American Lies

[McCamy Taylor]

“I’ll buy that for a dollar” Robocop

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_ESC4bygtp2M/SkjK8iHwieI/AAAAAAAAIDU/6olGF2YayC8/s400/Blake+The+Spiritual+Form+of+Nelson+Guiding+Leviathan+1805-1809.jpg

The health insurance industry and the other members of the Medical Industrial Complex did not create the Leviathan that is health care in the United States all by themselves. They had a lot of help, here at home, from ordinary Americans who believe some pretty extraordinary things.

I. “Money Can Set You Free”

Around 60% believe American benefits from having a class of rich people. In a question from 2007, 37% told Gallup we had too many rich people, but 40% said we had about the right number, and 17% said there were too few.

http://www.forbes.com/2009/03/21/americans-wealth-government-taxes-opinions-columnists-aig.html

American Calvinists----puritans, Presbyterians and others----taught that salvation was a gift bestowed by God. Nothing you did influenced the state of your soul. God either chose you to be among the elect----or he damned you to Hell for all eternity. The chosen would just naturally reap the benefits of God’s love in the form of material success in life. If your fields were fertile, you labor profitable and your slaves docile, then you were on the express train to paradise. If you lost your farm and were forced onto the streets to beg in order to feed your family, death would not end your suffering, because you were destined for the inferno.

Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism is a great resource if you want to learn more about the link between religion and western style capitalism. As far back as the early 20th century, he noted that Americans had an exaggerated regard for money. He characterized their eternal quest for profit as a “game”. But, in fact, people in the U.S. are very serious when it comes to money. We measure a man’s success by the number of digits in his salary---not by his good deeds. We measure the value of a company by the profit it posts---not the public service it does.

In a culture that calls profit the ultimate good, charity is a sucker’s game. Time spent worrying about the plight of those less fortunate than yourself is time wasted on the “shiftless”, the “lazy”, the “Welfare Queen”---you know, Satan’s chosen. No self respecting puritan would waste a cent improving the health or prolonging the lives of such people, since that would only give them more time to steal cars, rape women and snort cocaine.

Since profit is a sign of God’s grace, puritan Americans do not begrudge members of the medical industrial complex their inflated salaries. A cardiothoracic surgeon who makes a million a year obviously knows what he is doing. A health insurance company that posts a profit must be treating its customers right. The greater the return on its investment, the more sanctified the health care industry becomes. And who would not want God on his side when he is having a coronary?


II. “All You Need is Love”

Botox and microdermabrasion beat out diabetes medication and treatment of chronic disease -- at least in the wallets of an increasing number of health care consumers.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4190/is_20070831/ai_n19502805/

Oh yes, romantic love. It is used to sell everything from diet soft drinks to tooth paste. An alien from another planet watching a TV ad for Diet-Coke would think the advertisers were promoting a sex aid. In the U.S., the ultimate happy ending is boy kisses girl and then they walk into the sunset, hand in hand. Since real life does not have a “The End” after each happy moment, tomorrow the girl has to kiss someone else in order to recreate that thrill. So, she spends all her spare money on clothes, makeup, cosmetic medicine including surgery in order to attract potential lovers. She agonizes over a few extra pounds or the laugh lines beside her eyes. She can not find the time or money to get a Pap smear, but she can afford diet pills, growth hormone injections and a tummy tuck. She will not quit smoking, because the last time she tried it, she gained ten pounds!

The penalties for ignoring your appearance can be high, especially for women. Attractive females are perceived to be more intelligent. They are friendlier. They make better workers. Men value their opinions more. And so, they get promoted before their less flashy sisters. If you want proof, just look at Sarah Palin. Millions of Americans adore her---because she is a MILF.

Sex sells in America, and that goes for the health care industry, too. Time and money are spent finding ways to prolong erections, smooth out wrinkles. If those same resources were spent preventing diabetes and high blood pressure, our country might not lead the industrialized world in chronic diseases. However, the thought of no liposuction frightens some Americans more than the threat of heart disease. And so, the enemies of change can scare these voters with talk of “loss of choice”---which is code for “Your insurance will no longer pay for Viagra and Retin A.”

