Civilization: It Really Could Work
I had a fascinating experience today, which mainly involved going to get vaccinated with the COVID-19 vaccine. It came through the grapevine that I was now eligible to get vaccinated. I have been looking forward to it, and when I heard of my opportunity, I wasted no time pursuing it.
The pursuit led to a series of revelations a bit later. First, was the VA process for getting the vaccine. Being a service veteran, I was told that all over 55 years of age could now just go and get it. Now, I have never used VA medical insurance, so I would have to spend some time getting signed up. Fine. A vaccine that would protect me and those around me further from the potentially deadly virus that has been everyone’s daily worry for the past year seemed well worth the sign up process.
I have had few experiences with government services since my time in the Marines, so my impressions of them basically remained from that time. Well, things have changed, and not for the better. I did the process on the phone, and in that time I spoke with 2 women, and 1 man. They were all very nice, and helpful. What was really lacking was the service itself. The phone system was terrible, and in so many ways. But, who cares? I really didn’t. I was going to put up with this, make an appointment, and just be done with it. I had plenty of things to do, so I just went about my other tasks, including driving, while I went though this process, and I almost never talk while driving.
I could go into details about how getting lost on their automated system made it a bad experience, but you can imagine that. It was quite bad. The first two options ask if you have a medical emergency, or if you want to commit suicide. Clearly, not much has been invested in this system. And to make a long story short, once they found my military record and verified my eligibility, they asked me my income. To my surprise, my income vastly disqualifies me for their medical service. The last man I spoke to asked me, “well, if it is not by much, maybe your medical expenses will bring you back into…”. No. I was past it by multiples.
I was fine with that. I thanked him for his time, and that was it. Later that day, it was clear to me why some Americans resist the type of universal medical care that I think all Americans should have. I’m pretty fortunate. I can get medical care without going through mind numbing phone systems. I have doctors who form associations with me, and make my routines easy. My experience with medical care vastly outpaces what I experienced today, and it all became clear. It is not that America can not afford the care that we need. Those Americans who oppose care for all, it is that they want care that they can buy and others can’t. Why? Well, in my moment of clarity, those who would oppose care for others feel that they can trust the care that they can buy and others can not. It is a certain sort of faith. They believe in a dollar, and those who have fewer believe in those dollars. Each one is worth 100 cents, and not even Fox News will tell you differently. It is not disputed. And the more of those you can pull together, the better result you will receive. That is basically true in the US, in most of the commodities that we seek.
Conversely, universal care is a sort of system. The more who buy into it, the better it is. It is most especially so when the wealthier pay into it. The Social Democrats in Scandinavia and even Canada do much better in health outcomes than we do here in the US because they’re is broad buy in. (I’m preaching to the choir here). The Americans who oppose these do not trust systems. Wealth means control, and wealth disparity is the litmus. Those who oppose systems would rather control their outcome even at the risk of a worse result because they lack the trust of what can be done systematically.
That is the big part that just keeps expanding like a chain reaction. The more systematic something is, the more diverse it is, the less trusted it is…by those who lack such trust. This creates strict tribalism. Who you know becomes much more important than what you know…or what THEY know. You never have to trust what they know.
This thing that I think I realized, has helped me to understand how Trump’s supporters, as one example, continue to follow him. It even helps me to understand how some of his previous opponents like Lindsey Graham can become and Ted Cruz can become such strong defenders of him. The evidence based group is easy enough to understand. The epiphany came with the non evidence based. Someone like Trump can be proved wrong, and it is of no consequence because facts never mattered to begin with. They don’t trust those. They trust their connections. Connections can be manipulated and controlled. Outcomes matter. Systems, models, and sophisticated knowledge does not matter. The Constitution doesn’t matter. International laws don’t matter. The Periodic Table of Elements doesn’t matter. Neither inductive nor deductive reasoning matter.
Any lie will work as long it is said by your guys. Any success by your opponent is either a fraud or the greatest failure in the history of failures. Evidence doesn’t. It is not part of the picture. Qanon should have disappeared after January 6th when the mass arrests that were part of the myth did not materialize. And for some followers, it ceased to be a thing. But, as we all know, Qanon continues. Again, it should have disappeared after Trump was not inaugurated on March 4th, as the recent pivot myth predicted. It isn’t disappearing because they do not require trust from their people. They belong. And no matter how quickly the Biden administration makes order out of the chaos that has reigned, those opposed to him will never acknowledge it. They don’t trust science, vaccines, medicine, government, or mainstream media. It is all how they define trust, and about whom they invest it in.
koshersalaami
03/06/2021 @ 11:58 pm
This is true. This is about group loyalty, not analysis.
In a recent comment on my most recent post I talked about moral development. This group over everything ties into that analysis. This issue is quite literally cognitive.
Ron Powell
03/07/2021 @ 10:08 am
“What was really lacking was the service itself.”
