*What do I believe? How much time do you have, Charles?*
*First, a couple of minor details. When you say that Americans are losing
their claim to being a compassionate people, when and how was that claim
established? Was it in respect to Native Americans? to Black Africans?
Was it in respect to the Germans in WW1 or to the Germans, Japanese and the
various others of the sixty million who died in WW2? How about the
populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki who died after Japan was willing to
surrender? Was it in respect to the Vietnamese, who had a proposed
constitution after WW2 modeled after the US Constitution but were thrown
under the bus by Truman and demonized? When Kennedy took steps to withdraw
advisor US troops from Vietnam, he was murdered for that reason (and other
reasons). US involvement was goosed up generally and ramped up into a
full-scale war by the fictitious Tonkin Gulf incident. Around 2.9 million
people died in the war, including 58,000 American military personnel. The
US has continued killing in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Panama and a few
other places as it prosecutes its compassionate programs like a true
missionary. In case you have not noticed, the United States has not been
in a necessary war (that is one that it did not consciously precipitate)
since the War of 1812.*
*As for medical care, you first should consider the reasons for Americans
needing so much medical care. The American society is one that, largely at
least, has adopted an attitude that medical care in the US is so good and
so advanced that they can eat, drink, smoke, drink alcohol, do drugs, drive
recklessly, etc., etc. with abandon because if something goes wrong, the
wonderful medical system will fix it.*
*Over 73% of Americans are overweight or obese, with obesity being around
36% Even over 18% of kids age 2 through 19 are obese. Hispanic-Americans
and Black Americans have higher than average rates, with over 80% of Black
women being overweight or obese. (By the way high percentages of people
said to have died of COVID (whatever the hell it really is) have been
obese. One study of 148,00 patients revealed that 28.3% were overweight
and 50.8% were obese.*
*The overweight and obesity conditions are not standalone problems. They
lead to special types of inflammation, to heart and circulation problems,
to kidney problems, to diabetes and to any number of other health
problems. I am 87 years old and weigh the same as I did in high school. I
try to stay at least moderately active, and I take vitamins and supplements
to maintain my health and a good immune system. I do not have a lot of
regard for people who become fat slobs with bad health and poor immune
systems who want me to pay for their irresponsibility. My wife is a good
bit younger than I but still a well-established senior. She is active in
the community, works out at a gym and is a damned good-looking woman for
her age. She's a registered nurse and knows what she is doing and why
she's doing it.*
*High percentages of people in the US do little or nothing to maintain good
health, particularly people in lower economic groups. If a person does not
maintain his automobile and literally drives it until it completely poops
out, should the society at large be responsible for buying him a new car?
Tell me the difference when it comes to health maintenance.*
*I'll make you a little bet. If someone in the government were smart
enough to design a healthcare plan that was totally free for all persons
with Body Mass Indices less than 26 but required incremental payments for
every BMI point above 26, reaching full actuarial premium cost at BMI 40,
I'll bet that most of the people over BMI 26 would not take any action to
lose weight to save the costs of medical coverage. Rather they would
complain that the system was "unfair" and possibly even get off their lazy
asses to demonstrate.*
*The United States has an artificially created system of medical care based
on treating essentially everything with pharmaceutical drugs created
artificially, principally from petroleum products. This was courtesy of
Mr. John D. Rockefeller. Allopathic medicine was cultivated to promote
these types of treatments while other medical fields which were well-known
and widely practiced until around the turn of the 20th century were pushed
aside and marginalized. Use of plants or other natural substances as
medicines was discouraged and looked down on. Colloidal silver, which was
commonly prescribed by doctors up until the mid to late 1930s, is a very
effective broad spectrum antibiotic which kills bacteria, viruses
(including coronaviruses) and fungi. But it is now marginalized and
disparaged by the pharmaceutical industry because it is inexpensive and
cannot be patented. It is mostly all about the money and TREATING people,
not CURING them. There is an insider saying that a patient cured is a
customer lost.*
*In such a sloppy, undisciplined society, introducing "free" healthcare for
all or for lower income groups is an invitation to even more rapid
bankruptcy. As P. J. O'Rourke said, "if you think healthcare is expensive
now, wait until it's free."*
*It is true that many jobs do not include options for small payroll
deductions for group health care plans. Even among those that do, a lot of