III. “Everyman for Himself”

An income tax increase on all Americans to pay for a health care remake — an approach Congress never considered — was overwhelmingly rejected in the poll. Seventy-five percent opposed that idea, and only nineteen percent were in favor.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091117/ap_on_bi_ge/us_ap_poll_health_taxes

Rugged individualism is both the blessing and the curse of Americans. We are quick to stand up and complain if we do not like the way that things are going. We will even stage a revolution if that is what it takes to get things done.

On the other hand, we are descended from people who despised the countries of their birth so much that they crossed the ocean and then headed west, to find a new home in the wilderness, as far away from civilization as possible. Note that folks in California, our most western continental state, are the least likely to want to pay for stuff for other people. Schools, libraries, prisons---if they do not benefit from them directly, then they will not sacrifice a cent in order to maintain them.

This notion that every man is an island is a nail in the coffin of health care reform. The strongest argument for changing our current system is the lack of focus on prevention which gives us piss poor public health outcomes---at more than twice the cost per person than any other industrialized country spends. Cradle to grave insurance for every citizen of the United States would enable us to keep people healthy for pennies---which would save us billions in sick care, disability and premature death. However, the rugged individualist American is skeptical of any call to make a short term sacrifice for the greater good. He does not understand that we are all connected, economically as well as spiritually, and that his neighbor’s clean coronary arteries can actually influence his own standard of living. To him, the "public" (as in public health) is someone else, and he sees money spent on someone else as money wasted.

Note that these people are not the majority. Most Americans are in favor of increased emphasis on disease prevention (if you do not talk about how such a program will be funded.) The bad news is that 30% of us disapprove of keeping folks healthier.

http://www.healthcarefinancenews.com/news/poll-americans-favor-investing-disease-prevention-central-reform

Who could reject disease prevention? Could these be the same 25-30% who kept supporting Bush and Cheney, no matter how many Muslims were killed and Americans were spied upon and laws were broken to line the pockets of VIPs? And why the hell are these people so loud? Do they get some kind of thrill from going on television and acting like dicks? Maybe they do. Narcissism is the ugly cousin of rugged individualism, and fourteen minutes of fame are better than nothing.

One more statistic, implied from the two polls above. If you consider that two thirds of us want disease prevention but only one third of us are willing to pay more in taxes to get a program of disease prevention started, that means that only one third of the people in the United States truly understand the issue. They know that a temporary sacrifice will net significant long term gains. They are willing to plan ahead---and pay for their neighbor’s good health---because in the end, we will all benefit. That is a woefully small number when you consider how much money has been spent trying to educate the public on this issue. Which leads me to another American Lie…

IV. “Knowledge is dangerous.”

What other country would cast votes against a presidential candidate, because the press proclaimed him “too smart”?

[silverweb]

1. K&R

All too true.

[Libertas1776]

2. Sadly...only in America

[paulsby]

6. american exceptionalism exemplified

thanx for giving ne another example. not only this thread but the classic "only in america" which is the kind of american exceptionalism that is welcomed... as long as the "only in america" refers to a negative concept.

never will you see "only in america" here in regards to something positive.

frequently, you will see it here in regards to the negative.

a double standard, in that only the latter is accepted, and only the latter is common

[McCamy Taylor]

10. This push to turn DU into a corporate US propaganda machine puzzles me.

Certain posters (whom I will not name but they know who they are) are quick to criticize anything which criticizes some aspect of the US. They seem to believe in the Fox News definition of fair and balanced which goes something like "You can not report on the suffering caused by US financed death squads in other countries unless you also report that the death squads are keeping the price of _____low at home." Since Obama became president, this move to make DU a "Rah Rah my country right or wrong" forum has gotten exponentially worse---almost as if some people believe that having Democrats in control of Congress and the WH means that everything must be alright. Since the same power brokers---the Bill Gates and the David Rockefellers---still run things, we are stuck with many of the same problems we had under Bush and the Republicans. To pretend differently is to play the corporate game. Every four to eight years, they dump the party in power and embrace the other party. This allows disaffected citizens an opportunity to hope that the things which are fundamentally wrong with our country will change. But, in a system where you have to spend millions (or hundreds of millions) of dollars to get elected, elected politicians are not the ones who are going to make it all happen. We, the voters who put them into office have to keep their feet to the fire if we are going to see positive change.

