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extemporaneousmusings · 3 years

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2020 reflections below

To be honest, 2020 has been the best year I’ve had since 2016. Obviously on a global scale it has been absolutely devastating, and there are aspects of my life that were significantly impacted by the pandemic—I had to leave Greece suddenly in March, several months earlier than anticipated, and in doing so lost some crucial time that I was supposed to have spent with the physical materials of my dissertation—but on a personal level this year has been the most stable and comfortable I’ve been since my accident in 2017. I was not dealing with a massive physical or mental health crisis, or the immediate aftermaths of either of those things, and that is something I do not take lightly.

I spent the first 3 months of the year hiking across Greece, basically. It was really tough—I was pretty depressed, although my meds had just been boosted so I was feeling better than I had in fall of 2019, and obviously missing Ian and Macy was not an easy thing to sit with—but I did it! I had literally planned my entire life for the past 5 years around this time in Greece, and even though we didn’t completely finish the program and the scheduled trips, I still accomplished what I set out to do: I was able to do the hikes and got to explore the country that I love. After my accident, my sole goal was to be able to get my ankle to a place where I could do the program. It was really fucking hard, and there’s still so much more work I can do on my ankle (which is a source of deep resentment for me, something I’m working on) but at the end of the day, I got myself to a place where I could, with some difficulty, do this really physically strenuous thing that had been such a major goal of mine for years. I got to travel the Greek countryside and see hundreds of archaeological sites in a way that is basically impossible unless you’re doing it with the American School. Mentally I was not as present as I would have liked to be, which is something I think I’ll always regret, but I gave it all I had, mentally and physically. Even if I am hazy on a lot of the details, I’ll remember the exultant physical sensations of reaching a peak and taking in the view below, the sweet succulent taste of oranges in the height of their season, plucked straight off the tree, searching every museum for my pots, pushing myself physically to the limit every day but still being able to wake up and do it again the next, trying regional cuisine from across the country, and the camaraderie that all of us built together on that bus and on those hikes. And of course, the saving grace and defining point of the school year for me was spending time with Ev. He already was one of my best friends, so the opportunity to go on this adventure together was so exciting, but he really kept me sane, made me laugh with his stupid fucking jokes, stayed in the back of the pack with me when I was having especially bad ankle days, and our companionship brought me so much joy and support. It’s very likely that we’ll never live in the same place together again, and I will always cherish the time we had together this past year.

My life since returning to Cincy in March has been very stable and consistent. Except for having to TA on campus on Friday’s during the fall, we’ve both just been at home. E’s been out of a job the whole time, but we are very lucky that (bc Cincy is so affordable) just my grad student salary has been able to financially support us. Money is tight, all my savings are gone after Macy’s surgery in July, but we are very lucky to have support systems to rely upon should we need to (fingers crossed we won’t), and that for now, just my income alone can pay all of the bills so that Ian does not have to be on the front lines at the bar, physically interacting with everyone who is still comfortable and selfish enough to be out partying during a global pandemic.

The biggest joy for me of this year was getting to spend 8 beautiful months with Macy. We had her for 3 months before I left for Greece last September, but I feel so blessed to have had more time with the three of us as a family this year, and to spend so much uninterrupted time with her because we were just in the apartment all of the time. I’ve written what seems like a lot about losing her, so I’m not really going to dwell on it, but despite her death I am still so happy to have had the time with her that I did, and to have loved and been so loved in return. I’m hopeful that I can build a relationship with Lulu like I had with Macy, and that as she settles in and settles down, and becomes secure in this new home, that our new family of three can thrive. Another element to this is the fact that basically our only physical socialization with friends came from going on dog walks, mainly with S&D. Since March we’ve seen them almost weekly and it’s been such a good routine and way to see them safely. We’ll all be getting more of a workout with Lulu, though. She’s much more intense about walks than Macy was.

When I first got back from Greece, I needed to just luxuriate in being home, and shortly after that I fell into the hockey rabbit hole. Which has been lovely, truly! I had been feeling a bit stagnant fandom wise, and it was so nice to have a whole new world opened to me, and to see a bunch of my mutuals all going through the process simultaneously was so fun. I still haven’t written anything, and I’m definitely not as involved as a lot of people, but I’ve never been someone who is super funny in quippy posts or makes a lot of connections quickly. But I’ve really been enjoying it, and I’m hoping that in 2021 I’ll be able to post some fic and make some more friends. My ephemeral relationships with people on tumblr have been important to me for many years, but I definitely have appreciated it the most this past year. Tumblr is a really big part of my life, and I love interacting with people/when people interact with my personal posts. It’s nice to have found a little pocket of the internet where I am safe and comfortable and around people I genuinely like.

Getting into hockey did divert my attention from my mental health, and the ways it was impacting my work, for a solid two months, though. I very much used it as a crutch to avoid some bigger issues that needed my focus, which I was diverting to think about big men fucking each other. In August I started seeing a therapist again. We had worked together briefly after my manic episode, because my old therapist had gotten a new job so she took me on for like a month before I left for Greece, and working with her again has been so helpful. I am so fortunate to have healthcare through grad school that makes going to therapy extremely affordable. It’s seriously been a saving grace for me. By working on my mental health consistently I have brought myself to a better, more stable and comfortable place than I’ve been in in years, and I feel empowered to continue on this path to keep accumulating skills and mental fortitude to help me in the future.

As a result of my consistent work on my mental heath, I’ve also been able to develop a much better, healthier relationship with work/my research more specifically. This summer I was in a place where I felt like it was impossible for me to write my proposal, let alone an actual dissertation, but I did write my proposal! And I’ve been building up routines and stamina and now feel like I actually can get this PhD. Which is great. I know it’s not going to be easy, and that I have a lot of difficulty ahead of me still, but I feel very confident in my ideas, and I am so much better equipped to handle things than before.

So yeah, I think that’s pretty much it. For 2021, I want to just keep going in the path that I’ve been forging for myself. The next things I’ll be focusing on are more intentionally working with my ankle, to try and alleviate the somewhat antagonistic relationship I have with it, and to feel more physically capable. I think that re-integrating yoga into my life will be big here, it’s been really helpful for me before, but I’ve let it slip, and then we’ll see what else I can do to help with this. I also want to continue to reinforce a work routine that suits me and maintain/adjust it when I (almost certainly) make the move back to Athens in September. And finally, I really want to post some TK/Patty fic! I have some ideas, some word docs, some (imo) well-selected lyrics for titles, and I just need to dig in a little more and try and unclench my mental knot of perfectionism, as I’ve been learning to ease it with regards to work stuff.

#personal #I think this is actually the first end of year reflections post I've made on here #in the like 9 years I've had this blog #much to reflect on this year I guess

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radiofreeyurick · 3 years

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Thus The Man Continues to Fall

By Nick Yurick

20 years after the tragedy that shaped a generation now haunted by final days of the War that was spurred by it, and newly bereft of so many previously held sentiments, causes, or beliefs that felt so vital and true on that day, for many, all that remains is The Falling Man

Any adolescent on the verge of social awareness has to feel it coming. Though some may only be students of history out of obligation at that age, rather than genuine interest or concern, the patterns and shifts begin to take on palpable rhythms of causes and effects, ebbs and flows, and calms preceding storms. The moment when the News becomes a Documentary, replete with imagined underscoring, slow motion, and a dramatic voiceover. The moment when Life becomes History.

At 14 years of age I was already an aspiring multihyphenate. actor, artist, musician, perhaps educator, and on that day, and at this moment it seems, a journalist. Thus it remains a fitting coincidence that for me, Life became History when I was in second period school newspaper class. Much as my grandparents and parents had told me over the years of their “where were you” moments in experiencing the Bombing of Pearl Harbor and the Assassination of John F. Kennedy, mine took place as I struggled to upload photos of the first day of school from an already outdated late ‘90s digital camera. It is perhaps for this reason that, though my life and work since have spanned multiple fields and environments, from stage to screen to the classroom, it is still through the mind of a journalist that I revisit this day every year. Be it with my continued work as a student journalist in the years immediately following or later as one of millions of social media pundits in the years to come, I have felt compelled to revisit the facts of why and how every year. But as the History we’ve lived the past 20 years continues to make those answers more and more evasive, my fascination, and that of many others, has shifted to the actions of a different, and more functional, camera a thousand miles away. The camera held by a Pulitzer Prize winning Associated Press photographer named Richard Drew as he captured The Falling Man.

It is here that I must humble myself a bit, being well aware that the undying fascination with the image of this lone inverted figure has only increased in recent years. In a sardonic act of self-awareness I could just as well title this essay, “This 9/11, if You Read One Unqualified Take on ‘The Falling Man,’ Make it THIS one.” Day to day I am but one of millions who fight for stage and screen time, clicks, words, and any vague measure of digital real estate before taking a break to get back to my woodworking hobby. Thus I only ask that you read on with the knowledge that the History being lived by a 34 year old armchair philosopher as he chain smokes at his Chromebook is as real as the History being lived by the septuagenarian widower in the Oval Office. As it relates to The Falling Man though, for myself and many like me, today The Falling Man is all that remains of that day.