This is the primary difference between ‘health care’ and ‘health care coverage’.
“It is all how they define trust, and about whom they invest it in.”
“As democracy is perfected, the office of the President represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be occupied by a downright fool and a complete narcissistic moron.”
—-H.L. Mencken
Trump was able to poison their minds but couldn’t stay in office long enough to poison the kool- ade…
But, he came pretty damned close to doing just that….
Bitey
03/07/2021 @ 10:57 am
While the attempt to be vaccinated was how this occurred to me, this is not about health care. It is like Kosher mentioned, this is about group loyalty, and how that affects how we see and understand things.
Consider the Information Age. How do most people participate in it, through communication. What is being communicated with this information? Group identity. And through group identity, not only are facts and reasoning being attacked, but democracy itself is close to benign destroyed. This would be counter-intuitive to someone led by evidence, but as it turns out, most Americans are led by group identity.
Ron Powell
03/07/2021 @ 11:08 am
My point was that there are people who believe that private health care coverage at top dollar will guarantee the higher quality of health care and that universal coverage provided by the government would automatically reduce the quality of the health care which is a palpably false notion….
Bitey
03/07/2021 @ 11:18 am
I agree. And they feel that way about everything that money can buy. And when whatever they receive is deficient in some way, the solution will be more of their privately held money, rather than a broad approach of talent/solution sourcing. Boiled down, they believe in the value of money and wealth, and do not believe (trust) the value of human talent. It seems like a small thing, but if you apply this theory to practically everything we do as a civilization, you can see this thought process contaminating the result. You’ve heard the adage that goes, when you have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Well, money/wealth is the quintessential hammer. And what’s worse, it keeps civilization from developing technologies that make hammers obsolete.
koshersalaami
03/07/2021 @ 2:43 pm
There’s another aspect to this and it has to do with a conservative canon, a basic assumption that goes along with group identity. It was best summed up by President Reagan, when he said
“The nine most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I’m from the Government and I’m here to help.’”
There is a firm belief that private is inherently superior to public. Government is looked upon as corrupt, inefficient, and bureaucratic. Profit is looked at as an inherently superior motive to service.
This is bullshit of course. Both efficiently and bureaucracy exist in both the public and private sectors.That’s what Dilbert is about. Fiefdoms develop in both sectors. As to profit being a motive, the problem with that is that as a motive it tends to supplant the mission of the organization, which sometimes isn’t making money.
Some anti-government thought probably comes from the observation of really oppressive governments, but not all governments are Nazi or Stalinist or even fundamentalist.
Bitey
03/07/2021 @ 3:14 pm
Yes. And the inferiority of government as told by Reagan is the cute propaganda joke. The truth is actually more basic. Government, and the committee method requires cooperation and trust. It dilutes the ability to control, manipulate, and corrupt. What one style of thinkers would see as corruption, the other sees as straight power. These people don’t favor small government. They want to peel back civilization entirely.
koshersalaami
03/07/2021 @ 11:53 pm
I don’t completely understand what they want or why they want it. I suspect that they’re vaguely for or against things and aren’t seriously asking themselves about consequences. Grass is always greener.
Bitey
03/08/2021 @ 5:37 am
Everything that can be created by government, they are willing to sacrifice in order to eliminate government. In the case of the UK, they want to eliminate involvement with the European Union and all that it brings economically, and diplomatically, in exchange for smaller and more homogeneous. Within countries like theirs and ours, the reactionary forces seek to eliminate all that civilization has evolved into, and all that it might evolve into with progressivism. All that in favor of something resembling the Middle Ages in Europe. Imagine the theme song, “Those Were the Days” in the opening of “All in the Family”, but rather than hardening back to “Herbert Hoover again…”, the reactionary movements sweeping the world today harken back to Charlemagne.
koshersalaami
03/08/2021 @ 11:17 am
It’s very similar to ISIS, only ostensibly without the religious base. I say “ostensibly” because I don’t doubt that most participants think what they’re doing is protecting Christianity. I would disagree virulently that that’s what they’re doing, but I think it’s what they think they’re doing.
They’re also blatantly doing this in the name of patriotism, though I’d characterize that as insanely off base. Their agenda would cripple everything this country does. Internationally, like the guys opposing Brexit, I’d say the same thing because they have the same economic forces we have, not to mention some of the same social forces. And a major demographic force: Low White birth rates. Not that it’s a White thing worldwide – Japan has the same problem even more severely and there’s a possibility China will also.
This opens another conversation, not that it’s a new one: the ramifications of a proportionately shrinking White population. The more these guys take power, the more impact this phenomenon has (they generally don’t define me as White), which is weirdly ironic because they’re the main people concerned with precisely that impact. The more integrated we get, the less that matters, because it’s opposition that makes it matter. The same is true in Britain, where they have similar problems, as illustrated by why Harry and Megan left Britain (being as Oprah’s interview aired yesterday).
