Word has reached Cromer on the debate taking place in the good ol’ US and A over the creation of a more equitable healthcare system. This blog is not the place to extend that debate. However, one offshoot has been this meme which keeps popping up on Facebook like an efflorescence of herpes.
‘No one should die because they cannot afford health care, and no one should go broke because they get sick. If you agree, please post this as your status for the rest of the day’
Now, whereas I agree with the sentiment, I shall refuse to post it as my status, and would discourage anyone else from doing so – anyone with more than half a brain, that is, who is capable of independent and rational thought. Let’s look at this statement in detail. The first clause runs
‘No one should die because they cannot afford health care’
No sane person would ever disagree with this statement. The truth of this is self-evident. I can’t believe that anyone exists who would, if asked directly to agree with this statement, would demur. To post this as a statement with which one can agree or disagree is, therefore, to polarize what is in fact a complex issue. Such a statement might be congruent with exhortations to the effect that anyone who doesn’t take Jesus into their lives immediately is doomed to hellfire and damnation. Let’s look at the second statement.
‘…and no one should go broke because they get sick’
Again, this seems a self-evident truth. However, I’d caution all wide-eyed American liberals and followers of the documentaries of Mr Michael Moore that even with the wonderful NHS in the good ol’ U of K (an institution which I can say, hand on heart, continues to save my life) people do go broke because they get sick, because the good ol’ U of K will refuse them the drugs they need on grounds of price. Even in the best socialist utopias, resources are finite., and this will certainly be true of any similar system, even in the US and A.
The final statement, though, is the most pernicious.
‘If you agree, please post this as your status for the rest of the day.’
This implies that anyone who doesn’t follow this blind totalitarian diktat also doesn’t agree with the self-evidently true statements preceding them. Whereas I agree with the first two statements, I find that the third disgusts me for the same reason that I am disgusted by extreme politics – or religious movements – in which people are required to hang up their brains and indeed all powers of reason to follow the herd.
It’s also quite disgustingly humorless, self-righteous and po-faced. In the words of Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus, some people are so lofty you think they’d shit marble.
Spot on, Henry – although having heard some of the half-truths and downright lies about the NHS being put about in the US, I can understand the sentiment. It's the vehicle that's wrong.This sort of thing is too close to the 'Pass this on to ten people or your hair will fall out' chain letter that I have always found highly distressing. I refuse to send them on, but the inevitable result is that you feel you are letting someone down.
Ah yes but poor people do generally die younger than richer people I believe. So the first statement is only really true if you can cleanly separate 'lifestyle' from 'healthcare'. It is easy to agree in the case of the man knocked down by the Clapham omnibus but harder in the case of man born into Glasgow sink estate. Agreeing here would imply changing the way we organise our society and I don't think the majority are in favour of that.The second statement is also difficult. City trader with enormous debts to support lavish lifestyle has nervous breakdown verses bricky on minimum wage who slips a disc. It is probably OK for one of them to go bankrupt but not the other.I believe the real reason you don't want to pass on these statements is that, as a thinking person, you realize life is more complex than they imply.
Why even bother to justify not following the blind totalitarian diktat?
I like your blog very much.I'm waiting for your new posts.
my excuse is less lofty … just too bloody depressed lazy to cut 'n paste… ennui is a wondrous thing…
The sheer volume of both stupidity and cupidity in this debate is making me think it'd be best to go home, lock the door, and continue as I've done while the rest shout themselves hoarse and hate each other 4EVER. I am aware, increasingly, of having lived comfortably and with health insurance for twenty years on sums declared IMPOSSIBLE by every lefty from Baltimore to San Diego. In fact for 25 years now I've been doing all sorts of IMPOSSIBLE things, like doing well out of a crumbling, crowded, no-air-conditioning public high school; walking into very nice academic programs and other enterprises without resumes and transcripts stuffed with the things people say are required; maintaining good health insurance by buying it myself; being in the vicinity of HFCS without ballooning to 500 lbs; doing my own taxes; not taking on debt I can't repay; finding work in These Troubled Economic Times; etc.I'm just waiting to hear how much they want to hit me up for. Since I'm not a wreck, you see, I must be rolling in it, and therefore owe the public my ill-gotten wealth. I find that saying "Poor single mother!" stops them only for a second, unless I pick up pot & spoon and parade with them.
I understand where you're coming from, Henry, I really do. What you have to understand is that most of the strongly held beliefs by the people opposing this are as equally detestable as this meme and arise from exactly the kind of polarizing, simplistic, "you're with us or with the enemy" kind of thinking. Therefore this particular meme can be viewed as an attempt to fight on their turf – to use the communication modes by which they learn and understand things to communicate with them. They very fact that it's detestable to you and me is a sign that's it's probably calibrated properly to resonate with the people it's intended for.Not everyone in the world is going to become an independent thinker overnight, much as we might want them to, so if there's no intelligent people putting out followable memes, just who are the followers going to be listening to?While it might offend your delicate intellectual sensibilities to get involved with a popularist campaign, somebody has to or we might as well give up and let the likes of Glenn Beck and other bottom feeders tell those incapable of forming their own independent opinion what to think.You're right to detest the mindless and polarizing tone of this meme, and you're right to promote independent thought, but smart people can't make their message exclusive to independent thinkers. There's way more followers than there are leaders and someone's going to lead them if you don't.