-Trajectories and Arrival Points

In analyzing any historical event, we are drawn to examine it in terms of the trajectory it puts us on and arrival point it leads us to. These consequences often take the forms of calls to action, causes to be taken up, or revelations about American society of the day. In any case, they tell us why the world we fell asleep in that evening, or that many didn’t live to, was different from the world in which we had awakened that morning. Pearl Harbor placed us on the trajectory of entering World War II, drawing the United States and its Allies into a global conflict of unprecedented scale and accelerating the end of the Great Depression, with the arrival point of the Nation’s emergence as a global leader and the establishment of “The American Dream” in the form of a higher standard of living than was previously accessible to many. The Assassination of John F. Kennedy placed us on the trajectory of increased escalation in Vietnam, leading to a new era of social unrest and mistrust in our institutions. Simultaneously the inspiration to carry forth what was considered the late President’s unfinished work, gave birth to heightened social activism and significant leaps forward in Civil Rights and Women’s Rights. This was largely seen through to the arrival points of our withdrawal from Vietnam, the Resignation of Nixon, and the dawn of “Morning in America” with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. Although every single historical event echoes eternally, in American Society we are accustomed to some feeling of victory or at least reprieve, as if the demons that emerged from these national tragedies have been temporarily vanquished in our day to day lives while we lick our collective finger to gingerly turn the page on the next chapter.

-The Curtain

It is, at this very moment, 12:26 PM on September the 7, 2021. It occurs to me that to write with such perceived urgency about another September Tuesday a score of years prior will hopefully become as passe and bland as any of the seemingly newfound conspiracies on Kennedy’s Assassination have now become. Yet I continue to do so, because as of now, the aforementioned page has yet to turn. In the previously mentioned epochs, though there were plenty who still saw through the folly of the “American Dream” and the falsehood of “Morning in America,” even an equitable specter to those has yet to emerge. The Election of Barack Obama seemed a fitting placeholder in 2008, but the quick return to the frustrations of petty political gridlock coupled with the now pyrrhic victory we found in the final defeat of Osama bin Laden, made immediately clear that this generation would be visited by no such specter. This absence may on the surface seem a failure on the part of the current proverbial page turners to do so, but is also a result of our increasingly short attention spans having already written so many of the remaining pages that there is no consensus on Which page we may now turn to, but only the widespread certainty that we can’t. Because one thing we have so much more of than those preceding generations, be it the Boomers post Pearl Harbor or the X-ers post Kennedy, is an inescapable curiosity about what may be written on them and more importantly a will to read it. Or in stronger terms, this generation now carries the burden of knowing that which may be on those pages could prove our only salvation, as none other has made itself apparent. Thus if historical events can be seen in terms of a curtain being pulled back and then drawn again while the stage is reset, now the curtain has gone up in flames.

This so-called Curtain can come in the form of where we as a society now place our faith, or more specifically, what entity we trust to lead us to the aforementioned arrival point. With most national tragedies our instinct is to place our trust in our leaders, imploring them to step up when our faith in our own security has crumbled. Alhough with 9/11 we became quickly aware that we lacked an FDR to guide us through the darkness through Fireside Chats, we still entertained the notion that we were to have some faith in the very idea of Leadership itself, however personally distasteful or incompetent we found that Leader to be. By 2004 however, the leadership of George W. Bush had not only failed to bring us a perceptible victory in our immediate cause in Afghanistan, but had begun an entirely new sideshow in Iraq the previous year. This was the beginning of what has fittingly been referred to as “The Forever War,” where battles are not simply initiated by belligerents and ended by victors, but fought on eternally, perverting the traditional goal of final victory as we previously knew it. And if there is an end, it will likely be celebrated by none, if any, who were present when it began. This Forever War began to be seen as such during the Presidency of Barack Obama. While a controversial election in 2000 had already lead many of my generation to view the failed leadership of his predecessor Bush as a clerical error of sorts, we also blamed the misfortune of Our Generation’s Moment having taken place before we had come of age to elect Our Generation’s President. And yet the Page remained unturned. The aforementioned killing of Osama bin Laden did little to quell the Forever War, and domestically we were afforded mere scraps in the form of slightly more accessible healthcare for the few capable of navigating a bureaucratic system now more inconsistent and Byzantine than ever. Meanwhile societal issues such as racial equity and LGBT+ rights only achieved progress as a result of the larger culture elevating them to the status of the baseline right thing to do, but only when it saw fit. All of that being the case, 2016 arrived with an all too ideal stage set for the rise of Donald Trump, or more fittingly the fall of Leadership and the sheer laughibility that it ever represented a concept worthy of a generation’s trust. Even with Trump’s replacement by Joe Biden after the bitterly contested 2020 election, the ensuing Insurrection of January 6, 2021 cemented the new reality: there is now no such thing as Leadership, but only who You choose to believe.

Thus the Man continues to Fall…

-The Meaning of We

Two months prior to this writing, our nation celebrated the 245th year of its independence with the usual bombast we’ve become accustomed to. However each year for many the “bombs bursting in air” referred to in song seem to ring more and more hollow, as does the song itself. The hollowness of these verses seems a far cry from the days of ubiquitous flag waving and the shared sense of national pride we experienced twenty years ago. An outside force having done our country such grievous harm, we were called upon to show that world that We, the victims, truly represented the way of right and justice, while They, the aggressors, were but barbarous heathens, lashing out against the world’s brightest beacon of Freedom. We sought to show that our National identity embodied the supreme ideal of the civilized and just world we should aspire to, and that our way of life, the American Way, was anathema to the ways of those who employed violence and terror as a means to achieve their interests. This has long been what we’ve been taught to believe of our Nation, especially when such destruction has been brought to our shores, as if to say, “We are not like them, We would never do this. We are America, and to be American is to be on the side of Good.” Alas, as the Curtain’s smoldering remnants now hang in tatters, through the lazily wafting smoke we have seen America’s failings writ large in the ashes. Not only those we would previously chalk up to “a different time,” or “another generation,” but those being carried out as we speak. Thus Patriotism, as a concept defined by a faith in the unfailing virtue of one’s country, has experienced a superficial rebirth in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, only to be followed by a slow death in the years since.

It is here that we must revisit those previously mentioned pages in our History which we failed to turn, those unread or forgotten chapters that may not have fit into the collective identity that we wished to cultivate. For the History we once read was often presented to us as in a sanitized narrative, compiled as a companion piece to the definition of Patriotism we were compelled to accept. The heroic vision we once held of America during World War II, as saviors from unprecedented evils on either side of the globe, has now been graffitied over in these pages with stories of her persecution and internment of Japanese-Americans, an injustice not even acknowledged for nearly fifty years after. On other pages, the names of millions of European Jews who were turned away from our shores early in the war, many to their deaths, are now scrawled hastily in desperation, as though hoping that someone, in some distant year, may someday bear witness and validate their humanity as our country, and even one of our most venerated Leaders personally, failed to in their lifetimes. Even still, the pages following the war, heralding the establishment of the American Dream, now contain detailed revelations of redlining, “white flight,” and the practices that excluded People of Color from being included in the idyllic America we were thought to have achieved during this period.

Indeed this alternate chapter continues through the 1960s and to this day, where the America that was thought to have humbly shown remorse and emerged as a global leader in Civil Rights, redressing the atrocities of Slavery and Jim Crow, is seen to have done so with the upmost reluctance. This America instead sought to bolster its image by now phasing out more blatant forms of discrimination in favor of practices more pervasive and insidious. Wage discrimation served to keep People of Color impoverished and desperate, effectively prohibiting them from moving to areas with better access to education and opportunities. With limited access to education, cycles of generational poverty continued this trend. In the face of poverty, those suffering were often forced to turn to the drug trade or other forms of criminal enterprise as a means of achieving even a glimmer of the prosperity that was supposed to define this chapter in American History or even to sustain the very lives of themselves and their families. And when “Morning in America” dawned in the 1980s, also did the rise of the “War on Drugs,” which further criminalized and demonized the only means of income that many already living in poverty had at their disposal. Meanwhile the introduction of crack cocaine to the inner cities provided a more abundant and addictive product to target, leading to harsher prison sentences for those peddling the substance and more debilitated addicts left in its wake.

But America watched as First Lady Nancy Reagan appeared on television's most popular sitcom of the day, Diff’rent Strokes. In the Very Special episode, Mrs. Reagan’s obliviously grandmotherly voice comforted the precocious and diminutive young protagonist Arnold, an African-American child of the same poverty the American Dream shunned, now in the care of a wealthy white benefactor (and played by Gary Coleman who himself later symbolized an exploitative and predatory entertainment industry), along along with millions of other wayward youths at risk of falling victim to the ongoing drug epidemic, ironically fueled and enabled by the same America that created it. Arnold, and any of those watching could always, “Just Say No.” As though it were a choice. As though any of it were ever a choice. As though choice wouldn’t soon prove to be as illusory as the American Dream was to so many others who experienced naught but cold dark nights during “Morning in America.” As though the concept of choice wouldn’t also be blamed for the plight of LGBTQ+ Americans whose lives were destroyed by the AIDS epidemic that was stigmatized and swept under the rug by this same administration during this period.

