Still Angry

Hello readers, if any --

Haven't cooled off much in the past five days. A nasty ear infection hasn't exactly bettered my mood, and the collective wimpiness of our President and the Democrats is enough to remind me viscerally why I quit the Democratic Party so long ago! If this health care mess turns out to be more window-dressing behind pretty words, I will be more than tempted to barf on the steps of the Capitol, and I certainly will never again be suckered into working for any Democratic Presidential candidate. My finite resources and energy will be put into changing our utterly corrupt political system, instead.

As an object contrast, let me mention that my partner's father in Germany had to go into the hospital very unexpectedly three days ago. If you're not familiar with his situation, he's been on dialysis for 18 of the last 20 years (for two years, he had a transplanted kidney, but then the same virus that destroyed his own kidneys destroyed that one as well). Now, at 78, he is very frail, with osteoporosis as a result of the dialysis (he has broken both hips), but still able to walk and sometimes drive his car.

He suddenly developed a very high fever. Here's the German health system at work. His primary doctor, who lives nearby, came immediately when he was called on the phone and had the patient sent to the emergency room. Within a very short time they were in surgery. It turned out my father-in-law's appendix burst and had infected part of his intestines! He's going to stay in the hospital for quite a few days because his team of doctors know that his wife has a serious heart condition and cannot care for him when he needs lifting, etc.

My father-in-law paid into the German health care system all through his working life and now, as a retiree, continues to pay what we Americans would consider relatively high taxes. But in return, he and his wife and children don't have to worry about going bankrupt or losing the family home due to the costs of 18 years of dialysis and multiple surgeries for broken hips, carpal tunnel, cataracts, appendicitis, and more. Oh, I forgot his wife' s multiple stents and her scheduled open-heart surgery. And the large amount of prescription medication they have to take. Their four children were also able to attend excellent universities (one M.B.A., one medical doctor, one insurance broker, one professor) without having to pay any tuition (only living costs) in Germany. Their tax dollars have really worked for them. Their kids are all self-supporting, and they themselves, though not terribly well-off, are doing O.K. financially.

Contrast the peace of mind with which my in-laws can face surgery with the fear and worry of most Americans, who don't just have to deal with their apprehension about the procedure they're about to undergo, but also have to be terrified of the bills they'll have to pay! I absolutely cannot understand how anyone can think the U.S. system is anything but terminally dysfunctional. The worst thing, to me, is the knee-jerk, know-nothing, spiteful attitude of some who are out there ranting against health care reform: "I have to pay for my plan so nobody should get anything for free!"

Get this straight, people -- you are paying A LOT MORE for the uninsured now than you would under a well-implemented public option. Medicare works -- or it would if the Congress would stop looting its trust fund to pay for their pork -- and so would expanded Medicare, i.e. a single-payer plan. That's all "single-payer" is: Medicare for more people.

Here's the situation: we as a nation are not going to refuse people emergency care in order to cut costs -- we may not give them enough care, or the care they actually need, but they will get SOME kind of care. So all of us who pay taxes are paying local, state and federal taxes to support emergency services. If folks don't have health insurance because they can't afford it, they don't go to the doctor or a hospital until they have no choice, for fear of the expense. And it's much more expensive to have to intervene when someone is acutely ill than it is to give people regular preventive care, like annual check-ups or nutritional advice.

Now, I'm the first to agree that "health care reform" without a public option that cuts out the middle-man costs (the insurance industry's profit -- ugh, for-profit basic health care is SO grotesque and patently immoral) and provides real competition for the "health care industry," "reform" without a guarantee of regular preventive care, and "reform" without requiring some minimal level of cooperation and responsibility on the part of individuals, doesn't make sense. Of course, we can't expect the poor to avoid obesity when across the board, non-nutritious crud costs far less than really GOOD food, and really good food requires more shopping and preparation time as well as more bucks. But if we don't steer in that direction, our country will continue to be saddled with the staggering costs of avoidable chronic illness: some types of diabetes and heart disease leap to mind.

This is probably the last time in my useful lifetime that the United States of America has the chance to become a member of the community of truly civilized nations. If it's done right, it will actually save us all money, and it will remove a huge burden of fear. It will free small business owners from having to face a terrible choice, going out of business or cutting health insurance for loyal long-term employees. It will let the terminally ill concentrate on making the most of the time they have left, without having to dread the financial burden they will bequeathe to their families. It will liberate the many "health care serfs" who are now forced to go on working at jobs they hate, often under totally exploitative conditions, because if they quit, they will lose the health insurance they, their children, their spouse, or their parents need. It will take away a lot of obscene profit from giant insurance companies that have bled all of us to the bone for an unconscionably long time.

