Pardon my curmudgeonly attitude; I would probably feel better had I not been paying attention to the news media over the past several weeks. Last night I was watching an interview by Piers Morgan with presidential hopeful Ron Paul. They at one point were talking about health-care in this country, which as we speak, is being considered by the U.S Supreme Court, and Piers Morgan, being from England, was utterly befuddled that post industrial America unlike its European and Canadian counterparts (not to mention Cuba) lacked the political will for a comprehensive universal health-care solution, whether it be through the government, the private sector, or some combination thereof. Paul’s answer was the old tired one: It would be too expensive and we would cease being the leader in health-care in the world; we would have to settle for lower quality. First of all American health-care costs are already exponentially the most expensive in the world; and our quality of care and access to that care is falling behind at an alarming rate compared to other industrialized countries who provide universal care. With a bipartisan will for the greater good of this country this issue is solvable, but powerful stakeholders like pharmaceutical companies, insurance carriers, HMO’s and the medical providers also have to operate under the rubric of “greater good” for any progress to be made…alas, the intransigent profit motive….otherwise known as greed.
I read also yesterday morning that Mike Hubbard, speaker of the Alabama House announced that the new draconian immigration law of our state will be amended in the upcoming legislative session so that it will be more readily understood and “enforceable.” The possibility of repeal is now off the table…a bad law about to be made worse…and then how is it possible that the issue of contraception is now a topic for discussion in the media…Have we forgotten the incredible liberation and empowerment “the pill” brought to women? Do we not realize that the world without it would be dangerously overpopulated, much more so than it already is? Can’t the Roman Church’s hierarchy consider the invention of safe contraception to be a very gift from God? (which of course would be admitting they are wrong…slim odds) Is it me who’s crazy?
Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, with whom I often disagree, wrote an insightful Op/Ed piece just yesterday in which he noted that what the Middle East needs, instead of protracted warfare costing untold billions, is education (literacy), empowerment of women, access to health-care, and an equitable means to share wealth. This includes and demands, perhaps at the heart of the matter, a just peace between Israel and Palestinian Arabs. These are our issues at home for us as well; but somehow the art of statesmanship, the art of diplomatic conversation has been rendered impotent within the nihilism of post modernity….an acute stenosis of fear perhaps…..What of Roosevelt’s New Deal, a coming together of common interests for the good of the whole; Johnson’s “Great Society” a consummate bipartisan effort to provide economic stability for retiring Americans, and health-care (universal care, and this was in the sixties!) for our elderly; The voting rights act…bipartisanship at its best…Nixon’s triumph of foreign policy befriending the Chinese backed by a rallied international American conscience; Reagan’s artful diplomatic efforts and awareness during the collapse of the Soviet Union, which could have brought terror and violence, but was brokered in peace. Are we falling back into former old ways…or worse, are we falling forward into a renewed and dangerous form of militaristic self interest, the likes of which we have not seen…I fear the latter.
I shan’t go on….and I don’t really have any answer to the insidious intractability we face at home and around the world. We went to sleep here in Alabama while the immigration law sailed through. I would say that we must keep awake, let our legislators know that we are paying attention….Let corporations know that we are aware of their profit motives that thwart the good of the whole….like Caterpillar, for instance, building special machinery designed to destroy dwellings of Palestinians in the West Bank….Keep awake…pay attention…and act…those are in my opinion the three critical rudiments of prayer, not the pious folding of hands, but intentional and enlightened action….so let’s get real…pray….even if in the streets.
