Mary Dejevsky: A mean streak in the US mainstream
The US tolerates more inequality, deprivation and suffering than is acceptable here
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In the US, one in six of the population has to pay for their health treatment item by item, or resort to hospital casualty wards
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When we Europeans – the British included – contemplate the battles President Obama must fight to reform the US health system, our first response tends to be disbelief. How can it be that so obvious a social good as universal health insurance, so humane a solution to common vulnerability, is not sewn deep into the fabric of the United States? How can one of the biggest, richest and most advanced countries in the world tolerate a situation where, at any one time, one in six of the population has to pay for their treatment item by item, or resort to hospital casualty wards?
The second response, as automatic as the first, is to blame heartless and ignorant Republicans. To Europeans, a universal health system is so basic to a civilised society that only the loony right could possibly oppose it: the people who cling to their guns, picket abortion clinics (when they are not trying to shoot the abortionists) and block funding for birth control in the third world. All right, we are saying to ourselves, there are Americans who think like this, but they are out on an ideological limb.
If only this were true. The reason why Obama is finding health reform such a struggle – even though it was central to his election platform – is not because an extreme wing of the Republican Party, mobilised by media shock-jocks, is foaming at the mouth, or because Republicans have more money than Democrats to buy lobbying and advertising power. Nor is it only because so many influential groups, from insurance companies through doctors, have lucrative interests to defend – although this is a big part of it.
It is because very many Americans simply do not agree that it is a good idea. And they include not only mainstream Republicans, but Democrats, too. Indeed, Obama's chief problem in seeking to extend health cover to most Americans is not Republican opposition: he thrashed John McCain to win his presidential mandate; he has majorities in both Houses of Congress. If Democrats were solidly behind reform, victory would already be his.
The unpalatable fact for Europeans who incline to think that Americans are just like us is that Democrats are not solidly behind Obama on this issue. Even many in the party's mainstream must be wooed, cajoled and even – yes – frightened, if they are ever going to agree to change the status quo. Universal healthcare is an article of faith in the US only at what mainstream America would regard as the bleeding- heart liberal end of the spectrum.
As some of Obama's enemies warned through the campaign – and I mean warned, not promised – this is the philosophical terrain where, his voting record suggests, this President is most at home. But many more are not. The absence from the Senate of Edward Kennedy, through illness, and Hillary Clinton, elevated to the State Department, has left his pro-reform advocacy in the legislature sorely depleted.
But there is something else at work here, too, beyond defective advocacy, and it lays bare a profound misunderstanding. Europe hailed Obama's landslide election victory as evidence that America had reclaimed its better self, turned to the left and bade farewell to ingrained racial divisions as well. That was a benevolent, but ultimately idealistic, gloss.
Obama's victory can indeed be seen as a reaction to eight years of conservative Republicanism under George Bush and a turn by US voters to the left. But that left is still quite a bit further right than in most of Europe. Nor was it just a leftward turn that cost John McCain the White House; it was also a rejection of the weaker candidate. Obama's great asset was that he came across as more competent on the economy, at a time of global financial meltdown. From this side of the Atlantic, we convinced ourselves that Americans had voted with their hearts, but there was a considerable element of the wallet as well.
That wallet element helps explain the deep-seated misgivings that have surfaced about Obama's plans for health reform. A majority of Americans believe they have adequate health cover. Their choice of job may be limited by their insurance requirements (and labour mobility reduced). And their calculations may be upset – sometimes disastrously – by accident or illness.
But with most pensioners protected by the state system known as Medicare, an "I'm all right, Jack" attitude prevails. It coexists with the fear that extending the pool of the insured, to the poorer and more illness-prone, will raise premiums for the healthy and bring queuing, or rationing, of care – which is why stories about the NHS inspire such dread. The principle that no one should be penalised financially by illness is trumped by the self-interest of the majority, then rationalised by the argument that health is a matter of personal responsibility.
The point is that, when on "normal", the needle of the US barometer is not only quite a way to the political right of where it would be in Europe, but showing a very different atmospheric level, too. For there is a mean and merciless streak in mainstream US attitudes, which tolerates much more in the way of inequality, deprivation and suffering than is acceptable here, while incorporating a large and often sanctimonious quotient of blame.
This transatlantic difference goes far beyond the healthcare debate. Consider the give-no-quarter statements out of the US on the release of the Lockerbie bomber – or the continued application of the death penalty, or the fact that excessive violence is far more common a cause for censorship of US films in Europe than sex. Or even, in documents emerging from the CIA, a different tolerance threshold where torture and terrorism are concerned.