In the past twenty years, these undercurrents that eroded the notion of Patriotism in the fifty years prior now flow freely on the surface. Though these preceding chapters, ones that told of these racial, economic, and cultural struggles, were written on scraps of hotel paper or the backs of envelopes by those who lived them, now these stories grab headlines. Headlines that reveal now more than ever the long held role of the police in maintaining these systems of oppression, as well as the consistent biases ingrained in them against the communities they were sworn to protect. Though the Patriotism that flared so brightly after 9/11 was accompanied by an increased reverence toward law enforcement officers, many having lost their lives in those towers, the ensuing decades revealed their institution’s role in excluding so many from the justice and civility our Patriotic ideal was supposed to stand for, instead embroiling them in lives lived in terror from the violence the country was supposed to stand against. So now the iconic waving flag of stars and stripes turns on its side, as the stars fade and the stripes turn to the vertical walls of the doomed Twin Towers, split by one helpless, inverted figure.

Thus the Man continues to Fall…

-Truth, War, and the War on Truth

Last night as I readied myself for bed, I opened the News app on my iPhone one last time before turning in. Though my at times masochistic addiction to the news cycle had been in a remission of sorts after the emotional burnout of a pandemic filled year, it has experienced a brief relapse of late. I sometimes view it as a quest for positivity, a search for hope, and some indication, any indication, that things are getting better, but more often it’s simply to make sure I haven’t missed the last bad thing to have happened. Indeed such an addiction is far more possible now as the news is more accessible than ever. I’ve often thought that my generation’s predilection for ‘90s nostalgia wasn’t a mere longing for our childhood or for a pre-9/11 America, but a wish to return to a time when escaping the often horrific barrage of news stories was as simple as tossing a newspaper into the recycling bin or switching off the TV. But with more and more of our very existence taking place online, the news has become inextricably intertwined with it to the point that to disconnect would risk severing our ties with our work, our activities and our socialization. Perhaps too this nostalgia is linked to a time when the news by and large represented the truth, or at least the basic facts of the day. Though valid criticisms of media biases have long existed, widespread disdain for factual storytelling is at an all time high and consensus on any voice, even one voice, we can trust is nonexistent. My generation will likely be the last to even remember a reliably comforting presence like Peter Jennings reporting the events of 9/11, or our parents’ memories or Walter Cronkite tearfully informed us of the killing of Kennedy, or the multitude of trusted local radio announcers tasked with delivering the tragic news that broke on December 7, 1941. Much like the idea of Leadership, loss of faith in The Truth is another backdrop against which the Man continues to Fall…

What struck me though about the news story that appeared on the smudged touch screen of my iPhone yesterday evening was its similarity to one that may have appeared next to a coffee stained newspaper on our kitchen table any morning before I departed for 4th grade in 1996. Further, I tell you this was never where and when anyone who had lived through the past twenty-five years would still expect to see the headline: “Taliban Whip Women Protesting Interim Government.” This is what losing a War looks like.

It is for good reason that the Second World War has been referred to as “America’s Last Good War,” and that the War in Vietnam led to an all around loss of faith in war itself as an instrument of foreign policy and a means of progressing our causes. And with America’s participation in War taking on the form of quick and focused operations, isolated police actions, and distantly coordinated air strikes since then, the large scale mobilization against Afghanistan in the Fall of 2001 (rumored at the time to be leading to Congress’s first formal Declaration of War since 1941) cheered by vengeance seeking Patriots, perhaps now to be the Last Patriots, was equally as necessary and noble in beginning what was sure to become known as “America’s First Good War of the 21st Century?” For when, albeit not for ten years, American forces finally decimated Al Qaeda and killed Osama bin Laden, did America not cheer and celebrate throughout her streets, no doubt inspiring many a tear to trickle down the withered cheeks of those who recalled witnessing such on VJ Day in their much younger years, now assured safety in their homeland? For surely a further ten years mired in the unforgiving deserts and treacherous hillsides of the region, as thousands more of our soldiers shed their blood upon the land and return dismembered, traumatized, or not at all, surely that gained our country some unheralded boon to our interests, any strategic advantage, or the meanest notion of progress in the lives of our citizens or more importantly the people whose country we occupied for two decades? Why then, does America’s last plane departing from Kabul Airport nearly a score of years after the first of hers rained bombs not so far from it, instead truly feel like the final Fall of our long dying faith in War itself?

Because when I read a headline from Afghanistan last night, in high definition through the tired eyes of a young man feeling far older than he had earned any right to, and it remained (even after 20 years of frantically advancing and retreating soldiers, deafening blasts from bombs and improvised explosives, and so much more sanguine blood streaming from wounded flesh of all the colors of the world) so dissimilar from one that would have flashed onto a comparatively fuzzy television screen to meet the cheery eyes of an enthusiastically Patriotic Cub Scout, proud of the Leader his parents would take part in reelecting later that year (though, ironically, this Leader would himself have his own part to play in our collective loss of faith in Leadership), well...I simply could feel no other way. This is what losing a war looks like…

...and thus the Man continues to Fall.

And while our country losing its faith in War should be welcomed as a sign of progress and our collective evolution toward the civilization that was to serve as a cornerstone of our now-fallen Patriotism, it can only be truly welcomed when it is replaced instead by a renewed and sincere faith in Peace! And perhaps in global affairs, in a nominal and superficial sense, Peace is gaining some believers, though I can’t confidently believe all hold this faith sincerely as much as out of a cynically held tool of self-preservation until the war profiteers who pull their strings find new markets for their wares. But America’s faith in Violence is now stronger than ever. Carried out now by citizens on our streets rather than soldiers across the world, by police in squad cars rather than infantry in tanks, and now, perhaps imperceptibly, by viruses in our lungs spreading freely through uncovered orifi, violence is embraced by America as a whole in ways that make any notion that anyone this violent nation killed halfway across the world made us safer these last twenty years. In that same period, a new record for the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history has been set, first by a disturbed and alienated college student in Virginia, then by a would-be terrorist with a history of hate crimes at an LGBT+ nightclub in Orlando, and finally by his immediate usurper of this horrific distinction who just the following year rained bullets down from a modified assault rifle upon concertgoers in Las Vegas while perched far above them in his hotel room. Expanding our scope to the top five shootings, the other two on the list took place during just this past decade, the first carried out upon children by a mentally ill youth at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, and the other at a church in Texas, by a resentful and misogynistic former spouse of one of the parishioners, a uniquely American demon consumed with wanting. In each instance the tired argument, dating back to the pre-9/11 massacre at Columbine and beyond, was made, that our government’s comparatively lax laws on gun ownership were to blame, but after the killings at Sandy Hook in 2012 changed nothing in that regard, that argument has felt increasingly futile. After all, when a country does fails to restrict such instruments of death after they’re used to murder 27 children, it doesn’t really want to. And to blame the mere presence of guns sidesteps the truth at the root of these shootings: modern America breeds killers, and more effective ones than ever.

But while Americans react to the violence perpetrated by mass shootings with condemnation and abhorrence, the violence carried out by an increasingly militarized police force breeds division and itself, violent rhetoric as the calls to find more peaceful solutions to making our streets safer are met with calls for more violence and diversions of blame to the victims themselves. This rash of violence was once countered with the statement that, “police brutality in America isn’t getting worse, it’s just getting filmed,” once again ignoring the forgotten chapters in our History in which we have now read that policing in America has played a part in targeting and criminalizing People of Color since its near inception. And as indeed everything is being filmed now, it permeates our culture to the point that it now builds upon itself influencing our every interaction, becoming a key talking point in the hate speech that now passes for political discourse. The result being the undeniable fact that the Fall of our Faith in War has not given way to the Rise of our Faith in Peace. Not in any meaningful way across the globe, and within our own borders it has shifted to a Rise in Faith in War upon Ourselves. And meanwhile…

...the Man continues to Fall…

-Tilling the Earth to Grow Softer Ground

...but where will he land?

In embarking on all of my writings, in contrast to the manner in which our country begins so many of its wars, I never do so without some intention of finding some source of hope or comfort, some path forward to progress, or, when setting out with the most optimistic of outlooks, perhaps a solution to the issues explored. While there was little to be had as I drafted the first few segments, it also became all the more necessary in the face of revisiting so much of the despair, confusion, and upheaval my fellow Americans and I have experienced these last twenty years as well as much of what those who came before did the decades examined prior. Thus it is fitting that while the preceding passages of this article were written in multiple sessions on my porch this week while the searing summer sun begins to give way to the first chilly autumn winds, I conclude this piece sitting on my bed as the first minutes of September the 11th, 2021 tick by. While many of the recent writings about Richard Drew’s iconic photograph have sought to confirm, or at investigate clues as to, the identity of its subject. In writing this piece I was reminded of so much of the American lives currently being lived now takes place in a culture where many are emboldened by the absence of names or faces. Thus to the notion that one would seek to identify this blurry, tragic figure, I retort: in a society where to be nameless and faceless can mean to be validated or even in some way seem enviable, what meaning could this man’s name and face possibly hold were it revealed to the masses? Instead it is perhaps better he continue his descent in anonymity and transubstantiate in our collective consciousness, and perhaps enjoy the comparative bliss felt only when one’s form shifts to that of a generational metaphor.