Let's do it. Get on the Internet, pick up the phone, take out a piece of paper, sacrifice some stamps and some time. Write your representatives, write anyone whose campaign you gave money to last year or this year. Don't hold back -- tell them you will not tolerate being cheated again. Tell them you will never give them another penny, and even if you can vote for them, you won't. Tell them what this monstrous for-profit non-system of "health care" of ours has done to you, your family members, your friends and neighbors. And give money to that handful of real public servants like Bernie Sanders, the independent Senator from Vermont, who is working 24/7 for the public option.

FIGHT.

If you don't fight, you have only yourselves to blame.

Stunned and Disgusted

Well, this is a new low. It seems to me and my spouse as though health care reform is being derailed AGAIN. Our government doesn't have the spine to stand up to a poisonous coalition of misled, hysterical screamers and cynical big-money corporations (insurance, pharmaceuticals, HMOs, you name it). Of course, our political system as it presently operates is with very few exceptions a cat-house where money talks and BS walks.

It's exhausting, frustrating and infuriating. Everyone with any common sense knows that if we don't have a public option, i.e. any real competition for the insurance companies, they will go on colluding, price-fixing and cherry-picking those they insure (that is, using "pre-existing conditions" to make sure they don't end up with seriously ill people on their rosters). The costs of care will keep skyrocketing and this country will continue to be the Dickensian mess it presently is, inspiring mockery and pity in the more civilized world, where citizens have a right not to be bankrupted simply by getting sick.

I've been sending lots of snail-mail and e-mail to politicians I supported financially in the past, chastising the Blue-Dog Democrats (read: Republicans, and not even Republicans-lite) and trying to put some spine in the supposedly real Democrats, but of course my checkbook isn't as fat as the health care industries'. No-one seems to be listening, no-one has any balls, no-one is standing up for justice and to put an end to the outrageous, appalling non-system presently tormenting this country. I'm so fed up, so red-hot angry, I'd think it a relief to run amok.

If I have to stand by and watch the Obama administration, which I worked hard to get into office, pretend we're getting "health care reform" while basically leaving things just as they were, I will vomit, and I will make a point of vomiting on someone who shares responsibility for this terrible failure.

I've learned a dreadful thing: that this country is so bought and sold, so totally owned by the big corporations, that there probably is no hope for justice or even plain old common sense to prevail. And putting all my energy into a third party, as I've done in the past, will do no good at all if the entire election system continues to revolve around nothing but the no longer so almighty dollar.

I'm over fifty years old and look at this mess. Women still don't have a firm guarantee of the same civil rights as men (no Equal Rights Amendment). We have to go on forever fighting the tacitly tolerated domestic terrorists (the anti-choicers) to preserve a shadow of abortion rights, trying to make sure that the lives of girls and women aren't derailed because of unplanned pregnancies. If biology can be used to keep women down, it doesn't seem to matter that unwanted children are a recipe for long-term social disaster.

Speaking of social disasters, homophobia and racism still run rampant. This country is so desperately immature and willfully unthinking that many of its denizens remain obsessed with trying to make every couple look like Ken and Barbie, instead of realizing that full legal protection for stable unions, same-sex or opposite-sex, is good for everyone. And let's not even get into the fact that arduous legal struggles were necessary to so much as allow veterans' graves to be marked with the symbol of their Pagan beliefs. Ironically, for us straight white folks, the way to instantly and viscerally find out what discrimination is all about is to be up front about not being Christian. Of course, being a woman, I did already have some idea of what it's like to be considered automatically inferior. But I'm the first to admit that the flak I've faced, though real, doesn't measure up to what people of color or lesbians and gays have to endure.

Well, I'm sure I won't feel this desperate forever, but right now the idea of spending the rest of my days overwhelmed by the stupid, the bigoted, the corrupt and the venal is bloody unattractive, and the feeling of disillusionment about this president and government is bitter indeed, though part of me always expected it. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and the corporations continue to find ways to divide and conquer and manipulate the comparatively poor to get out there and make their own situation constantly worse by indulging their knee-jerk prejudices rather than being aware of what would really serve their interests.

Ugh.

Responsibility, Change, and Character

So, it's December 6th and I haven't posted in four days. The holiday preparations continue to rev into ramming speed, and I suspect posts will be fewer and farther between until after the New Year. But I wanted to touch upon a subject I've already mentioned and develop it a bit, in preparation for more concentrated treatment when life becomes a bit less harried (ha, ha).