people do not opt for the plans. Think about How many uninsured people are
actually spending more money on cell phones, cable tv, alcohol, tobacco,
eating out, movies, and other entertainment than what a qualified health
insurance plan would cost. You "pays your money and you makes your
choice," but then when a health problem arises, it is not the individual's
"fault," and he or she wants "the government" (meaning more responsible
fellow citizens) to pick up the tab.*
*What I believe is that you see the problem the way you want to see it and
then want a solution to it that reflects the way you see it instead of how
it really is. Yes, there has been a series of bad choices. People who, at
the time, recognized that they were bad choices were shouted down if they
were lucky and killed if they were not lucky. Those choices included many
things, including systems of medicine, pharmaceuticals, water fluoridation,
wars and several others. The same things are going on these days with
regard to a thoroughly fake "pandemic" and all its fake (and quite
ineffective) measures that are hurting people much, much more than a
never-isolated virus that has a survival rate (without vaccination) of
99.7+% overall and with a survival rate of 99.997% for people 25 years of
age or younger. The people of most countries are manipulated by very evil
people and used to their own advantage. Science knows better than much of
the medicine practiced in the US and many other countries. The people who
understand the real science and tell the truth are, again, pushed aside if
they're lucky and killed if they're not lucky.*
*Charles, you do not have the "big picture," and I somehow suspect that you
don't really want it because it would cause some uncomfortable cognitive
dissonance. You are far from alone. The propaganda is very, very slick,
and there are a lot of players, including the news media, working to sell
all the big hoaxes. George Carlin used to say, "Think of how stupid the
average American is, and then realize that half of them are stupider than
that." He also had another very accurate saying that has strong
applicability here: "It's a big club, and you ain't in it." Unless many
millions of people wake up and deal with problems in serious, rational
ways, things will never change, and the population will never have a shot
of being in the big club, which should be all the people really running the
country.*
*Bob Gregory*
*==================================================================*
On Sat, Mar 27, 2021 at 8:01 AM Charles wrote:
I immigrated to Canada, from a Deep South US state, in 2005, along with my
wife and my 14 year old daughter. I was 48 years old, and I now have long
personal experiences with the medical system in both Canada and the US.
I would *never* suggest to anyone that better medical care or facilities
or equipment or professionals is available anywhere in the world than what
is available in the US. The problem, in the US, is that access to that
medical care is increasingly rationed based on ability to pay for it, and a
growing number of Americans are finding themselves forced to forgo
necessary care for financial reasons.
I was one of the lucky ones, too ... I had a lot of career success; I
wrote a best-selling technical (Linux) book in 2000 ... but after my wife's
colon cancer experience (which gave us those famous "pre-existing
conditions") and my being caught in a corporate "downsizing", I understood
that it would not take much of an emergency to put us in a very bad
situation. I could not ignore how many Americans suffered from no fault of
their own ... and I changed my attitudes dramatically.
The best measure of the greatness of a nation (in my opinion) is in how it
treats its citizens who are the weakest, most vulnerable, the elderly, the
infirm, the handicapped.
The US is losing something that is a lot more important than their
economic and military dominance of the planet ... Americans are losing
their claim (in the eyes of the entire world) to being a people of
compassion.
Is it worth it? I don't think so. I think it's yet another in a series
of very bad choices.
Indeed ... most Americans are probably in very good shape. As long as
they choose not to care about those who are not as fortunate, most
Americans have no reason to hope for change.
But "most" is the problem. "*Most" *excludes millions of Americans. So
the divide is really between those who think that those millions of
Americans don't count ... and those who think they do.
I think they do matter ... because the measure of the greatness or
goodness of a society is in how well it treats its most vulnerable; its
infirm, its weak and elderly. It's poor.
American is trying to determine whether it will be great and good ... or
sell its soul to the highest bidder. America is in the process of making
that choice, whether people are aware of it or not. And the choice is
profound, because it will set the country on a course that may prove
impossible to reverse.
That's why the opponents of the health care have resorted to a campaign of
lies and fear rhetoric. They do not use fact or reason, or *offer
alternative solutions.* Because they have already made their choices,
and an honest, open, fair-minded debate is not in their best interest. And
science is their enemy.
What do *you* believe?
___
Charles Aulds
27 March 2021