But as a now belabored metaphor, surely worn and windburned by his descent through my accountings of over a half-century’s worth of America’s broken promises, cheapened values, and hidden hatreds that were really in plain sight, he certainly deserves a softer place to land than the mattress that now serves as my roost, upon which I try to write one up for him. And from it I am reminded as well of the faiths that fell from our very homes, many of which we held our most steadfast trust. Our generation having now experienced the twin economic upheavals of the 2008 financial crisis and the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, faith in our dreams has fallen. And when the fall of this faith was begun by the shortsightedness and bad advice of those who first told us to believe in our dreams, we have to believe our dreams were always meant to decline. Thus many of us have embraced decline, with rates of depression, addiction, and other mental illness climbing in recent years. This is but one factor in the fall of our faith in the preceding generations, but this is in no way a textbook shifting of blame to our parents and grandparents, for they too have never lived in a world like this either. Instead, having spent so many of their younger years in a state of Not Knowing (while we ironically know nothing but this feeling) the brief length of time they spent in a state of Knowing, having been taught so well History’s patterns, shifts, palpable rhythms of causes and effects, ebbs and flows, and calms preceding storms that they weathered in the America they thought they knew, became their addiction as well, their perceived wisdom now the opiate of their uncertainty. For me personally, my late father was the one who taught me the most about the components, currents, and forces that moved History and how they had been maintained. Thus after his passing in early 2016, the loss was made all the more crushing upon the election of Donald Trump later that year, now that he, who for so much of my life could always point back to an equivalent trajectory America had placed upon and determine some possible arrival point, was no longer with us. But even having asked him so many times in my youth, “so what does this mean now, dad?” I recall now how many more times in the final decade of his life, he could answer with little more than, “I don’t know Nick.”

So perhaps I am also one of many for whom their faith in Wisdom has fallen as well. And since with the passing on of Wisdom our society traditionally passes on its culture, so with it has our Culture fallen as well. By now means in such a way that I would dare complain there has been a decline in the quality of our art, music, and films, but the notion of a shared culture of unassailable timeless classes has fallen. This may be for the best however, as the very subjective nature of art itself implies that any attempt to establish the undeniable supremacy of any work of art in such a way that spans generations, cultures, or life experiences serves to deny the validity of so many diverse tastes, sensibilities, and traditions as well as that of a work’s relevance when its purpose was only to encapsulate the cultural moment it was created in. So perhaps we should embrace the fact that our cultural landmarks are now determined more by individuals for themselves, and consist of niche classics, flavor of the day pop hits, and even tuneful inside jokes distributed across the vastness of the internet by among the varied enclaves of those who appreciate them. And even as part of a generation of young people who feel old, though many who had the luxury of experienced their brief stint in the state of Knowing will argue I haven’t earned that feeling, I remain a dedicated fan of the legendary musician Bruce Springsteen, it is perhaps fitting that his hopeful 2002 album “The Rising” would resonate far less in defining the musical outlook of the post-9/11 era than a 2003 release by his fellow New Jerseyans in the lesser-known punk band Thursday, titled “War All The Time.” Still with cultural moments all the more fleeting and tastes increasingly specific, one might say that each is now as obscure as the other, in contrast to the attention paid upon their initial release. The truth of course may be determined by which generation one comes from.

However this softer landing surface upon which our Man is to Land can only be created through generational cooperation, so let us finally unite in the experience of Not Knowing as we reluctantly celebrate the death of Wisdom, and perhaps even briefly entertain some illusion that the ground may yield when he reaches it, but bear each other through the realization we can instead only soften it by creating new institutions and redefining old ideas.

For the failing of Leadership need not truly be failure if we instead build our Leaders from the ground up. Rather than following those who present themselves on a bully pulpit as such, follow those who present themselves in the places we already needed them to be and allowed us to find them there. That is to say, on our own streets in the neighborhoods we live in, serving the communities in which they have built their lives while helping others to build theirs. Find them in our own offices and factories, working side by side while gaining an understanding of the labor and dedication that truly builds a nation, a dedication they wouldn’t dare exploit. And task these leaders with creating ideologies of which they themselves will someday no longer be irrelevant symbols, as ideologies must now be based not upon whom among these privileged few we choose to vote into power, but upon which of the many more helpless we choose to heal of their suffering.

Further I implore you not to mourn the death of our faith in Patriotism if our New Patriots can now redefine their love for their country as no longer being a love for the vague and faceless notions of Freedom or exclusionary definitions of “We” that were allowed to make that Freedom a luxury so few were truly afforded. And when harsh economic forces and the predatory and cynical motivations of those who were allowed to write the chapters upon which the Old Patriotism was written seek to restrict that Freedom even further, let us redistribute it to the no longer huddled masses so they may no longer thirst for it. For the New Patriotism will be based in understanding that to love one’s country means to love every human being who resides within it, no matter their origin or status. This Patriotism understands that America need not merely be the name of a long dead sailor, given by white men to stolen land that once bore so many varied, beautiful, and sacred names for the vast and diverse locales that comprise it, but that America by definition is collection of the hopes, dreams, fears, and needs of three-hundred thirty or more million souls upon whose very existence building a fair and equitable society depends.

And if our faith in War is to truly fail and give way to sincere dedication to faith in Peace. Let the only faith in War that remains be faith in the War upon War, and the destruction of our faith in violence of all kinds. And let the War upon War be a war upon ignorance and selfishness, and allow a generation whose defining tragedy’s only arrival point was a larger and more prolonged tragedy breathe easier, with hope that the virus that destroyed their dreams, and took vast numbers of the preceding generations who once comforted them with their experience in the state of Knowing, will no longer dominate their futures. And if this love that defines the New Patriotism can be the motivating factor in facing our challenges with genuine concern and care for the well being and prosperity of all three-hundred thirty or more million souls for whom the freedom to lives of health and safety, joy and fulfillment, will now be by this new definition their birthright.

At last, when this War upon War has ended, not with a dubious arrival point, but on a glorious and eternal new trajectory, let us harken back to the ways the ends of Wars were written of in scripture, for to bend the sword into plowshares now takes on a greater and renewed urgency, as the need to till the Earth is essential in the necessary task of growing softer ground upon which someday, somehow...

...this Man will Land.

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phroyd · 4 years

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Just how badly has American capitalism failed? Consider the following.

The White House backed out of a deal to manufacture ventilators because the price tag was too high. Go ahead and guess. Ready? It was…one billion dollars. Sound like a lot? Too much? For ventilators for…the entire country…in the middle of a pandemic…that’s already spiraling out of control?

Then think about this.

Jeff Bezos is worth $113 billion. Zuck, about $60 billion. Warren Buffett, about $70 billion. Are you seeing my point yet? Let me make it clearer. Either Bezos or Zuck or Buffett — or any number of penny-ante mega-billionaires — could pay for all the ventilators America needs right now, and not even blink. Not even think twice.

Take Bezos, for example. That one billion dollars to supply the country with ventilators is less than one percent of his net worth. The net worth of the average American household is about $100K. That’s like the average American spending…a thousand dollars. The net worth of the average millennial is about $10K. That’s like the average millennial spending…one hundred dollars.

That’s how trivial it is for a Bezos to literally supply the entire country with ventilators. It’s pocket money. To call it chump change would be an overstatement. He could do it and he’d literally never even notice the money was gone. It would take his accountant a lifetime to even begin to care.

Is your head spinning yet? What on earth? It should be.

All that, my friends, is an object lesson in the profound and surreal failure of capitalism. Let me now put it in simpler terms.

Capitalism is adding disaster to tragedy, by way of needless scarcity.

Suddenly, a society experiences a catastrophe — in this case, a pandemic. That would be bad enough. But because a tiny number of people in society have hoarded all the resources — in this case money, which really just means foregone ventilators — a society cannot respond to its catastrophe well at all. What happens next? What happens is what’s going to happen.

People are going to die. In fact, they already have. Perhaps you read about the poor kid who was turned away from an urgent care center for a lack of insurance. That’s not a ventilator, but it’s not exactly hard to see how a lack of ventilators is going to start killing Americans en masse very, very soon, if it hasn’t already.

Capitalism is adding disaster to tragedy…by way of needless scarcity.

How much is one billion dollars, anyways? The American economy is worth about $20 trillion. One billion is a vanishingly small fraction of that. How small, exactly? One twenty thousandth, or .00005%. It’s so small, I might have missed a decimal place there — and it doesn’t matter, because it’s that miniscule.

And yet the government can’t raise one twenty thousandth of the size of the economy in order to provide society with the one resource it needs most to survive a pandemic — ventilators.

Think about that math for a second. Really just think about it.

What would it say about you if you couldn’t raise one twenty thousandth of your income to, say, give your kids life saving medicine? That’s a flawed analogy, but I struggle for anything — anything at all — to express the magnitude of this failure well. I literally can’t think of anything remotely close to it, so let me simply try to express it again, even more concisely.

The government can’t raise one twenty thousandth of the whole economy’s income to pay for a critical resource during a pandemic — ventilators — while it would cost a Bezos maybe one hundred of his wealth to provide them for the whole country.

What on earth? My head is spinning. Is yours? It’s so grotesque, baffling, obscene, it’s literally impossible to process. How is it that in the richest society in human history, apparently — pennies can’t be found for ventilators? And yet it’s wealthiest man could single-handedly provide them, and never even notice?

Now, here’s the even more distressing part. Bezos (or Zuck, Buffett, etc) can’t spend all that money anyways. There is simply no way that you can spend a hundred billion dollars. What would you do? You could buy up all the luxury properties and mega yachts, and you’d barely have made a dent. You’d have to buy entire cities, nations, and whole social systems. Which is effectively what a Bezos has done. Americans don’t have ventilators because Bezos has hundreds of billions. Americans don’t have healthcare because billionaires have all the money in their society.

