"Confused yet? So am I." - Bret Callentine

"Confusion is mightier than the sword." - Abbie Hoffman

On break again, I would like to engage Bret Callentine's recent article on health care. To give you a head start on dismissing my position as unworthy of your serious consideration, you should know that I'm just a crazy radical youth still in my 'rebellious phase,' and that my grasp of reality is still a bit idealistic. If that doesn't stir a comforting, dismissive attitude that reinforces a sense of sercurity in an anonymous average world, then it might help to know that I'm still a student, and haven't yet had a chance to accumulate enough Real world experience to fine tune my awareness of the way things are. If that doesn't cut it, then you can regergitate the standard colloquial dismissal of most radical positions by collapsing mine into 'communism' and declaring, 'communism is a great idea, but doesn't work,' or otherwise into anarchy where the line is, "but without rigid and macroscopic social infrastructure, the world [excluding places like Iraq, of course] would be CHAOS!" I'm trembling in my boots. Then of course if that's still not quite enough (Mr. Callentine, the 'haves' always want more!), you can at least dismiss my position on the grounds that I am some sort of pompous, um, 'sophomoric' intellectual awash in my own ego, or produce your own piece in a balanced and reasoned tone that makes your opinion seem more factual, or perhaps in a sweepingly charismatic or stylish tone that captures the hearts of the masses. Finally, if you find yourself, with fright, starting to understand where I'm coming from, feel free to resort to the ULTIMATE: completely conflate my apparently dangerous perspective with terrorism, communism, anarchy, evil, treason, voodoo, chaos, or another ideological umbrella term infused with enough pejorative tone, negativity, and paranoia to have me dismissed by someone else that is more powerful and spiteful. So! Now that the important issue has been addressed, let us begin.

I was excited about where Mr. Callentine was going with this quote:

"Let's just say that between the major candidates that remain, I'm not filled with a whole lot of confidence that they'll even stick to their campaign promises, let alone affect positive change when they do. That's why I'm glad that no one is counting on my endorsement to help them make their own decision. It kind of takes the pressure off of things for me." Phew. 'Could it be?,' I thought to myself in near disbelief. 'Could it be that space is openning up for 'them' to make their own decision?' Tuned in, I Turned on to the next paragraph, and saw it repeated: "despite the passing of the Ohio primary, we're still faced with a major decision in the Fall. Therefore, while I'll make no pitch to sell you on any one candidate..." Well at this point I was hooked, and knew that I'd have a lot to say in my next response.

On that note, let us begin afresh! I'd like to take a careful look at the messages underlying some of the arguments in this article. Lets look at the context of his voice. Mr. Callentine presents us, graciously (and in his paradigm of undifferentiated American citizenship, unnecessarily) with his own socio-economic status: "I must admit, I make a modest living; my family is by no means either rich or poor. As such, when it comes to health care, I'm afforded certain liberties that others might deem a luxury, while still having to navigate obstacles some others might avoid all together." Absolved of any guilt for deviating from a neutral average American prototype, Mr. Callentine is now in a position to speak for the rest of us average Americans. This icon of 'average American' can then stand in as the model for any American, to flatten any sense of de facto inequalities between us. Also, despite the implicit individualism in his title, the neutral author uses words like 'we,' 'us,' and 'Americans' to stand for all American citizens, so that it appears self-evident that everyone should be just as average and uncomplaining as the prototype. Here is one example: "Despite what Michael Moore would have you believe, Americans have access to the finest doctors and medicines in the entire world." There are two implicit messages I glean from this statement: 1. Michael Moore has done less empirical and or sociological research than Mr. Callentine and is therefore less reliable 2. complaints should be raised about the health care system only when they affect America as a whole, which is, of course, represented by the 'average American' in Mr. Callentine's paradigm. The general message is then, as I read it, that because Mr. Callentine is located in a socio-economic stratum that most of us suburbanites can identify with, a stratum that, conveniently, gives us just enough to be comfortable and educated but not privileged, we are absolved of any responsibility for the care of others who may be less fortunate than us. My guess is that we can trace this attitude back, through 'common sense' and thus probably the public education system (usually quite functional for average Americans), to a reductive misreading of Charles Darwin's The Origin of the Species. Such a reading (and it seems to be the standard, average one) extracts and isolates the competitive components of Darwin's work, projects them onto a mythical 'human nature,' and then uses this competitive human nature to justify, with either unbridled enthusiasm or self-righteously pious and defeatest regret, the stratification of a whole 'society.' Both positions assume a fundamentally competitive or greedy human nature. Maybe we can't change it, but at least we can repent and count our own, average, blessing$. And then we can deposit those blessings in the bank, and withdraw them later when it's convenient.