One of Barack Obama's most attractive, to me, themes during the recent presidential campaign was the concept that the restoration of American liberties and freedoms must go hand in hand with a general re-shouldering of individual and social responsibilities. "We are the change we've been waiting for" is not a new slogan, but remains a true one. Jim Hightower's most recent monthly newsletter (Dec. 2008, Vol. 10, No. 12: if you're a political progressive and don't read the Hightower Lowdown, look into it) takes up this message:

"If last month’s sweeping vote for change is to come to fruition, We the People must be the ones who nurture it. We can’t just crank back in our La-Z-Boys and say, “We did our job – now Barack can do the heavy lifting for us.” We tried this laid-back approach after Clinton won in 1992 – with unpleasant and unprogressive results.
"If you think your job is done, look who’s waiting for Obama in Washington: a swarm of Wall Street bankers, the war machine, 13,000 corporate lobbyists, naysaying Republican Congress critters, right-wing yackety-yackers, weak-kneed Democrats, the conformist media, and other powerful forces of business-as-usual politics. These insiders intend to shape his presidency in their image.
"We have to be the counterforce, pushing insistently, vociferously, and persistently from the outside. Who’s “we”? You and me – determined citizens, working through our personal networks, public-interest organizations, progressive media, the netroots nation, unions, community groups, and other connections to grassroots activism.
"Obama was the candidate of change, but he’ll be the president of change ONLY if we buck him up and back him up. We must stand up and speak out on every move the insiders make; we must propose and push progressive ideas and ideals; and we must certainly expose and vigorously oppose any capitulations he will be pressured to make to the corporate powers.
"If his presidency is to be worthy of the enormous effort that so many put into it, worthy of the deep potential of this political moment in American history, you and I have to be on the alert and in the face of power...
"From the start, I’ve felt that the most significant thing about the Obama phenomenon was not Obama, but the phenomenon – the fact that millions of ordinary Americans (especially young people) were not merely enthusiastic but were engaged, organizing and mobilizing, taking possession of their democracy, and doing the grunt work that is the essence of self-government.
"People really do want change – not as a political buzzword, but as a fundamental matter of national direction and policy. In fact, for some time, folks have been shouting: CHANGE! Get our troops and America’s reputation out of Iraq. Provide good health care for all. Rein in greedheaded CEOs and corporate lobbyists. End “tinkle down” economics. Re-invest in America’s infrastructure. Rebuild middle-class opportunities. Deal with global climate change. End the use of torture. Get serious about green energy. Restore our stolen liberties. Stop polluters. And, generally, reinstate the Common Good as America’s governing ethic.
"As Obama himself often said on the campaign trail, he is not the change. We are. By electing him, we opened the White House door to the possibility of change. Now we must see it through."

This kind of collective effort is part of what I, personally, mean when I talk of social responsibility. Effecting political change by continuing to work, noodge, speak out, demand and protest. Individual responsibility includes doing so in an honest, researched, thought-through and consistent fashion.

Which takes me back to the issue of gay and lesbian civil rights. Like much of the rest of America, I've seen "Proposition 8: The Musical," which I think is a brilliant piece of agit-prop. If by some chance you haven't encountered this three-minute tour de force, check it out on YouTube. Touching back upon the December 2008 Hightower Lowdown, which disappointed me by not addressing the horrific anti-gay legislation that was passed in four states even as Obama was elected, it did trash James Dobson and his Focus on the Family Christian-right organization for publishing an apocalyptic anti-Obama brochure right before the election. Written from the perspective of a shell-shocked "Christian" chronicling the abominations of four years of the Obama administration in the year 2012, one of its many fear-mongering prophecies was that a liberalized Supreme Court would force schools to teach first-graders that homosexuality is good.

Well, that set me to thinking. Of course the Dobson brochure is despicable, and largely ludicrous. But somehow it made something very clear to me. I think homosexuality, in and of itself, isn't good and isn't bad. It just is. Just like heterosexuality, in and of itself, isn't good or bad, it just is. Some of us are 100% homosexual, some of us are 100% heterosexual, and some of us fall somewhere inbetween. I've come to believe that each individual's possible spectrum of sexual preferences is almost as hard-wired as hair and eye color. Which means legislating discrimination against gays and lesbians is about as sensible as legislating discrimination against blond-haired or green-eyed people. Whether someone is gay, or blond, or green-eyed does not determine whether or not that individual is a decent person.

The only factor that may affect the character of gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered people is a societal one, the still far too commonly parrotted lie that anyone who isn't easily classifiable as "straight" is somehow "less moral" than "the rest of us." If as you grow up you realize that you are homosexual, or attracted to either gender, or don't fit with the sex characteristics with which you were born, you can't escape being bombarded by the societal expectation that you will be a "lesser" or "bad" person. Since expectations do shape us up to a point, those who aren't vanilla/straight have a harder row to hoe -- they have to fight against a whole set of external and internalized expectations of failure (much like people of color or women in general) on top of all the common vicissitudes and adversities.