Sometimes closing ranks is protective, but sometimes all it does is make enemies. This is one of those times.
Bitey
03/08/2021 @ 2:01 pm
Yeah. That’s how I see it. Or to say it a little differently, we are on a path domestically, as are several other large nations and large economies, to being in a situation where the world as we have known in since the middle of the 20th century is in for a big change. I fear that war may be part of that. Diplomacy, governance, and investment in systems has to begin now, or we start seeing the conflagration of war. I am quite sick of saying such alarmist things, but if I said otherwise, I’d be lying.
koshersalaami
03/08/2021 @ 5:44 pm
Right now what I’m most afraid of is a reversal of course in the 2022 elections. Most things are moving in the right direction in the US at the moment, but they won’t if the Republicans take the House or Senate in 2022.
I have less faith in the US than I ever have. We are moving in exactly the right direction and if we can continue to move there we will be in unusually good shape but I don’t have faith right now that we will. The wake up call for me was the utter failure of the second impeachment effort and how much of the population showed Trump support in its aftermath. Too much of the country was OK with the Capitol invasion.
Bitey
03/08/2021 @ 6:22 pm
One lesson from childhood that was the most disturbing was learning about Reconstruction, and its end. It is the most disturbing part of history for me because its end and reversal lasted 100 years. It was difficult to process because it bleeds over on to what America is (or was), who I am (or was), and what my country thought of me. Over time since then, it seems to me that Reconstruction was the aberration, and what came after was the true representation of what America was (or is).
Whether one looks at that moment in history, or what Europe and the UK seems to be grappling with, even today, it seems like this is who we are. This is the height of western civilization, and it highlights what is still left to be accomplished. So…
2022 is a rational worry. I think your analysis is a good one. The potential exists to move forward in next year’s elections, and the danger exists that we wont. Not doing so this time presents many risks, which don’t need to be enumerated. We get it. I have a great deal of faith in the players, and their talent in handling these problems that we are presented with, but that also comes with a relatively new understanding that we are much lower as a country, and as a specie than what had formed my understanding of who we were (or are).
I am not surprised by the fact that it was racism that drove the Duke and Duchess of Sussex out of the British Royal family. I am not shocked by the discussion about the potential shade of Archie’s skin color…as if that had some meaning for the family. I have watched latent racism dawn on the non self-aware racist before. Right now, the Western world is going, ‘Oh, we didn’t know…’, to something that has been obvious to others forever. And watching this slow…slow realization flicker on, be discussed…and then probably disappear again into the murky waters of status quo, I am not optimistic about what may be learned. And it will take that lesson on a broad scale that will be needed to succeed in the 2022 elections, and then in 2024.
So, I guess the Chauvin trial, and the reaction to the Meghan and Harry bombshells, and a number of other canaries in the coal mine serve to predict whether we are able to be different in 2022 than we were in 1877.
koshersalaami
03/09/2021 @ 11:00 am
I wish I could say that I was placing bets. I’m not. Yes, I think the arc of history bends toward justice, but that arc has a very slight curve to it and, looked at in more detail, it has a whole lot of switchbacks. You’re completely right about Reconstruction.
The Biden administration will accomplish things for this country. However, there’s a big question as to whether the Biden administration will get credit for the things it accomplishes. There are two problems here. The first is that Democrats are terrible salespeople, which is a problem because Republicans are good salespeople. And, as I’ve said multiple times, the Democrats are often unaware of what they (we) have to sell. The history of Democratic policies is full of social policies that produced economic benefits that Democrats ignore. We’ll probably see that with medical policies. The Biden administration will be directly responsible for improved vaccine distribution which will open the economy sooner that it would have opened under a Republican administration, but I don’t have faith in the Democrats using that political capital effectively if at all.
The second problem is the outlets through which information is spread. Some Republicans will say over and over that the election of 2020 was stolen. They will say it on news programs in mainstream news and those doing the covering and interviewing will get tired of correcting them every time they say it, but that correction needs to be made every time. We have to stay out of the NYTimes trap and I don’t trust what media we have to do that, at least not most of the. The Washington Post I trust but it doesn’t reach the right people. The Times trap I’m referring to is an editorial policy – which I don’t know if is still in effect – called Sophisticated Objectivity. Sophisticated Objectivity is Newsspeak (literally in this case) for valuing impartiality over objectivity. The problem with this, of course, is that the more extreme one side gets, the further to that side the journalistic center shifts and the more that center deserts merit.
In an odd parallel, because though the subject is slightly different but the mentality is the same, the press is saying “we didn’t know” about what happens when they aren’t truly vigilant. They didn’t intend for Trump to be elected in 2016 but they handed him the election by treating Hillary with a major double standard that they didn’t begin to hold Trump to. It can happen again.
It will be weirder this time because the first time the press’ corporate ownership was hedging their bets. This time around corporate ownership generally opposes Trump. But they’re still timid.