When I have more money than I can ever spend, then there is no real cost to me to supply you, say, with ventilators. Do you see how grotesque that paradox is? That is what “artifical scarcity” means. Jeff Bezos having a billion less wouldn’t actually cost him anything, because he can’t spend it anyways. All him having those billions does is cost everyone else life-saving resources, like ventilators in a lethal pandemic.

So let’s put this epic failure in more technical terms.

Capitalism has misallocated capital on a truly stunning and surreal scale in America. It’s created a system where an entire nation goes without the critical, life-saving resources they need, in the midst of a lethal global pandemic — while the wealthy could literally buy Americans those resources single-handedly, and doing so wouldn’t make a dent in their fortunes. But the wealthy can’t spend all that money to begin with. It’s literally just sitting there, going to no good use. Like, say, the critical one of ventilators. The result will obviously be needless death on a massive scale.

Economists call all that a “deadweight loss.” If American economists were actually good ones, they’d immediately understand that capitalism is a colossal and tragic failure. Consider the Soviet Union — Americans used to make fun of it for breadlines. But now Americans are the ones beset by artificial scarcities. What’s scarce in America? Yesterday — healthcare, retirement, decent work, education, good food, and so on. The basics.

Today? The critical, life-saving necessities. Ventilators, masks, protective equipment.

Capitalism — as an economy — literally cannot supply these things to society. It is more interested in billionaires hoarding as much wealth as possible — and then crafting political mechanisms to protect that wealth. And yet that wealth is too much, in the simple sense that nobody can even spend it.

But when I have too much money that I can never spend, of course you will go without — because the economy slowly grinds to a halt, as my money simply sits there idle, instead of being invested in the things you need. That is what “artificial scarcity” means: ventilators aren’t really scarce, we just can’t make them because only Jeff Bezos can afford them, since he’s now as rich as…a whole healthcare system, which Americans now go without, since those resources belong to him.

What we see at this dire stage of American capitalism is a kind of evolution, backwards, devolution. Yesterday, basics were in perpetual, artificial short supply — money, retirement, healthcare, etc. But you can eke out a life without basics, still. Just one without dignity and meaning and happiness. Yet today, the situation is much worse. Critical, life-saving resources are now artificially scarce. And you can’t live without those.

The result? People will die — needlessly, on a staggering scale.

I can’t think of an economic system failing in a more disastrous way than that. A truer way than that. You don’t have a ventilator that might save your, your kid’s, your partner’s life — meanwhile, the wealthy could buy them for all, for every single person in society…at literally no real cost to themselves. There is literally no better example of what Marx famously called “exploitation” than all that: you dying, during a pandemic because the super rich have such an absurd amount of resources in society that they could literally buy everyone life itself, and not even notice, yet won’t, because, well…why care? Americans are being exploited and abused by capitalism now not just into poverty and overwork and social disintegration — but into lethal illness and death itself. Yes, really — in hard, cold, absolute, unforgiving terms.

Let them eat ventilators? It puts Versailles to shame.

I have few word left to express how I feel about all this. But I am not the point. You are. Some day, the world hopes, Americans will understand just how badly capitalism has abused and exploited them. Because the world is made of good people, who want the best, still, even for Americans. The question is whether Americans want that for themselves.

Umair Haque March 2020

Phroyd

#captalism #covid #failure

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foxingpeculiar · 3 years

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Bitching. I need to vent this morning.

I have been up for less than 20 minutes and I’m already completely done with today.

First, good ol’ insomnia strikes again--I went to bed at 1:30 and fell asleep around 5. When I DID finally fall asleep, I had 1) a really awkward sex dream, followed immediately by 2) a dream where I’m being kidnapped and tortured by a crooked cop. So that’s fun. Then yesterday, I discovered my car battery died because it’s been cold and I haven’t had anywhere to drive in like 3 weeks. It’ll be fine when I can get it jumped, but I haven’t been able to deal with that yet, so I ordered some groceries to be delivered between specifically between 12-2, but I get woken up by messages about it at 10am, so now I’m running on 5 hours of interrupted sleep. And like, I’m not a spring chicken anymore. When I was like 22, I could sleep 4 hours and be basically fine, but now? I get less than six and I feel drunk and nauseous and all my limbs just hurt. Oh, and part of the reason I ordered groceries was because I’m out of coffee. So there’s that.

Plus my computer apparently took it onto itself to restart, so all the tabs I left open for work at my actual job are now gone. I don’t think I lost any saved work, but it’s gonna take a bit to track them all down again.

And I have a bunch of schoolwork I have to get done today that I just DO NOT care about right now. I’m supposed to annotate this chapter, but I just don’t have anything to say. And I have 8 poems, and 4 flash-fiction stories to critique before Tuesday and I’m just SO TIRED. AND like 100 pages of reading to do in a novel (at least this book is more interesting than the last one).

And I’ve had practically no direct human contact for months and still have 2 weeks until my first vaccine shot, but we might go on lockdown again because this state is full of rednecks who can’t be bothered to take basic precautions so we’re leading the nation in the latest spike, natch. (Did something stupid happen in the news? If it wasn’t FL or TX, it was probably MI.) And I’m probably going to move down to MO next summer, which will be great once it’s done, but it’s going to be SO EXPENSIVE that I basically have no disposable income for the next year. I mean I can probably squeeze out a few little incentives for myself, but it’s gonna be small things only and I’m gonna feel shitty about it anyway because I feel guilty about EVERYTHING.

What I definitely can’t afford anymore is weed, which I’ve been self-medicating with for years, which creates its own set of problems that I’m not thrilled about, but it’s been at least effective in 1) reducing the panic attacks that I get all the fucking time without it, and 2) keeping me chill enough to be able to manage basic shit like keeping the apartment clean. But it’s so expensive here--in OR I could walk out of a store with an ounce for $50--here that’s about what 1/8 costs. And a federal market would even out those prices some, but noooooooooo, America has to have a century long “war on drugs” (how the fuck do you fight a “war” on an abstract concept?), that was 1) founded on a history of blatant, not-even-disguised anti-Black/Asian/Mexican racism, 2) features rampant and often ridiculously untrue propaganda disseminated by policymakers who have no actual experience with the subject (I was literally told as a child, in school, that you could die from smoking a joint--I remember that clearly), 3) cost taxpayers billions upon billions of dollars, 4) ruined as many lives as the drugs themselves, and 5) accomplished nothing other than lining the pockets of actual, violent criminals. So real fucking slow clap there, America.

And okay, maybe I can get on some actual medication soon, cos I do have a doctor’s appointment scheduled finally (after spending months trying to navigate the fucked up healthcare system in this country--when an actual insurance agent tells you to lie on your insurance form to get coverage, maybe something is wrong? Just a thought). But that appointment is definitely going to be more focused on the unexplained gastrointestinal bleeding I’ve been having intermittently for like... months now (what prompted the whole “I’m going to deal with trying to get private insurance” debacle in the first place). So I’m super excited to find out what’s going on there, cos like... a bleeding ulcer seems like maybe the best-case scenario, you know? Plus, just... everything. That we keep elevating people to power who have no problem shitting on me (transphobic, anti-asian rhetoric) or my family (Islamophobia) with no fucking consequences. That there are people all over the place here flying the confederate flag (who have lived in a Union state their entire lives, so tell me it’s about history, I dare you) on their trucks talking about how their “American way of life” is under threat without a hint of fucking self-awareness or irony, that... just... I can’t even go on.

And I know I come from a place of privilege in all of that bullshit--I have a basically stable family that would be middle-class if that were still a thing (which it’s not, because all economic policy is designed by the very people who are trying to flout the rules that apply to everyone else), so every time I start feeling like this and getting mad, it just ends up turning back around on itself and there’s that guilt again. And all it would take is just getting away from this scarcity mindset, this attitude of fear that people have that just aren’t fucking necessary in this world--but what are you supposed to do about that? You can lead horses to water, but not only do they not drink, they kick you in the face while they’re dying of dehydration.

It’s enough to make one want to just go back to bed forever. But I can’t, cos I have shit to do.

But typing out a rant now and then does help.

#personal #bitching

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mouseyfox · 4 years

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youtube

[Video description] A white woman with dark brown hair down to her chin and black horn rim glasses sits in front of a cream wall with a string of mint drying behind her. She is holding a pillow with a geometric design as she turns on her phone's video camera.

[sigh] Hi, my name is Krystal. I am a disabled queer woman and I am here to have a talk with you today about what it's like being disabled in the United States and trying to keep a job.

[Transcript Below]

So [sighs] there's some major issues with how we as US citizens and people in general, um, deal with disability and how it relates to the job force and how [thoughtful pause] we are treated as employees. Now the Equal Opportunities, um, Equal Employment Opportunities Act, um, was a major step forward as were similar things such as the, you know, Disability Rights movement, and the Americans with Disabilites Act, and even, you know, the Affordable Care Act. Those have all had positive effects on the Disabled Community as a whole, but there's a lot more that needs to be done. Now, disabilities are not just physical. They can be emotional, or psychological, and they can also be intellectual. That means you could see someone with a wheelchair, or a missing limb, or someone who has Parkinson's Disease, or someone who has dyslexia, or someone who has PTSD, someone who's missing an eye, someone who's deaf, blind, the list goes on, honestly.