Nonetheless, a large part of every identifiable population -- whether it's white straight women, gays, African-Americans, or transgenders -- consists of plain old good people. People who are honest with their friends, loyal to their partners and children, responsible about their duties to themselves, their families, their community, their employers or employees. Whatever the difficulties we face, we are capable of demonstrating good character. The capacity to live as a responsible human being is not affected by our sexual preference or orientation. Unfortunately, the capacity to participate equally in the benefits offered by our society still is.

Thanksgiving

Just a few lines which may be all I manage until after Thanksgiving. We're expecting, as of right now, 24 people (including our two selves). A 21-pound organic turkey just arrived at the front door, and is now reposing in our fridge. Yikes!

Actually, we've been hosting this festivity for 14 years now, so although it's always a bit of a frantic rush, we're used to it. It's a lot of fun to bring together a bunch of diverse folks from teenagers to 80-somethings, and the only thing that would be more fun would be not having to haul the turkey out of the oven every 15 minutes to baste it for four to five hours!

I'm thankful this year, even though I'm also wistful. The vicissitudes of the financial markets have taken a lot out of me, but I'm trying to remember my favorite adage: "Adversity is inevitable; misery is optional." So I do my best to keep my chin up, and count my many blessings. I'm thankful that most of our nearest and dearest are healthy and happy, I'm thankful that we're looking forward to a President Obama (although right now he's looking a bit too "Clinton-lite" to me!) instead of four more years of Bush redux, and I'm thankful that after 24 years and lots of curve balls to deal with, my dearest spouse and I still love, respect, consider, and care about each other. I wish the same to everyone out there!

Obama Drama?

Will he or won't he? Will she or won't she? All sorts of speculation about whether or not Barack Obama will choose Hillary Clinton as his Secretary of State. When my cleaning team was here yesterday -- yeah, we've budgeted a cleaning service every two weeks ever since we got hitched, we both hate housework -- one of the ladies complained that it seemed Obama was surrounding himself with people who were more of the same old same old. I can't argue with her too much. I know all the rationales -- the Clinton people are the last Democrats who were in the White House so they know the ropes and Obama has to hit the ground running, so he needs them, or at least some of them -- but the general idea makes me as uneasy as it does Ruth the cleaning pro.

And I can't say I'm thrilled about the idea of Hillary Clinton, less because of her -- though her vote for the Iraq War still sticks in my craw -- than because of the skeletons I fear may continue to fall out of her husband's closet. More his business associates than any "bimbo eruptions," as they called them in the '90s.

My hope is that the Obama team will leave it as it is, not add much more ballast from the Clinton years. The last thing this country needs at this precarious point in its history is to lose hope, get cynical, and turn away from our soon-to-be president, believing he's just more of the same. And I send a wish to all the deities that may be that not too many Republicans are added to the Obama Administration either. We didn't vote for them, and we don't want their discredited ideas distorting both the image and the substance of this new beginning.

I'm sending e-mails to every lawmaker I think might actually get at least a tally of voter sentiment on various issues. But I'm too old to be super-hopeful that, to name the most immediate case in point, Joe Lieberman (Senator from Connecticut, for those of you who aren't political junkies) will actually lose his Senate committee chairmanship for his consistent, obnoxious and mendacious trashing of Obama during the election. He should. And when he's let off without any punishment, the Democrats will once again look like wusses, and amoral ones at that. Not good.

More on morality in my next post.

Pagan Pundit

November 15, 2008

Welcome to my blog, Pagan Pundit. I intend to let loose, intermittently, on current events, pet peeves, and plenty more from an eclectic pagan perspective. Since I have the equivalent of three full-time jobs to try to keep up with, there may be long intervals between posts.

Until less than two weeks ago, what free time I had was dedicated to working to elect Barack Obama president. Not that I think he's the perfect candidate, but considering the alternative, I felt honor-bound to do anything I could, from contributing to decking my eye-catching little car out with Obama paraphernalia. On Election Day itself, I served as a poll worker from 5:30 a.m. to 10 p.m., then headed home to glue myself to the TV and soak up the results. One of the unique features of being a poll worker is that you have no glimmer of how the election is going until you are done with your job. Frustrating sometimes -- as is the perfect impartiality demanded of you in your official role -- but intriguing, and the sort of challenge on which I thrive.

OK, I'm going to do what I can to jazz up the format of this blog, but since I'm what I fondly refer to as a techno-moron, don't expect too much!