Or, as Blake put it "Opposition is true friendship."

[paulsby]

12. that's wonderfully irrelevant

and i appreciate it

AGAIN...

a metric assloads of posts (and even threads) where the theme is... america sucks and europe canada, etc. are much better
or
we are the worst amongst the industrialized world
or
ONLY in america (do we see this kind of suckiness)

and yet can you even FIND a post (besides mine) :) that speaks positively about america as compared to the rest of the world in ANY subject

they are rare. hella rare.

that's an interesting double standard?

it's like reverse nationalism. and so many people here play into that stereotype of people on the left hating america. it's not quite hating america, it;'s just a one sided view that america is always deficient when compared to the rest of the world which is OH so civilized.

it's really an astounding example of shit colored glasses distorting the view

it's also proof positive that these viewpoints are either grossly distorted or that people are just afraid to ever present the (rah rah) america attitude, but free to express the (american sucks) attitude, because that's the accepted status quo norm. (i realize that's redundant)

hth

[McCamy Taylor]

13. The Myth (of the Myth) of American exceptionalism.

Obviously the phrase "American exceptionalism" exists. I have seen it used by several different people at DU in response to threads which I have written which criticize some aspect of this country. It is a very weight authoritative sounding term. (Note how similar exceptionalism is to existentialism) But, I have never been able to figure out what it actually means. So, I decided to investigation.

I. Semantics

ex⋅cep⋅tion⋅al
–adjective
1. forming an exception or rare instance; unusual; extraordinary: The warm weather was exceptional for January.
2. unusually excellent; superior: an exceptional violinist.

American exceptionalism. At first glance, this seems redundant, like saying “You are a unique individual.” Just as no two people are alike, each group of people is different. For instance, mountain peoples tend to have exceptionally strong bones, to enable them to climb. People who evolved at far northern latitudes developed exceptionally pale skin so that they could absorb more UV radiation and produce more Vitamin D to prevent rickets. This does not mean that sturdy bones or pale skin are better. The value of these adaptations is relative. A group of fishermen would find those heavy bones a burden when diving. If you live in Arizona, pale skin increases your chance of melanoma.

If questioned, many of us would agree “taller is better”. But, once you move into the era of space exploration, big stature means a big need for oxygen and other nutrients which take up valuable space within the limited confines of a space craft. For astronauts, “smaller is better”. Five feet seven inches is now the official optimum height according to NASA, which makes astronauts exceptionally short in a country where the average man is five foot ten.

So, if exceptional means “unusual”, what does the phrase “American exceptionalism” mean? What is “usual” on our planet? Since “American” is widely used in the United States to refer to U.S. citizens (to the chagrin of other folks residing in other parts of the American continents), the term seems to imply that people in the United States are not the same as the majority of people on Earth. Is this true? I checked a list of populations by country. Sure enough, most people in the world are either Chinese or Indian. The two countries combined have eight times the number of people that we have. That means that people who eat rice as a staple with their meals out number those who eat bread. So, we are exceptional (or unusual) in our dependence upon wheat.

This may seem like a trivial difference. However, those who have studied anthropology and the effect which environmental and economic factors can have on a group will tell you that what people eat plays an important role in the development of their culture. A nomadic herder and a rice farmer will have very different social organizations. A fertile river valley gives rise to a civilization which differs from that which forms on top of a mountain.

America is unusual in another way. Very few countries around the globe have witnessed the near genocide of their native peoples and the introduction of immigrants from many different parts of the world. Canada and Australia are a lot like us in this respect. In most other countries, the citizens are the descendents of the same people who lived there two or three thousand years ago.