For me personally I have been disabled for ohhh well over fifteen years at this point. I have experienced over fifteen years of abuse in my life which has triggered Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, um, DID, um, Anxiety Disorders, Major Reoccurring Depression, I have Trichotillomania, Excoriation Disorder, I also have physical disabilities as well. I have Poly Cystic Ovarian Syndrome. I also have Chronic Pain and Fatigue, I have hips that don't sit right, and a back that doesn't like sitting straight, and I also have migraines that have gotten to the point where I'm having about a migraine every week or so even with medication. I'm going in for more treatment options with a neurologist to figure out why they're happening. Now, I am a person who would benefit greatly from things like Universal Healthcare, and uh Universal Basic Income because at the end of the day I am a queer woman who is disabled and who is supporting a partner who is totally disabled as much as I can, and even just saying that could cost him his benefits, and that is heinous. We are not married, if disabled people marry and they have benefits they can loose them entirely, legally, within the US as it is today. I have a Bachelor's degree I got from the University of Louisville this spring during COVID and while I am very happy that I have finally achieved something ten years in the making for a lot of reasons it was horrible on my health both mental and physical.

As a student who is independent and was relying entirely on loans aside from very few scholarships that did in no way cover the full cost of tuition. I worked [sigh] a full time job while being a full time student at a call center uh who violated my rights as a disabled person in a number of ways and when I eventually left that job and applied for full time disability benefits, which I was denied, by the way, uhm, [the call center] lied to the SSI department, and said that I had never once filed accomodation letters to them, which is very untrue as I had spoken with an HR Director on multiple occassions, I had emailed them, I had spoken to them on the phone, I had one on ones with supervisors about how the job was affecting my physical health, as well as my emotional and mental health and how it was worsening my disabilities.

I had applied for short term disability, which is something that in the United States, is only offered by certain employers and is something that you have to pay into. There is no short term disability department with the SSI. There is no way for an American citizen currently as it stands to have short term disability to get some of the medical issues under control in the US unless you have already paid into a pool.

Now, some of you might be wondering what about FMLA, the Family Medical Leave Act? I applied for that, and they really don't like you using that for short term disability unless if it's something that was happened at the job or outside. For example, if you undergo an amputation, you might be someone who would qualify for FMLA. But, for me, a person who was just dealing with further issues with my chronic disorders that are never going to go away, um, at this point my issues are so deeply imbeded that I will have to be on medication for the rest of my life to handle my disorders and as with many people, as I age, I am as likely to get more disabilities on top of everything else.

The way that our economy, the way that our healthcare works right now we don't accomodate or help or you know just give disabled people a way to live and work without highly unfair and horrible ways of treating them. I have been gaslit by employers. I have, uh, very highly insinuated that I was lying about issues with my health just so I could go home and "be lazy", or I've been told or implied by coworkers that I was lying about my disabilities and there are all sorts of negative public stigma about people who lie about disorders so they can like get benefits. And, honestly, here's a news flash for you, it's virtually impossible to get full time SSI benefits if you're lying. I have friends who have disorders that can kill them before they turn fifty who are considered not disabled enough to qualify for SSI benefits. And these are people who are dealing with horrible diseases that will kill them or just make it really impossible for them to ever work. Like, physically, mentally, some education, uhm, or not education, intellectual disorders there's no way they're going to be able to hold a full time steady job and you know with the way that our economy works part time jobs don't cut it.

Most people are working two to three jobs because our minimum wage isn't high enough. And if you're disabled you spend so much money on taking care of yourself, and spending days at home, and that's just part of being disabled. I don't like calling off of work. I don't like being drug into my supervisor's office to get you know reprimanded for constantly having to call in or leave early. I don't like inconveniencing my coworkers either because I know that makes it harder on them, but you know what's also harder on them? If I decide to power through a day even when I'm feeling like garbage, and I make more mistakes, I will get less things done, I'll be worse off with my customer interactions, and there are days where I have worked through on ten, twelve, even thirteen hour shifts as a disabled person, and it has absolutely wrecked my health.

I have been working for ten years and I've been a caretaker for even longer, and my ability to perform at a full time job has drastically diminished in just ten years of trying to support myself in the way our current economy works and I've worked in a variety of different jobs. I've done physical labor jobs, I've worked in factories, I've worked in call centers, I've been a barista, I've been a cashier, I have been a bourbon steward, I have worked in healthcare in a variety of fields, and I have worked in library science which is what I'm hoping to get for a- for my- my education goal is I want to be a librarian. I want to be someone who helps people with research and reference work, and helps with their community. I love being engaged with my community. I love helping people. I like going to work. I do genuinely enjoy going to work! But when I have to keep working to a point that would make even a- you know someone who's not disabled overly worked and wreck their health... What do you think that does to those of us who have disabilities? Huh? Cause I can promise you it's a lot worse than you initially think. And the accomodations that they offer at most jobs are a fucking joke. They really are.

Most jobs aren't even accomodating for people in wheelchairs, for people with physical disabilities, and not to mention people who have hearing problems, or who are blind, and don't get me started on psychological problems. We could have an entire separate discussion on that one because the way that workplace cultures work and the way with microaggressions with racism, and all sorts of other factors like homophobia, transphobia, fatphobia, yes that counts, okay, because a lot of disabled people are just big, and you know what a lot of them are also really skinny, because their medical problem might be tied into that in ways that you can't understand either without a medical degree, or without being disabled yourself and having to do research.

Because at the end of the day the people who are most educated about their own disabilities are often the disabled person themselves. Yes doctors are very educated. Yes they know a lot. But you know who also knows a lot about the disorder, the person who's fucking experiencing it. I have friends who have been dismissed by doctors for years. Whose illnesses and issues have been completely mishandled and not at all treated by doctors because they wouldn't fucking listen to their patients. Okay. And, that's not something that we should be proud about as a country.

The way that we treat disabled people is horrible, and that's not even considering the problem with eugenics in this country because there are a number of people who are very interested in the fact of created designer babies, or aborting [disabled] babies, or you know, just throwing disabled people away until they die in a corner so you don't have to think about them. And that's a historical problem with this country and it hasn't gone away. We haven't fixed it. And it's something we need to work on.

But you know what? We're never going to be able to address those harder issues until we address the fact that working and having to hold multiple jobs to live for abled people that's inexcusable. It's even worse when you're disabled.

I can't tell you the number of times I have been almost homeless because my job had fired me because I had to call in too often, or I just had to leave a job because it was horribly wrecking my health. I have played yo-yo with all of my jobs for the past three years after I tried filing for disability, and you know what? They told me no. They told me I'm too young. I can't possibly have the disorders that I have or I'm just not disabled enough.

And you know what? You can be disabled at any age. And that possibility only increases the older that you get. Because the older you get your systems start failing and you will be disabled at one point in your life. Period. Everyone will experience disability before they die in some way shape or form. So when we talk about disability rights it's not just about me. It's not just about friends of mine who are being killed by our healthcare system, and by our government, and by our economy, every single day. It's also about you. So when I ask you to give a fuck about disabled people and work and listen to what we're asking you to do this is about you too. Because one day you're going to be in our position, and you know what? It sucks. And no one should have to deal with this.

[Emotional Pause] We need healthcare reform. We need it. Very badly. And when I say that it goes from everything to my own father who has been insulin rationing, and dealing with completely ludicrous insulin prices since before I was born.

It goes to my mother, you know, whose liver shut down because of black mold in a church my father preached at. I watched her slowly die for a year because she refused to go to the hospital because if she did, and she got the care that could have saved her, it would have killed my father because we wouldn't have been able to afford his insulin.

You know, and I'm not the only person, who's had situations like this, there are elderly people all over our nation who are dealing with similar issues all day. There are people who are disabled, there are families of disabled people, who are working to support people. There- Did you know that it's actually illegal for disabled people to marry and keep their benefits? Did you? Because I have a pertner who is disabled and even just saying that could rob him of his benefits.

That's not including issues with disability and, you know, being queer. Because being queer complicates everything. You know I don't say that because it's fun and I get "all the social benefits it brings" as Rosalarian would say because you know what? There really aren't any.

I'm queer because I'm queer. I'm disabled because my body is a pain in the ass, and because I've gone through things that no one ever should have had to go through and it has completely wrecked my mental health.

And I've gotten so much better than I used to be! I used to be so much worse off and put up with stuff that was absolutely wrecking my mental health and physical health because your mental health does a lot of stuff with your physical health that you might not be aware of. [Cat sneezes]

The United States as a nation is literally working itself to death, and that doesn't just affect able bodied people. It affects disabled people a lot worse. And you know what, I like working, but I like living a lot better. [Turns off video]

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nocturnals-anonymous · 4 years

Link

The absolute rage expressed in this piece borders on the righteously murderous. I would wager it’s a sentiment shared by at least 70,000,000 Americans. This mom is angry and tells it like it is:

I was born at the end of Gen X and the beginning of the Millennial Generation, and grew up in a middle class town. Life was good. Our home was modest but birthdays and Christmas were always generous, we went on yearly vacations, had 2 cars, and there was enough money for me to take dance classes and art lessons and be in Girl Scouts.

My 1940s born Dad raised me to be patriotic and proud, to love the war bird airplanes of his era as much as he does, and to respect our flag and our country as a sacred thing. I grew up thinking that being an American was the greatest gift a person could have. I grew up thinking that our country was as strong, and honest and true as my Dad. I grew up thinking I was free.