Some put the divergence down to the ideological rigidity that led Puritans and others to flee to America in the first place; others to the ruthless struggle for survival that marked the early settlement years and the conquest of the West. Still others see it as the price the US pays for its material success. What it means, though, is that if and when Obama gets some form of health reform through, it will reflect America's fears quite as much as its promise. And it is unlikely to be a national service that looks anything like ours.
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Comments
No, we Americans are significantly more hardy and determined than our British counterparts. Our expectation is our peoples will stand on their own two feet and make their own way through life.
Your British culture is born of aristocracy, born of two distinct classes; the ruling class and the impoverished ruled. I am writing of your cultural beginnings not so much of culture today.
Our American culture is born of hard work, sacrifice and challenging struggles. Our beginnings are of independence, freedom and personal survival. Like your British culture, much has changed with our culture over the centuries.
Your British peoples inherited a cultural thinking of being submissive to authority. Our American culture inherited a cultural thinking of being the authority. You are the subjects and not just in royal deemed name only. We are the rebels in charge of our lives. You British allow your royal family and your Anglican church to decide for you what is appropriate and what is not. We Americans, on an individual basis, decide what is appropriate and what is not; we value freedom much more than you British.
Mine is not to critique your culture nor ours rather mine is to highlight differences in cultural beginnings. Neither culture, yours nor ours, is superior but there are differences. Personally, being a red skinned girl, I find both the British culture and the American culture to be sorely lacking in needed ambition and work ethic to be truly successful in living life. Both cultures, yours and ours, have very serious problems and I am not sure those problems can be solved; westernized nations are stuck in a steady decline of quality of life. Most of this, in my estimation, is both the British and Americans are basically spoiled and lazy.
However, Americans are more fierce about personal freedoms for better and for worse. This is our cultural inheritance. I understand how those outside of our culture would see a "mean streak" but what others see as "mean" is actually our holding our peoples responsible and accountable for their lives.
You write of national health care. Here in America there are two major factors at play. One is Americans do not want our decision making taken away from us; we are to decide what is in our best interest. Other factor is economic fear. Americans are having a very rough go of it, Americans are suffering a lot of financial pain. A national health care program carries a lot of costs and we expect those costs to appear as massive tax increases. You British well know how we feel about Tea and Taxes.
I do not see any chance of a national health care program in America for years to come. Our dire economic circumstances will squash any possibility of expensive national health care; American families are near bankrupt or are bankrupt. We simply cannot afford this, not now.
I am a traditional American Indian. Should you want to experience your "mean streak" notion give us traditional Indians a try. In my culture, you will either survive and contribute to our tribe or be banished from our lands if not simply killed. We are known for being harshly pragmatic.
To close, I will urge both British readers and American readers to look to respective cultural beginnings to better understand these entertaining differences on your side of the pond, and our side of the pond; British are aristocrats, Americans are rebels. Neither are all this impressive to my peoples.
Okpulot Taha
Choctaw Nation
Puma Politics
As the result of long lasting policies of the Cold War, self-oriented opportunistic and idealistic values, religiously founded institutions, and also paranoiac system of education in America; generally speaking, many (if not all) kind of liberal ideas (as liberty: freedom, justice and equality for all) are considered as proletarian and alien (presumably more likely in extraterrestrial form) to American way of life.
What they ought to find interesting and enlightening would be many years of extensive education and sense of responsibility towards each other and realising that there might be the possibility of existing a broader world beyond their States’ borders that its occupants could delightfully contribute humanistic values as well as wealth.
Therefore, in order to discourage the implementation of good social programs and scare people, they spread all kinds of false rumors about the government run programs.
Finally, another reason for resisting President Obama’s health care option is pure racism. Many do not want an African American to sign one of the most important bills in our history. They just want him to fail even to their own detriment.
This comment of yours is inherently ludicrous.
Chesscheckers adds, "...discourage the implementation of good social programs...."
Who decides which programs are good, you, Obama, the American peoples?
Current polls display Americans are against national health care by a 2 to 1 margin. This is the will of the American peoples. What you are proposing, Chesscheckers, is tyrannical socialism. Your notion will be very challenging to sell to Americans. Here in America, though, you are free to try to impose tyrannical socialism upon our peoples. Try this, won't you? I am sure this will smarten you up.