For our study of the semantics to be complete, we have to consider the second meaning of the word “exceptional”. “Unusually excellent, superior”. And here we seem to strike pay dirt. For while the phrase “American unusualness” is without meaning, “American superiority” is something we all understand. It has been pounded in our heads since grade school, when the teacher told us that the U.S. had never attacked another country first (a blatant lie).

Certainly there are plenty of people in this large, rich, powerful country who believe that (United States of) Americans are superior. The myth of American Superiority is very real. But is American Exceptionalism the same thing? Or is it a convenient fiction, like the phrase “Department of Defense” which glosses over the unpleasantness of having a Department of War? Or like “Compassionate Conservativism” which seeks to make a virtue of the failure to act in defense of the weak and needy.

II. Etymology

You can learn a lot about words and phrases by studying their origins. Apparently, Alexis de Toqueville got the whole thing started by calling the circumstances that created the United States “exceptional”. We know that he was interested in the notion of democracy---a revolutionary idea for most of the world back in the early 19th century. So, we can assume that for him America was “exceptional” because it was a large country with a Constitutionally mandated representative government. I guess that made us pretty special 150 years ago, but not so much today, when India wears the title of “World’s Largest Democracy.”

More recently, Sarah Palin has embraced the phrase “American exceptionalism”.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/24/opinion/24iht-edcohen.1.16446140.html?_r=1

Sarah Palin loves the word "exceptional." At a rally in Nevada the other day, the Republican vice-presidential candidate said, "We are an exceptional nation." Then she declared, "America is an exceptional country." In case anyone missed that, she added: "You are all exceptional Americans."
I have to hand it to Palin, she may be onto something in her batty way: The election is very much about American exceptionalism.
This is the idea, around since the Founding Fathers and elaborated on by Alexis de Tocqueville, that the United States is a nation unlike any other, with a special mission to build the "city upon a hill" that will serve as liberty's beacon for mankind.
But exceptionalism has taken an ugly twist of late. It's become the angry refuge of the America that wants to deny the real state of the world.

Huh? So, does that mean that by pointing out the faults of my country, I am denying reality, living in a fairy tale land?

From the conservative Washington Times here is Monica Crowley chastising Barrack Obama for his perceived criticism of the phrase.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jul/01/american-exceptionalism/

He replied, "I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism, and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism."

Snip

President Obama's reference to British or Greek exceptionalism suggests a belief that the United States doesn't stand alone with a particular greatness but that every nation is great in its own way and America is simply one of many nations with something cool to offer.
This kind of multicultural, politically correct, "we're all unique in unique ways, every kid must win at dodgeball" thinking is the basis for his economic and foreign policies, from his schemes to nationalize the auto, banking, and health care industries to his lollygagging on behalf of those fighting for greater freedom in Iran.
It is the rationale for his Vesuvian explosion of big government and the much higher taxes required to finance it. It also explains Mr. Obama's irrepressible urge to apologize for past perceived American injustices and ill-conceived foreign "meddling." In Mr. Obama's kaleidoscopic left-wing view, no nation is better than any other, no country can tell another country not to have nuclear weapons, and we're all socialists now.

Let me see if I have this straight. Because Obama thinks that all countries think highly of themselves, he wants to socialize medicine in the U.S. This is like saying “Because the sky is blue, my dog likes hamburger.” The two statements may be true, but they have nothing to do with each other. Well, that was not much help---

Hold on a second. This is the Washington Times we are talking about here. Would Obama really piss all over the American flag? I think not. He wore one on his lapel during the campaign.