As an adult, I have witnessed the world I grew up in fall to ruin. I have watched as our currency and our economy have been shamelessly corrupted beyond redemption. Since we’ve been married, my husband and I TWICE had our meager investment savings gutted by the market that we were told to invest in, now that pensions no longer exist and we working stiffs are on our own. We will be working until we die, because the Social Security we’ve been forced to pay into has also been robbed from under us.

I have watched as our elected officials enter Congress as ordinary folks and leaves as multi millionaires. I have watched my blue collar husband get up at an ungodly hour every day and come home with an aching back that we pray will hold out long enough to get him to old age in one piece. Outside of shoes, socks and underwear, almost everything my family wears was bought used. We’ve been on one vacation in 12 years.

We don’t have cell phones, or cable, or any sort of streaming services, just a landline and internet. We hardly ever eat out. Our house is 1400 square feet, no air conditioning. I cook from scratch and I can and I garden and I raise chickens for eggs and meat and I moonlight selling things on Etsy. Still it is barely enough to pay the bills that go up every year while service quality and the longevity of goods goes down. What I just described is the life you can live on 60K a year without going into debt.

At last calculation, when you consider all of the federal, state and local taxes plus registration and user fees, Medicare and SS payroll taxes, almost a third of what my family earns is stolen by the govt each year. What’s left doesn’t go far, just enough to cover the basics and save a little for when the wolf howls at the door.

I watched as my family’s health insurance was gutted and destroyed. Our private market insurance, which we had to have because my husband’s employer is too small to have a group plan, was made illegal. We were left with the option of either buying an Obamacare plan with unaffordable deductibles and insanely ridiculous out of pocket maxes, or paying the very gov’t that destroyed our healthcare a fine for not buying the gov’t mandated plan that we cannot afford. We now have short term insurance that isn’t really insurance at all, and I live in fear of one of us getting injured or sick with anything I can’t fix from the medicine cabinet.

I have watched as education, which was already sketchy when I was a kid, became an all out joke of wholly unmathematical math, gold stars for all, and self-loathing anti-Americanism. My family has taken an enormous financial hit as I stay home to home school our child. At least she’ll be able to do old-fashioned math well enough to see how much they are screwing her. A silver lining to every cloud, I guess.

I’ve sat by and held my tongue as I was called deplorable and a bitter clinger and told that I didn’t build that. I’ve been called a racist and a xenophobe and a chump and even an “ugly folk.” I’ve been told that I have privilege, and that I have inherent bias because of my skin color, and that my beloved husband and father are part of a horrible patriarchy. Not one goddamn bit of that is true, but if I dare say anything about it, it will be used as evidence of my racism and white fragility.

Raised to be a Republican, I held my nose and voted for Bush, the Texas-talking blue blood from Connecticut who lied us into 2 wars and gave us the unpatriotic Patriot Act. I voted for McCain, the sociopathic neocon songbird “hero” that torpedoed the attempt to kill the Obamacare that’s killing my family financially. I held it again and voted for Romney, the vulture capitalist skunk that masquerades as a Republican while slithering over to the Democrat camp as often as they’ll tolerate his oily, loathsome presence.

And I voted for Trump, who, if he did nothing else, at least gave a resounding Bronx cheer to the richly deserving smug hypocrites of DC. Thank you for that Mr. President, on behalf of all of us nobodies. God bless you for it.

And now I have watched as people who hate me and mine and call for our destruction blatantly and openly stole the election and then gaslighted us and told us that it was honest and fair. I am watching as the GOP does NOTHING about it. They’re probably relieved that upstart Trump is gone so they can get back to their real jobs of lining their pockets and running interference for their corporate masters. I am watching as the media, in a manner that would make Stalin blush, is silencing anyone who dares question the legitimacy of this farce they call democracy. I know, it’s a republic, but I am so tired of explaining that to people I might as well give in and join them in ignorance.

I will not vote again; they’ve made it abundantly clear that my voice doesn’t matter. Whatever irrational, suicidal lunacy the nanny states thinks is best is what I’ll get. What it decided I need is a geriatric pedophile who shouldn’t be charged with anything more rigorous than choosing between tapioca and rice pudding at the old folks home, and a casting couch skank who rails against racism while being a descendant of slave owners.

I’m free to dismember a baby in my womb and kill it because “my body my choice”, but God help me if I won’t cover my face with a germ laden Linus-worthy security blanket or refuse let them inject genetically altering chemicals into my body or my child’s. I can be doxed, fired, shunned and destroyed for daring to venture that there are only 2 genders as proven by DNA, but a disease with a 99+% survival rate for most humans is a deadly pandemic worth murdering an economy over. Because science. Idiocracy is real, and we are living it. Dr. Lexus would be an improvement over Fauci.

I am done. Don’t ask me to pledge to the flag, or salute the troops, or shoot fireworks on the 4th. It’s a sick, twisted, heartbreaking joke, this bloated, unrecognizable corpse of a republic that once was ours.

I am not alone. Not sure how things continue to function when millions of citizens no longer feel any loyalty to or from the society they live in.

I was raised to be a lady, and ladies don’t curse, but fuck these motherfuckers to hell and back for what they’ve done to me, and mine, and my country. All we Joe Blow Americans ever wanted was a little patch of land to raise a family, a job to pay the bills, and at least some illusion of freedom, and even that was too much for these human parasites. They want it all, mind, body and soul. Damn them. Damn them all.

#voting #voter fraud #election fraud #ShadowGate #IIA #color revolution #coup #electioneering #gaslighting

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thatdrawingbikerchick · 4 years

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I'm going to rant so you've been warned.

Almost the entire world is in lockdown due to Covid-19 and I have some things I want to say because I'm sick of seeing and hearing what's going on. People need to cop on and grow up and come together at this time but clearly they're not getting that so here's a few things I'd like to say and a few ideas I have for any politicians who may see this in whatever country they may be.

First and foremost I can't believe I have to say this but this pandemic affects everyone equally. To anyone who says otherwise you are wrong. Covid-19 does not care what race you are, what age you are, how much money you have or whether you're unemployed or employed.

Why am I saying this? I've heard people over the past month say things like 'Jobseekers aren't affected by this they don't deserve additional support'. Now I'm paraphrasing there but you get the idea. I'm going to break this down by explaining the effects of Covid-19 on my life.

I am 21 years old, I fortunately do not have underlying health issues, however my mother is 60 years of age, she has survived cancer not once, but twice, she has fibromyalgia and other underlying health issues. My father is type 2 diabetic, he has high blood pressure and when he gets a common cold he ends up in hospital under the advice of his doctor because it affects him so badly. My step grandmother is 76 years of age she also has diabetes and other health issues. My stepmother and stepsister are healthy fortunately, however, I now can't visit any of them as I run the risk of bringing Covid-19 into their homes because they are high risk.

I am a jobseeker. I recieve jobseekers allowance from the Department of Social Protection. I was made redundant on January 21st this year as the company I was working for closed. I did not apply for Jobseeker's Allowance until mid February. You may be asking why, because I was doing everything I could to find a new job before making a claim. I applied for each and every job I was qualified for and brought CVs to many local businesses. I do not want to be a jobseeker, I want to be employed and working. I allowed myself a 6 week deadline for finding a job when I applied for allowance. This was to motivate me and push me to find work and also because I cannot afford the independence I earned on Jobseeker's Allowance. This 6 week deadline has now been and gone, I am still unemployed and I'm unsure where the money for next months bills is going to come from. Due to Covid-19 there are fewer jobs, the jobs that are available have too many applicants and therefore the odds of me finding a job are now slimmer than they were.

On April 30th I am going to have a decision to make and it's a tough one. I know the Government have applied a no evictions policy for the pandemic but I have to face the reality of this. On April 30th I am most likely going to have to give my landlord 30 days notice on my tenancy. I will not be able to afford to continue living where I am as I am beyond May. Now this may seem fine to you but let me break that down. If I have to give up my apartment I have to move home to either my mums or dads. I don't drive a car and therefore would have to ask them to assist me in moving, putting them at risk. I run the risk of bringing this virus to them even if I find a way to move home without them leaving self isolation. If I do move home I will be living in the countryside and be in self isolation until a vaccine for Covid-19 is created. This will mean I won't be able to travel to job interviews.

I have already had to give up my motorcycle and cancel the insurance to prioritise bills, I am contacting my bank in order to request a hold on my loan repayments to prioritise bills. I have cancelled all online subscriptions to prioritise bills. I will most likely have to get out of my phone and internet contracts to prioritise bills. I have cut back on habits (smoking) and reduced my food intake and cost to prioritise bills.

I am a jobseeker. I am affected by the Covid-19 pandemic as equally as those who were in employment. I do not receive any additional support.

Secondly and I know I've already written a LOT, if you've read to this point thank you. Has the world gone mad? We as an entire global population are in a pandemic and for some reason people don't seem to understand this. In Ireland (I’m Irish so it’s my example) in the past few weeks there have been multiple murders, stabbings and burglaries, domestic fires and arsons, 2 ATMs robbed in Dundalk, 20 rubbish bins set alight in Dublin, joyriders destroying pitches, multiple high speed car chases some of which ended in collision, and god knows what else that didn’t reach the media. But the worst of all to me is the people going around spitting and coughing on Gardaí and civilians and on shop stock. We are all in a time where we need to come together and be strong in our homes, our communities and our society. Those who are committing offences at this time, in my opinion, should receive an automatic 1 year prison sentence, without hesitation. People are afraid, we are anxious and unsure of when this will end, people should not be causing more upset and unrest at this time, those who see this as a time to commit crimes should receive additional punishment.