Okpulot Taha
Choctaw Nation
Puma Politics
By the way, what is wrong with the inclusion of a public option in our health care program? In a democracy, one must have multiple choice. Why are you attempting to impose your will on us by depriving us of the public option? Now, who is the ill-informed tyrant? If you don not want public option on your reservation, it is fine, but remember the US is not your reservation.
The problem, says Chronicle Watch reader Bill Carroll, is that people are ignoring the "No Bicycles" sign that's perched on a pole in the sidewalk. "Every day I walk to Aquatic Park (and) every day I and all the other pedestrians are nearly run over by all the bicyclists on the sidewalk," Carroll said in an e-mail. "The 'NO BICYCLES' sign is so small and so high that no one seems to notice. The sign should be larger, lower, and state 'NO BICYCLES ON SIDEWALK.' The bicycles are supposed to be on the street. This is unsafe for everyone. There is virtually no automobile traffic on the street so there is no reason to be on the sidewalk." Carroll's suggestion was forwarded to the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, which says it's not responsible for the signage, and to the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, which did not respond but seems to have jurisdiction over the area.
I thank you
Firozali A Mulla
"For there is a mean and merciless streak in mainstream US attitudes, which tolerates much more in the way of inequality, deprivation and suffering than is acceptable here, while incorporating a large and often sanctimonious quotient of blame."
When you say that this is a U.S. trait, you seem to imply that it is not a European failing. In fact, dualism and the fear and hatred of the "other" exploited for the financial gain of the elite is a quintessentially European trait. How else were you able to take Africans and bring them to the New World as slaves. Yes, YOU did it. How else did you justify the rape of Africa, Asia, the Americas? In Europe, one deserves only the best if one talks the same language and worships the same God and acts like a good son of ______ (insert country of your choice). But any one else---people from Turkey, Africa, Asia, the Americas---- takes the crumbs they can scrape off the floor.
Yes, there is a fascist streak in the US. It crossed the Atlantic with the European invaders.
To boast that you want only the best for your fellow countrymen and that this makes you somehow morally superior completely ignores the fact that your "best" was snatched from the hands of starving children in the rest of the world. And continues to be snatched from those same hands. Maybe you should read "The Heart of Darkness". It seems to me that you are casting about, looking for a "horror" to condemn so that you can avoid the painful task of knowing yourself.
It's not good enough to say you value freedom and don't like paying taxes. In the US you pay twice as much for healthcare as we do here in the UK. Yet many people get little or no cover. So it should be a case of you can't afford to carry on with the present system which is too expensive and unfair.
What you mean to say is that you prefer to be dictated to by private companies making large profits from peoples misery, rather than a Government run or organised healthcare system. You don't have decision making power unless you are well off or in a job which gives good health care cover. Neither of these things may be within your own ability to influence.
It's easy to say people should be responsible for their own lives when you are fit and healthy. But when you become ill, through no fault of your own, it is not so easy to stand alone. This is the time you need support and assistance. You should not be worried about asking for it - either because yo think it makes you look weak (when you are ill you are weak!) and you should not be worried about asking for it because of worry about the cost.
What personal freedoms are you fierce about? The right to carry a gun? Other than that (mistaken view of freedom) you seem to be as restricted as we are!
As for your native American ('harshly pragmatic') ways - well, that ruthless streak didn't seem to work too well, did it i nthe long run?
I recognize the fragility of my station. I appreciate my good fortune. I am well aware that much of my comfort has more to do with blind luck than skill (why is my company still in business while my neighbors employer has closed, for example? Perhaps okpulat_tah would gladly attribute this to my superior value as a human being, but i simply cannot summon such hubris.)
I am also in favor of drastic changes to our health care system in the US. In opposition to the opinion of okp, I suspect that a profit-motive will quickly remove me from the rolls of the insured. Yes I am insured now, but a bad turn of luck that results in hospitalization, which results in no longer being able to work, which results in no longer being necessary to cover, and I would be SOL. Would Okp attribute such misfortune to my poor character?
I am well aware that private companies control my life. My cell carrier dictates when/if i get what kind of digital content or phone coverage. The major oil companies decide what I will pay for gas. Wal-Mart decides how much I pay for everything else. My insurance company, to return to the point, decides what illnesses I can have, what medicines are necessary, how many physicals I can have, how long my wife should stay in the hospital after childbirth (they also insist that I go to the hospital, rather than a mid-wife,) and how far from home I can be if I get hurt (it's called out-of-plan emergency care if I am injured when too far from home, roughly 500 miles in my case.)