I decided to look for his full response to the question.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism. I’m enormously proud of my country and its role and history in the world. If you think about the site of this summit and what it means, I don’t think America should be embarrassed to see evidence of the sacrifices of our troops, the enormous amount of resources that were put into Europe postwar, and our leadership in crafting an Alliance that ultimately led to the unification of Europe. We should take great pride in that.

http://cedarlounge.wordpress.com/2009/04/28/obama-and-the-issue-of-american-exceptionalism/

Obama goes on to wave that flag for three more paragraphs as if to say I dare you to call me unpatriotic just because I do not believe in American supremacy . Wow. That is a whole lot of flag waving. Could it be that Obama really, secretly believes in American exceptionalism? Here is one writer from the left who says that he does.

In short, there is a lot about the American way of life in this respect that should be apologized for. Massive inequality, terrorism (both state sponsored on the American side and radical uprisings on the side of those the U.S. has created those conditions for), extensive human rights abuses (which I'll make note of an upcoming post), and even extensive environmental degradation (which I will also discuss in an upcoming post.)

Obama's grandiose declaration that there is nothing for the American's to apologize for (along with his plans for Iraq and Afghanistan, which will be my next topic) is a pretty clear declaration that while the Bush doctrine is no longer the leading ideology in Washington, Wilsonian idealism and American exceptionalism still hold exalted status as guiding ideologies.

http://resistancemonamour.blogspot.com/2009/03/obama-and-american-exceptionalism.html

Oh man! What a mess! The right wing criticizes Obama for disavowing the doctrine of American exceptionalism. The left wing accuses him of secretly believing---and acting out---that doctrine.

III. Context

Being an English lit major, I know that context counts. You can change the meaning of a words or phrase completely depending upon how you use it. “Ladies” has a much different connotation than “bare naked ladies.”

My own experience with the phrase “American exceptionalism” has been limited to a handful of posters at DU who whip it out and wave it around while they complain that my posts about the United States are too negative and don’t I have something nice to say about my country? Surprisingly, they accuse me of promoting a doctrine of “American exceptionalism.” Do they live in Bizarro World, where criticism is praise? Or, is this some right wing word game, like calling feminists “fascists” and Nazi’s “socialists”? Are those who object to criticism of the U.S. members of the “American superiority” league who know that their ideology will not be welcome at DU, and therefore they seek to muddy the waters by proclaiming that only an American Supremacist would attack the U.S.? Or is this just more political propaganda, like the doublespeak of 1984. Big Brother can be trusted with his power because he is your brother . And I can be trusted to complain that all attacks against the U.S. are unwarranted, because I object to the idea that the United States is superior.

Roland Barthes could make sense of this mess, if he was still alive.

“Men do not have with myth a relationship based on truth but on use: they depoliticize according to their needs.”

[StarfarerBill]

3. Oh, willful ignorance and arrogance aren't solely American shortcomings...

...but no other country I know of so proudly makes them virtues.

:dunce:

[Whisp]

7. what you said.

no other country on earth is as proud of their ignorance as americans are.
and so loud about it.

lots of present company excepted tho. this is DU not mainstream stupid vaccuous dumb as a bag of mud americans

[Overseas]

4. K&R. Good questions. //nt for now.

[cherokeeprogressive]

5. "All You Need is Love". Hmmm, wasn't that John Lennon? n/t

[pink-o]

8. I remember watching James Burke's "The Day the Universe Changed"...

...back in the 80s. It was a 6 part PBS series, part science, part sociology. One of the episodes focused solely on how social Darwinism manifested itself into three powerful 20th century government structures: Communism in Russia and China, Fascism in Germany, Italy and Spain, and Capitalism in the USA.

I can't remember the entire premise, but the latter was all about survival of the fittest, of course, and the idea that individual freedom trumped everything else.

I wish the series were more readily available, I could link up to it. But it sells on EBay now for about $600.00.

[Crunchy Frog]

17. I know where you can download it from.

PM me if you're interested.

[kristopher]

9. Excellent, thanks. k&r

[Prophet 451]

11. K & fucking R!

Well said, that man!

[Delphinus]

14. Very good conversation

and commentary here. Thanks all for what you have shared.

[LongTomH]

15. This is the type of intelligent commentary that keeps me coming back to DU!

One of your best!:kick:

[Mari333]

16. knr

lies lies and damnable lies.