come now in large groups, in armored
vehicles, wearing helmets and vests and
carrying assault rifles. There are a lot
more shootings and ass kickings by police too.
Lots of stop and frisk, and lots of invading the wrong premises, and
very little “excuse me.” I recall
mocking other countries because their people had to fear their own police. That’s the boat that we now find ourselves
in;
4. The Privatized
Military. Private contractors building
bases, cooking and cleaning, and fueling planes and vehicles. Private detective agencies are providing
security. This increases costs and
transfers tax money to corporations, it also dulls the chances for oversight;
5. Corporate
Prisons. This is such a terrible idea
that I’d like to meet some of the politicians who support the idea. These corporations charge by the head, and
they demand quotas that are written into the contracts with the states, and
they insist on very high levels of occupancy.
If the prison population falls below the prescribed levels, penalties
must be paid by the state. I keep waiting for this scandal to blow up in
someone’s face, but I remain disappointed;
6. Health
Insecurity. Americans live with such
enormous health insecurity that it amazes me every year that goes by without a
revolution. America is almost alone
among the developed countries of the world in not having a single-payer
system. No, we prefer an adversarial
relationship with predatory health insurance providers and various other
medical entities. Most Americans are one
medical catastrophe away from financial ruin and/or actual death. In
return we spend, as a nation, about twice as much in terms of GDP as the other,
more sensible developed countries. For
this we get no increase in the quality of care.
Even if you have good insurance, the co-pays will kill you. It’s the worst health care in the world. And don’t go off about the “takers”
either. Sure, someone with no money and
no assets can get free treatment in a hospital, but it’s no alternative. They are merely stabilized and sent
home. This problem really galls me;
7. The Death Of The
Oceans. The oceans are warming up, they
are being over-fished LAMF, and the waters are acidifying. The only ones who like the state of the
oceans of the world are the jellyfish.
They are thriving to a degree that is shocking, colonizing new areas by
hitch-hiking around the world in the ballast water of commercial ships. We’ll need to start writing jelly-fish cook
books pretty soon;
8. Global Climate
Change. A separate problem from number
7. Whether you believe that Global
Climate Change is man-made, or whether you believe that it’s cyclical and
normal, or whether you deny that it is happening at all, it is a very real
phenomenon. It is observable and
measureable, and the negative effects are already being seen. It’s going to be a real party in forty or
fifty years, if not sooner;
9. Compound
Interest. Not often thought of as a
problem, I admit. I appreciate the
benefits of it myself, at least when the banks are offering interest that is
not just a joke. Now, though, we have a
situation where virtually all of the money is being sucked up to the top of the
benefit chain. Don’t the Walmart heirs
alone have twenty something percent of all of the money these days? As the rich get richer, and compound interest
works its magic, money will have to be printed at a frightening rate to keep
some of it available for wages for the rest of us. What happens then? Prices go up?
You’ll have to be a Walmart heir to afford food;
10. Politicians
Selling Their Asses Ridiculously Cheaply.
I almost understand politicians benefiting financially from their
positions. Within reason I could
tolerate it pretty well. I find it
annoying, though, that instead of selling off a little bit of benefit for good
money, we elect guys that are such piss poor negotiators that they sell off the
whole game for a pittance. They
cheerfully give away billions of dollars of benefit for a few measly hundreds
of millions of dollars. Then they preen
around like hot shots while they are begging for rides on private jets that
most of them can’t afford for themselves.
Pathetic;
11. The Death Of Privacy. Oh, I know, just the idea of “privacy” is so
quaint by now. How can it be a problem
when it doesn’t even exist anymore?
12. The Death Of
Compromise. Democracy cannot exist
without compromise. We are now
discovering the truth of that statement.
Nobody’s interested in finding the middle ground these days. Remember arguing with the Soviets? They started out with a list of demands and
if you asked them to forego the dot over one “I” they would scream like you
were killing them and claim that they could not possibly abandon their
principles to accommodate you. This
lesson was learned by the Republican party, to our detriment;
13. High
Productivity/Low Wages. In the last
thirty years, human productivity has gone through the roof, it has exploded to
levels that would have been science fiction back in the 1960’s. What have workers gotten from all of this productivity? Lower wages in real terms. Unions destroyed, benefits eroded, and all of
the old covenants between labor and management abrogated by the corporations. The productivity itself has led to higher
systemic levels of unemployment, which also serves to lower wages. All of the money generated by the high
productivity has accrued to the benefit of the investment class;
14. Income
Inequality. Think of the Willard Romney
family and Honey Boo Boo’s family. Get
the picture?
15. Our Unbalanced
And Regressive Tax Structure. Over the last
thirty or forty years the tax structure has been altered to lower rates on
income derived from capital gains while raising them on wages.
So Warren Buffet’s secretary pays a rather higher percentage rate on her
income than he does on his. Add in the
more recent infatuation with sales taxes and fees for everything imaginable and
you get a tax system that oppresses the lower income ranges while giving the
upper ranges a virtual pass;
16. The Threat To
Public Education. I never went to public
schools myself, but my children did. I
believe that managed correctly they are the great levelers that can be so
important to a democracy. In a simpler
age they functioned to homogenize the diversity of America, rendering all
students “Americans” with a common experience.
They could serve this purpose again.
And they already provide as good an education as private schools or
so-called charter schools. I believe
that private schools should be subject to a luxury tax, and that charter
schools should be done away with all together.
Charter schools have not demonstrated any superior ability to educated
students, and they just suck up public money and hand it to corporations who do
nothing to earn it;
17. Religion. I mean religion in general, all religions, all
around the world. Religion needs to sit
the fuck down and shut the fuck up;
18. The Democratic
Party;
19. The Republican
Party;
20. The Illusion Of
Being Well Informed. Thanks to the
Internet, everyone thinks that they are a genius these days. This is a problem. Everyone feels like they are just so well
informed, because, after all, they watch TV news, listen to talk-radio, and
read news accumulation sites on the Internet.
This state of high-quality
intellectual readiness gives everybody an apparent license to have an opinion,
which will be promptly Tweeted or otherwise distributed. To this new genius class I say, paraphrasing
Oliver Cromwell, “I beseech you in the bowels of Christ, please consider that
you may be wrong.”
Well, my fingers are tired.
That should be enough reading for now anyway. Maybe you could transfer it to your
Kindle! That would be modern!
For anyone who makes the heroic effort required to read this
whole thing, please accept my sincerest thanks.
4 comments:
An excellent list. I really don't have much else to say, but you covered a lot of bases here.
Another triumph to cross off my bucket list: a comment from Green Eagle. Thanks man, really.
Man, did you just depress me . . .
*J
It's like Keith used to say when he worked up at UCLA with the dying babies and I asked him, so, isn't it kind of sad when they die? He told me that whether he was there or not, they were dead, and while they were alive he could help them, and they needed it. Same here, knowing doesn't make the problems worse.
Or, maybe I should just say: sorry, Jorge.
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