It has become a pressing anxiety of mine that the loud, if dim-witted, Americans have bullied their way into speaking for all of us, and I am driven to object. The clown who calls herself okpulot_tah speaks for no American save herself.
We read the horrors of the NHS daily, and keep seeing rich liberals from Canada sneaking into Detroit and Chicago for healthcare.
About 22,000 uninsured Americans died in 2006 because of lack of insurance (Families USA).
About 900,000 Americans will go bankrupt due to medical bills. (CNN)
60% of Americans are willing to leave the country for cheaper medical services (Surgery Abroad).
I think Stephen Hawking might argue with you about the "Horrors of the NHS".
If you didn't watch Fox news every day you wouldn't hear about those NHS "horrors" either.
Unless they are doing something illegal, Canadians don't have to "sneak" into the US anymore than Americans have to "sneak" into Canada. Only rich "liberals" liberals seek care in the US? I am sure that many impatient rich conservatives do that also. That is the one good thing about the US health care system. If you got the money to pay for it you will get great treatment. Unlike "theonlymoderate" (yea right), the american health care system doesn't care if you are a liberal or a conservative, you got money you get treated, you don't have the money you may die. That's raw American capitalism for ya.
As an Englishman the difference I see between Europeans and Americans is that Europeans have willingly relinquished their democratic rights to allow a political neo-aristocracy to lead them by the nose wherever they want and then allow themselves to be fleeced to pay for it.
I can see why this is the case with Continental Europeans they having had a history of and it appears a liking for being herded and prodded about by dictators and authoritarian regimes - witness the current Fourth Reich aka the EU - plus ça change. I cannot fathom why Anglo-Saxon England has given up its birth right of freedom, proper, accountable, representative government and self-determination.
My one hope is that the spirit of Anglo-Saxon England lives still in the USA where they will not be led as lambs to the slaughter by a self-selecting, self-obsessed, self-satisfying posse of Socialist soi-disant intellectuals who believe they know what everyone should have and will have, whilst they get on with their luxurious lives at the taxpayers' expense..
You are wrong when you say - 'People pay into a health care scheme whether private or public for their own/family benefit not for others. ' This is precisely what the NHS is for - e all pay in for our own and others' benefit. Socialist? Who cares? This is a system tohelp those who need it when they need it woithout regard to worries about payment. Remember the US system is much more expensive and does not have universal coverage. Big business does not have the answers! Some things need to be socialised. Get it?
It is the Anglo-Saxon world that is the cause of the current problems in the world economy! It is the Anglo-Saxons who keep interefering militarily all over the world causing instability wherever they go, not to mention suffering among the ordinary people.
The difference between the Europeans (which we are also by the way!) and the Anglo-Saxons is a certain willingness to share and to be part of a civilised society. Sadly, that has declined somewhat, due to the willingness of some EU leaders (Sarkozy, Merkel) to follow the US in foreign policy.
You are in a dream if you think that in all the Anglo-Saxon countries they are not led by the nose by their politicians, nowhere more so than in the USA. There the politicians use the media (mostly rabidly right wing extreme) for their purposes and big business makes the decisions. No doubt you prefer things to be run by big business rather than elected politicians. Neither is any use, if the current economic crisis is any indicator.
By the way, the US citizens are led like lambs wherever the politicians and their business backers choose to lead them. Hence they vote for Bush et al and go into wars with no good reason...And if you think US politicians live in less luxury than ours, look again.
First, let me point out that opponents of Universal Health care are not heartless. We recognize that our system has some major flaws. We do want everyone to have access to medical care. What you have failed to address is the underlying philosophy of the economic model Americans subscribe to. That is, we are not socialists, not yet, we are capitalists. We do not believe that the government can manage anything better than the smart, able, innovative citizens of our country. For example, many of us prefer the option of giving vouchers to the poor so that they could buy private insurance.
We do not want the government involved in the management of health care. We are entrepreneurs, we develop new drugs, we invent new medical devices, we make faster, more accurate diagnostic tools. Did I mention, we don't believe the Government will be motivated to innovation?
Until you understand this underlying difference of economic model you will continue to bark up the wrong tree.
