Potpourri...Say what?

While waiting to watch The Daily Show yesterday, I watched this clip on The Comedy Channel:
A youngish, neatly dressed woman appears on stage and announces that she has “Roving Kidney Disease”. Since she does not know what it is, or what to do about it, she has asked her Dr. to speak.

A short, plump and bespectacled man in a white smock appears, chart in hand, and confirms her diagnosis. He points out that she currently has one kidney on her left thigh and another on the back of her neck. She asks, “What causes this?” He does not know, but asks if she has any bad falls lately?

At this point, as they talk (and she denies falling), we see short out-takes of comedic pratfalls: women being tackled unexpectedly by football players; women falling from kitchen counters; women walking into walls; women being knocked to the floor by clumsy oafs. Following these Dick Van Dyke-like routines, the DR. tells the woman that there is a cure: If she will bounce repeatedly on a small floor-mounted trampoline (shown), she will recover. She thanks him and he leaves.

The woman then begins casually jumping up and down on the trampoline, and talking about how grateful she is for her cure. After a few moments, she missteps and falls off, backwards into the (fake) wall behind her. The wall crumbles and she crashes onto the floor and out of sight. She quickly jumps up and reassures the audience: “It’s OK! I’m alright! Just a little set back!”

This is, I think, a metaphor for health care reform. We are treating the symptoms and not the cause, with antiquated technology after hasty prognoses. Then whatever meager steps are made toward wellness are then derailed by the un-health insurance companies and big pharma, and we fall off through a (fake) wall of recovery. And we get up say we are OK. Say what?

And then there is this quote, from the new book, The Death of Why, The Decline of Questioning and the Future of Democracy, by Andrea Batista Schlesinger: “When was the last time you changed your mind on something important? I’ve changed my mind a few times. One thing I can say for sure is that I’ve never changed it while surrounded by people who agree with me.” Wow. I think this explains why so much of the “news” and “newsy” info we get is not news at all, but merely gossip. That is why I don’t read it or watch it much, anymore. We exist and subsist on newsfluff.

Faced with decisions about health care, gay and lesbian issues, the auto industry bail-out and the re-election of obviously corrupt politicians, we choose not to change our mind, and seek comfort and confirmation from those around us who will willingly and readily agree with us (read the book: the author does a much better job with this concept than I do).

With war raging in multiple countries, Goldman Sachs raping the country and foreclosures and unemployment at all time highs, why do we hear most of all about Michael Vick re-entering football for millions, what performance enhancing swimsuit will win the most contests and who is protesting it, and whether o r not Brittany has on underwear? Does it matter how much cash Ruth Madoff has stashed or that half of Michael Jackson’s brain is unaccounted for? Or that a man bit a dog? Say what?

And while I am at it, bringing together a cop and a college professor for beers (and the press speculating on who will drink which brand of beer) on a picnic table, outside the Oval Office, in order to quell racial tensions, is acting “stupidly”. Yet many of us (and the MSM) are fixated on the gesture. Say what?

We resist changing our minds; essentially we resist thinking. We listen to and tune in to what is easiest to accept without question or using the word “Why?” We accept half-truths or nonsense blindly and blithely. This is why Glenn beck has an audience that nods in agreement when he (stupidly) calls Obama a racist or Limbaugh says the same about Sotomoyor. Or how”birthers” gain an audience on a topic that is without substance or merit or grounding. Or Lou Dobbs calls Rachel Maddow a “tea-bagger queen” and gets away with the total absurdity of it all. Say what?
Having said all of this (so far), I am looking for a book, called, Idiot America, How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free. It should fit in nicely with the talk about “anti-intellectualism” that is flying around, these days. “Look! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s anti-intellectualism!”

And speaking of half-truths and nonsense, I heard a local minister, on the radio this morning, say this (with regard to the role of churches and religion in hard economic times): “We need to teach and embody hope because that is the realization that God intends”. Say what?

Which brings me back to “Why?”, and Schlesinger’s book. She reminds us that we don’t ask why often enough because we have settled for easy “answers” (you can find out anything from Google) and instant gratification. We think we can keep the world afloat by buying more stuff, when the simpler fact is that nothing which breaks which is not essential to life does not need to be replaced immediately. Wal-Mart is not the savior of the world. There are things and stuff and items in life we can and should learn to live without, despite what the TV commercials tell us. Did I just hear someone ask, “Say what?”

Let me leave you with one remarkably realistic conclusion (about life) and one unbiased and very realistic appraisal (about what we are facing in life right now ). One is more sobering than the other, but both may help you ask “Why?”

The first is by Derrick Jensen, in Endgame:

The truth is that I am going to die someday, whether or not I stock up on pills. That’s life. And if I die in the population reduction that takes place as a corrective to our having overshot carrying capacity, well, that’s life, too. Finally, if my death comes as part of something that serves the larger community, that helps stabilize and enrich the landbase of which I’m part, so much the better. [quoted via Carolyn Baker: Sacred Demise]

The second is from the economist, Paul Krugman, in the NYT:
Medicare versus insurers
“I notice from comments that a fair number of readers think that Medicare has had runaway costs. What you need to ask is, runaway compared to what?
Here’s the raw fact, from the National Health Expenditure data: since 1970 Medicare costs per beneficiary have risen at an annual rate of 8.8% — but insurance premiums have risen at an annual rate of 9.9%. The rise in Medicare costs is just part of the overall rise in health care spending. And in fact Medicare spending has lagged private spending: if insurance premiums had risen “only” as much as Medicare spending, they’d be 1/3 lower than they are.
We don’t have a Medicare problem — we have a health care problem.”

Now, after both of these, you may be saying, “Say what?”...which I must remind you is dangerously close to saying “Why?” But whatever you do, do not say, “So what?”