Skip to main content

Here Goes, Doug

Berkley MI
Saturday
I’ve been challenged by my friend Doug, an Ontario resident, to explain to bewildered Canadians “why the current health crisis will/will not move the U.S.A. toward universal health care.” He provided an imaginative list of colorful words that he admonished me not to use, but he didn’t include “dumbfuck,” which has been used in these pages previously, and will no doubt continue to find apt uses.

 The answer to Doug’s question is, of course, it depends. It depends—more than it’s ever depended before—on what happens between now and the November election. The future of American healthcare is only one thing—and by no means the most important thing—that will hang in the balance.

 America as a concept has been breaking down before our eyes for some time. This virus is exacerbating all the forces contributing to that breakdown, and injecting a panicked urgency into the mix. The possibilities for the next eight months are as staggering as they are fraught with peril.

 The happy ending would be that Republicans are overwhelmed in the election, ceding the presidency and all of Congress, ushering in a Democratic administration that (a) immediately brings criminal charges against a hundred or so people starting with Trump and his entire family, and (b) moves to restore enough of both the government and the healthcare system that a universal plan of some kind can, however painfully, emerge.

 I’m rolling my eyes even as I write this, but it must be said that this outcome is significantly more likely than it has ever been. Which is not to say it’s likely. But I’m guessing some 60 percent of the electorate is enraged at and embarrassed by our dumbfuck president (there, I got one in). Not to mention everyone around him. And that was before the virus. In a fair election, I have no doubt he will lose. But let’s not be naïve.

 At the extreme other end, the nightmare scenario would be that the country devolves into a dystopian anarchy that our methodically dismantled government simply cannot deal with, which moves Trump to declare emergency powers and cancel the election. This would be a shitstorm I can’t even get my brain around, which would, among other things, surely spell the end of the healthcare discussion for many years—which would be the least of our problems. As crazy as this sounds, can anyone looking ahead at the next few months seriously dismiss it as a possibility? Again, let’s not be naïve.

 Of course, there are any number of possibilities in between these two extremes, and any scenario will be subject to a whole deck full of wild cards:  the course of the virus, the damage it does to the economy and society, the chances of holding a fair election (not promising), the chances of holding any election at all (better than 50-50, but not by much), and whether there’s anything left of either our institutions or our medical system once the dust clears. And that’s leaving social breakdown and civil unrest out of the equation.

 I feel like I’ve answered a question with a question, or with a lot of questions, but only because the real answer is Who the fuck knows?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Decents, Deplorables, and the Conditional Mood

  F or my next trick, I’d like to indulge in a linguistic conceit of sorts. I’d like to use the current political nightmare to speculate about a matter of grammar, of all things, that has long intrigued me: Namely, why do so many languages codify the conditional mood — also known as the conditional tense — in their grammar? Why do we use ‘should,’ ‘could,’ and especially ‘would,’ in so much of our speech? Why do we hedge our conversations this way? Why is it more acceptable to say “I would like a cup of coffee” than “Give me a cup of coffee.” Why is one deferential and the other pushy? Why has history passed down this polite form to multiple language groups, in such a similar way? Why is it bad form to use “I want” in a non-confrontational situation? And why does the MAGA crowd insist on such bad form? I have a speculative answer to these questions, but first let me cavalierly divide the world into two groups of people: Decents and Deplorables . Goods ...
11 comments
Read more

Yet Another Mole in Need of Whacking

  I n a week when Israel attacked Iran, Trump invaded Los Angeles, four million Americans took to the streets, and a Minnesota legislator was assassinated, the news from the arcane world of digital advertising probably didn’t make it to your list of big concerns. By the time I’m done, it probably still won’t. But in this miasma of Trumpish distractions, it’s often hard to figure out what we’re being distracted from . It’s a constant game of whack-a-mole, and last week, we got the first inkling of yet another mole that will require whacking. Warning: This will take a while to explain, and might cause mild-to-severe boredom. Proceed at your own risk: As we’ve seen, the Trump gang has recently extorted large corporate law firms into defending its pet causes, an ongoing story still developing. Now, apparently, they are trying to do something similar with large advertising agencies. The immediate focus is on the approval, or not, of a major merger between two of...
Post a Comment
Read more

Uncertainty is Ready for its Closeup

E very day, we learn a little more about the way the Trump junta operates. We might sum it up with the phrase “Shoot first, ask questions later,” but this is not entirely accurate. They do indeed shoot first, mostly with executive orders that are breathtaking in their over-reach, malicious intent, and criminal shortsightedness. But they don’t so much ask questions later, as they send stupid lawyers into court to defend stupefyingly illegal behavior. They tend to fail, but even in failure, the confusion they create works wonders for them. On what must be several dozen fronts since January, MAGA operatives looking to subvert the government have done so, first by launching whatever harebrained scheme they’ve come up with, then by watching for the fallout. The fallout could be in the form of a court ruling, or howls of protest from the victims, or even from Democrats calling them out. But the point is that they depend on that first launch to shake things up, to flo...
1 comment
Read more