You must also take into account the illegal immigrants in the United States, an estimate by Pew Hispanic, http://pewhispanic.org/, a nonpartisan research group puts the number of illegal immigrants at 12 million. We are already paying for the emergent and critical care of these people. They are funneled from the emergency rooms into the hospitals for the full range of testing and care that every American has access to. European government run health care systems would collapse with millions of users who do not pay into the system at all.
An aside, as a matter of observation, my husband and I did live in England for two years with young children in tow. There is no doubt that the medical care in United States far exceeds that of England.
We lived in a very upscale town in the Cotswolds and the "clinic" where my children were seen was not better than the worst of inner city clinics in the United States. I spent many hours in the waiting room with ill children. Been there, done that, doesn't work!
Call an American a c**ksu**ing, mother f***er and they'll smile at you. Call them a "loser" and they'll turn bright red and start fumbling for their mail order handgun while shouting incoherent obscenities.
It's interesting to note for people who read a lot of posts by Americans that they inveterately misspell the word "loser" as "looser". when using it themselves, such a deep complex they have with the word.
Also, only a portion of the U.S.A. is into the "I'm OK, screw you" meme. However, they are the most vocal section of American society, frequently shouting incoherent obscenities, and control the majority of the American press. Do not believe that most Americans prefer to have health insurance companies make billions of dollars in profit to having a national health service provide healthcare for all. Unfortunately, the Americans who want national health care are usually the people who do not own guns thus they remain quiet for fear of being shot at a town hall meeting by a gun toting, rugged individualist, loud mouth hypocrite who is vehemently against the proposed government supported health care proposals yet is steadfastly in favor of the government supported health care for the elderly, Medicare.
As for American spelling, it has become almost a point of pride for the loud, vocal portion of American society to ignore proper spelling. If you pay attention to Americans comments and blog postings you will find few that know how to properly use the words their, they're and there. I believe the common thinking by them is that they're the masters of their environment and thus can spell any word in any manner they desire. When those losers are turned loose they tend to wreak significant havoc at politcal meetings much to the detriment of all.
Henri
Medicare - which Obama wants to cut to help pay for his plans.
Medicare - a program in financial mess, like Social Security, like the VA etc, all run by the government, and they think they can take over 16% of the economy and run it properly ?
Another point is that there are four or five bills at present and no one can seriously suggest how to pay for it all. Obama has once again outsourced it all to Congress, just like the stimulus-that-wasn't and provided minimal leadership.
The health system needs reforms but the current rushed mess is not the answer.
By the way, all the afore-mentioned countries are capitalist and democratic. Just think about it.
Video Links against: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxbbe35E
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5wVWUfY
As far as thinking for ourselves, again, you've nailed it, because my experience of education in the UK and the US is that we tolerate - even encourage - mediocrity in the US, teaching only to tests that only prove how much information a student can memorize. Our schools quit teaching any kind of critical thinking, any kind of independent investigation, decades ago, and it shows in our internationally low standings in education.
Americans need to take a good look in the mirror and actually SEE what who and what we are and have become, and then stand up individually and collectively and reclaim our compassion, our intelligence, and our sense of equality. And yes, I'm an American.
Why does Obama's administration require over 800 F.E.M.A (concentration-style) camps?
Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPnCz_rt
Americans aren't born lacking the gene for kindness, fairness and cooperation. We're no better or worse at heart than anyone - and, indeed, our country used to pride itself justly on helping others. But now even Obama, to judge by his actions, is just a corporate shill -- probably because he genuinely doesn't know any better. I hope you Europeans won't succumb to the same forces. You're beset by them; please don't think you aren't.
You nailed that explanation. Concise and dead on accurate.
"I hope you Europeans won't succumb to the same forces". The Germans already did in the 1930's. I am very concerned that we in the US are at a similar point in our history. We are a fascist light society right now, and it would not take much to push us over the top, to a goose stepping Reich.
All the pieces are in place. Government and corporate powers tightly intertwined. Propaganda spitting outlets like right wing talk radio and Fox news, that would make Goebbels proud.
As a result of this right wing propaganda onslaught we have a fairly large part of our populace that has no idea what is really going on. See collin_brown above. He thinks the US is going communist. He thinks Obama is a flaming left leaning liberal. What can you say to someone like that? It's like trying to coax a moth away from a candles burning wick by appealing to the moths logical/rational side.
As for you Brits, thanks for the criticism--wish you might have had the wherewithal to preclude Blair from jumping onto the Chief Chimp's war wagon, though.