But is there any other way??? Mr. Callentine also addresses this question:

"I know a lot of you are still holding onto the dream of some utopian society where everyone shares equally in the fruits of collective labor. But let's face it, that's just not a reality. The Real situation is..." What makes me giggle a little about this quote is that Mr. Callentine, without a whole lot of empirical evidence but with an appeal to the ideology of neutral common sense (the hidden collective that gives his argument authority via down to earth proclamations like 'that's just not a reality') stifles the possibility that abstractions like 'society' and 'reality' were already dreams in the first place, or at least very general signifiers that could be used to imbue one who mobilizes them with a god like knowledge of the 'objective world.' In all seriousness, it's comforting when I can count on common sense to make me feel safe in a world predetermined by external forces, but sometimes I have to wonder if I'm jumping the gun by positing such a world of personal powerlessness...Am I afraid of someone or Something?

I suppose, ULTIMATELY, that I believe in the truth of the idea that jumping the Gun is a necessary gesture to preserve a sense of reality, a reality where "the 'haves' will always find a way to have, sometimes to the direct detriment of the 'have nots.'" I'm actually quite obstinate about this one, I insist this is necessary. I'm serious here. That's just the way things are. It's human nature, we're competitive. No one will deny that. But then again...it's as if there is some sort of anxiety behind my words, under the persistent statement and restatement of the unchanging status quo of my position. It's as if there's Something I'm trying to hide from myself...nevermind.

Getting back to my point of focus, to illustrate how words like 'reality' and 'truth' can be used to bolster authority, I'd like to present an example from a foreward to 'German Physics' by German physicist Philipp Lenard in 1935:

"At the end of the war when Jews in Germany began to dominate and set the tone, the full force of its [Jewish physics'] characteristics suddenly burst forth like a flood. It then promptly found avid supporters even among many authors of non-Jewish or of not really pure Jewish blood. To characterize it briefly, let me best refer you simply to the activities of its undoubtedly most prominent representative, to the unquestionably pure-blooded Jew A. Einstein. His 'relativity theories' attempted to transfrom and dominate the whole of physics; but they have now already completely played themselves out against reality. Apparently they never were even intended to be true. The Jew conspicuously lacks any understanding of truth beyond a merely superficial agreement with reality, which is independent of human thought. This is in contrast to the Aryan scientist's drive, which is as obstinate as it is serious in its quest for truth. The Jew has no noticeable capacity to grasp reality in any form other than as it appears in human activity and in the weaknesses of his host nation. Astonishingly, truth and reality do not appear to be anything at all special or different from untruth to Jews, but are equivalent to any one of the many different theoretical options available." (emphasis added)

What do you think, Einstein? What else was I going to say? Oh yeah, there was another excerpt I found intriguing: "even IF the government institutes a state-run health care system, someone somewhere will find a way to develop a system of private doctors and private hospitals, where anyone with the extra money will be able to skip the lines of the regular hospital and not have to deal with the government red tape." Certainly we can Fix this problem somehow...after all, that's what this country's all about, right? Pull yourself up by your bootstraps! Get in there slugger! Get 'er done! So what will it be Mr. C.? State or Capital? Socialism or Libertarianism? Collective or Independent? Or somewhere safe in the average in-between? I personally am getting a bit tired of these trains of thought on a tired old one-dimensional spectrum. Always exploring either/or, both/and, mix and match, but never neither/nor. I had more to say, but I'm running into computer issues; I think this machine is broken.