12/12/24

 Thursday, December 12, 2024

D+37

1961 Adolf Eichman was found guilty of war crimes in Israel

2000 The US Supreme Court released its 5-4 decision in Bush v. Gore

2017 Democrat Doug Jones defeated Republican Roy Moore for the Alabama Senate seat in an upset win marked by allegations of sexual misconduct against Moore

2023 U.N. General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to demand a humanitarian cease-fire in Gaza, amid reports that 18,000 Palestinians had been killed, 70% children and women, with over 80% now homeless

In bed at 9:45, awake around 4:15, and up at 4:45, thinking of Lilly and the Little River Band's Cool Change.  It's 4° outside, wind chill of -18°.    SEVERE WEATHER ALERT: icy wind chills as low as -20° to -25°. I'm doing a mid-load of laundry, thinking about the birds and other animals outside in the cold.

Prednisone, day 212, 7.5 mg., day 27.  Prednisone at 5:10 with hot peppermint vanilla cream tea.  Meds at 9:00.  

LTMW   I see a steady stream of all our regular visitors plus a crow and a starling, on the 2 tube feeders, the 2 suet cakes, and on the ground below the feeders.  As I type these words, it is 10° where the feeders are with a wind chill of -8° so I suspect the birds need lots of feed to keep their body temperatures warm enough to sustain life.  At sunset yesterday, I filled the sunflower tube and spread mealworms and suet buds on the ground.  The manager at Wild Birds Unlimited told me that they might encourage the return of the bluebird(s) who visited recently.  Looking out our window over the kitchen sink, I see what I think is a kestrel, or sparrow hawk, standing atop and pinning down a smaller bird on the ground under the berry tree., waiting for it to die or to become unresisting enough to permit it to be eaten.  . . . Do robins flock together during the winter, like cedar waxwings?  At 1 o'clock this afternoon there were 31 robins on and under our berry trees, eating.  In the warmer months, the robins always appear on their own, or perhaps in twos.  Wahzupwidat?

Three Columnists Wrestle With the Lionizing of Luigi Mangione, Michelle Goldberg, Tressie McMillan Cottom, and Zaynep Trufecki in this morning's NYTimes.   I was interested in the language used by these upper-crust, highly educated, privileged reporters in describing America's health insurance industry: the explosion of disdain toward health insurers . . . the intense rage people feel toward these insurance companies, which I understand and share . . . coverage decisions that seem highly arbitrary, impenetrable and unfair . . . coverage decisions that seem highly arbitrary, impenetrable and unfair . . .  without accountability and recourse . . .  these companies are purely extractive. Relative to a single-payer system, they create no value whatsoever. . . industries that affect and control our lives, our futures, our pain. . . The system has to make a profit and, in doing so, the system victimizes a lot of people. . . huge, implacable systems they hate . . . disgust with the health care system . .  lDecades of failing systems and institutions that don’t live up to their end of the bargain . . . health insurers are cold, remote and impossible to navigate . . . the heartless precarity that underlies so much of American life. . . a system of interlocking ninth circles of hell for all of our basic needs . . . Our moral economy is trash. . . What other kind of company inspires that sort of hatred? . . . the moral rot of our system exposed . . 

McMillan Cottom: Nowhere is the perverse nature of our moral economy more evident than health care. It is not just expensive. It is often tied to jobs people either cannot get or cannot afford to leave if they want to be able to see a doctor. Health care is one of the biggest reasons that Americans file for bankruptcy. The incentives are to put profit over people. We know this and yet we also gaslight millions of Americans. We tell them that the system is fair and meritocratic, that their quality of life is not deteriorating and, if it is, then they did not work hard enough. Scam culture makes everyone a mark. The moral economy of a scam culture says that everyone deserves to be a mark. That is dehumanizing.

Goldberg: And scam culture thrives amid the insecurity our health care system creates! One thing alternative medicine does is make people feel like their needs are being seen and addressed, even if they’re being addressed in bogus ways. There’s a direct link between people’s disgust with the health care system and the dangerous rise of R.F.K. Jr.

Healy: More than 60 percent of U.S. adults say it is the federal government’s responsibility to ensure all Americans have health care coverage. That 60-plus percent is the highest percentage in more than a decade. Will we see any movement anytime soon toward ensuring better coverage?

Tufekci: I have family and friends in countries where there is some form of national health care, sometimes with a private insurance option as an extra. They all have some complaints, too, and there are trade-offs to any system. But the key difference in the U.S. system is the sense that there is an unaccountable, cold, calculating entity profiting from one’s misery and vulnerability. . . The health insurance executives are reportedly in shock by the response to this killing, and I presume many politicians are, too. What do I expect here? They’ll hire more security firms, travel more on private jets, live in gated communities and interact even less with the public. As I said, this period feels like the era between the two world wars in terms of the shortsightedness of people with power who should know better and the rise of demagogues who successfully exploit the rage and anger.

Confirmation bias.  The reporters express what I have long thought not only about America's health care and health insurance system,, but also about America's corporate neo-liberal capitalist economic system generally, what Tressie McMillan Cottom calls our 'perverse moral economy."  Michelle Goldberg calls the health insurance industry a purely "extractive industry" that adds no value to Americans' health care.  Zaynep Trufecki predicts not that the federal politicians will move toward a more just, more moral system, but rather that corporate execs and the politicians who support them in return for their support will even further protectively isolate themselves from the rest of us.  What we refuse to admit, even to ourselves, is that for many Americans, this country is a dystopia, reminding us daily of the worst aspects of 1984, Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451  A Clockwork Orange,, and Animal Farm.  I'm too 'out of it' today to develop this thought but I have often done so in earlier entries in this journal.