Continuing on this point, I ask people to be vigilant not only due to Covid-19 but due to the hooligans who appear to believe this is Grand Theft Auto. I have seen posts online where people are hanging ropes from overpasses on motorways, at the end of these ropes there are metal bars at windscreen height, to the people doing this, what on earth is wrong with you? The people who are travelling at the moment are putting their lives at risk to care for the sick or elderly, to leave their families and work in shops so you have food for your families, they’re truckers who get that food to the shops, they are putting their lives and the lives of their families at risk and you fools are trying to injure or possibly kill them? You too should, in my opinion, receive an immediate 1 year prison sentence. This is one example within many but this to me is the most disgusting I have seen in recent times, it truly boiled my blood.

Now I’m going to stop focusing on the negative affects of Covid-19 and point out some of the truly incredible moments we have seen in the past few weeks. Firstly the Italians singing from their balconies, millions in donations to support and protect healthcare professionals, the British on the streets clapping and showing their gratitude to the NHS, the Irish following suit for the HSE. Never mind moments the bravery and selflessness of those essential workers, you are not just essential in the time of pandemic, you are essential all the time and I truly hope that this pandemic makes the world see this and you receive greater appreciation in the future.

Now I have an idea I want to suggest to governments around the world. An idea I had while walking to do my essential shopping this afternoon, pedestrian etiquette should be called upon during this time. By this I mean walk as we drive, walk in the directional flow of traffic where possible, I know some footpaths are closed due to works being done. I believe it would be beneficial for governments to suggest that when walking we walk on the side of the street in the same directional flow of traffic as we are walking. This meaning people will be less likely to have to pass one another on narrow footpaths allowing social distancing.

#covid_19 #covid19 #coronavirus #government #pandemic #national health service (nhs)#hse #nhs #idea #rant over #rant

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strohller27 · 4 years

Text

Just some poetry about what I’m feeling right now...

It’s nothing special, it doesn’t rhyme, and I don’t care what people think of it. It’s not supposed to be great. It’s suppsed to help me vent.

I have spent my life

Wishing I was older

As if I would somehow feel more comfortable

As if it would somehow be better

When I was a child

I wished I was a teenager

Because I thought

If I was a teenager,

I could start making some of my own decisions

When I was a teenager

I wished I was in my twenties

Because I thought

If I was in my twenties,

I would be able to have my own space

My own car, my own house,

My own life

Now I am here,

I’m in my twenties,

With no car,

No house,

No space of my own,

My life is not mine,

And I suddenly wish I was old and retired

Because I think,

Maybe if I was old and retired,

I would have already gone through my life

When the wealth in this country was more evenly distributed

And maybe I could have afforded a nice little one-bedroom house

And a sensible car

And maybe I would have already met the love of my life

And maybe my children would all be grown

And me and my love would go on walks near the beach

And we would read together in bed

And make lunch together

And laugh together

And we wouldn’t have to worry about finances,

Or healthcare

Or our own welfare

But I am still here,

In my late twenties,

And that dream of a life without worry

Seems like an impossibility

If all of that still stands before me

I certainly don’t see it actually coming true

It all feels like a 1960s TV movie

In Technicolour and built on façades

Like it’s a set painted on muslin and plywood

Too easily torn down

It all feels like a comforting fiction

But it’s just not plausible

Not practical

Not real

You see, here I am in my 20s

Living in my parents’ house

Doing the dishes so I can have a roof over my head

But the roof isn’t mine

The dishes aren’t mine

The food that I eat isn’t mine

Not even the bed I sleep in feels like mine

Maybe I have the clothes on my back

And the computer I bought

So I could write my thesis on a keyboard that actually worked

Maybe the hockey equipment I saved up for is mine

And the gaming system I saved up for

And all of the little things I have locked away in a shed

Some plates and cups and silverware

Movies and books

Awaiting the day when ‘I have my shit together’

Of course, my parents keep talking about ‘when you move out’

Like I’m still a teenager,

A fledgling getting ready to ‘leave the nest’

And in the same breath

Will tease me about not giving them grandkids

As if I’m in any position to do so

You see, when I was a child,

I thought by now I would have reached those milestones

My mother was my age when she had me

She was younger than me when she married

She was also kicked out of the house by her mother when she was 18

Because she was supposed to be an adult

It was ‘time’ for her to leave the nest

She was able to find a job and an apartment

And I am grateful for that, I suppose

Because otherwise, I probably wouldn’t exist,

But there’s another side of it

I never asked to be born

But here I am,

Living in the second-bedroom-turned-storage-room in my parent’s house

Feeling like just another thing they’re saving for a rainy day...

Or for when they don’t want to do the dishes

‘That’s what kids are for’ they joke

‘Why else would we have kids?’

When they see my room, my friends teasingly compare me to Harry Potter

Living in his cupboard under the stairs

And I laugh at their jokes, but later

When I’m lying in bed trying to get to sleep

I wonder why my parents have picked now to tease me about not giving them grandkids

When I can’t even survive on my own

My parents say they want me to ‘contribute to the household’

Because working to put yourself through college apparently isn’t enough when you’re living rent-free

But I’m constantly reminded

That this is not my household

And these are not my dreams

And when my mum buys coffee cups ‘for the household’,

She buys two and not three

My parents have their dreams

They are close to retirement

They get to decide how they decorate their house

They get to decide how to live their lives

My life ‘is just beginning’, according to them

‘At least you have your youth’, they tell me

Okay, so I have some inflated sense of being younger than I actually am...

...Thanks?

But I don’t have my space

I don’t have financial stability

I don’t get to decide how I live my life

And you know what?

At heart, I’m an old man living in a beach house with the love of my life

Sending our kids and grandkids birthday cards every year

And the most troubling thing I have to worry about is whether or not the weather will be kind to my garden

Or whether or not the wind will interfere with the get together we want to have with our friends in the back yard

Or whether or not there’ll be a stick and puck session at the local rink this week

And so, you’ll forgive me if I live in a fantasy world

So I can try to experience what I’d like my life to be like

So I get to experience deciding where I’d like to put my dresser

Or what colour to paint my walls

Or hitting all of those milestones that don’t really mean much in the grand scheme of things

But that I somehow still yearn for anyway

Or what it’s like to be old enough

That I can finally rest

That I can finally live

#i know my problems are not that important compared to what’s going on right now but #I have to live with them and they’re getting pretty heavy #people are always telling me i have my whole life ahead of me #but what if I don’t?#if I died tomorrow would I be happy with my life?#the answer is hell no #I know this may seem selfish #but I’m just so tired #I'm tired of 'just making it through today'#and I know so many of us in my generation are facing similar problems #i’m already so burnt out on life #when do I get to rest?#how old do I have to be?

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relationshipsandpolitics · 5 years

Text

The Medicare for All Debate isn’t about healthcare; it’s about taxes.

So here’s basically what’s happened with Medicare for All, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.

Warren and Sanders both support Medicare for All or at least some government-run healthcare system that provides health care for every American regardless of their income, job status or health. Pretty much every industrialized country in the world has some form of universal coverage, whether it be totally funded and run by the government, or through a public/private mixture. But the result is everybody pays taxes to get free or cheap health coverage.

Republicans and many Democrats (including Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg and professional anonymous person John Delaney) have attacked Warren and Sanders because they believe enacting such a policy will cause taxes to go up and lead to worse health outcomes. Democrats argue that our current health care system is lacking, but universal coverage will somehow be worse, or if not worse, cost too much to be palatable. Because budget deficits are worse than 45,000 people dying every year due to lack of health insurance, apparently.

Sanders has countered this criticism by saying that, yes, middle class taxes will go up. Taxes on almost everyone will go up to fund Medicare four all. But, and this is crucial, overall costs to the poor and middle class will decrease because they would be paying nothing in insurance premiums, copays and deductibles. The Republican and Democratic opposition, along with the media, ignore this fact, but it remains to be seen if the average voters will understand this. As such, Sanders is forced to be on the defensive.

Warren, meanwhile, has avoided answering whether taxes would go up under her plan. Biden and others are after her for this and will likely bring it up in the debate tonight. Recently, Warren released a financing plan to fund Medicare for All without raising taxes. Many people have been skeptical of her plan, questioning whether she could raise the money she says her plan can raise, and whether people would avoid paying more for universal coverage. More recently, Warren has shifted her plan to now call first for a public option in year one before gradually moving to full Medicare for All by year four.

That’s where we stand on the issue. I won’t get into the validity of either plan; smarter people than me have already gone over the numbers.

I want to briefly discuss how this issue is framed. The problem with the Medicare for All debate is it relies on an assumption about the average voter. That assumption is that the absolute worst thing in the world for a voter is to see their taxes go up. The political experts believe that even if an asteroid was heading to earth and we needed to tax everybody 1% of their income to destroy it, the public would throw a middle finger in the air and get a bigger television to watch the end of the world. And I’m not sure how wrong that feeling is.

I think Biden is still winning in the polls, and Buttigieg is surging, precisely because they won’t support a plan that might raise taxes. Even though we all agree health car in this country sucks and is too expensive and covers too little, we simply cannot allow our taxes to increase to solve the issue. We shed tears over the father of three who got cancer and died because his HMO wouldn’t cover treatment, and then vote against legislation to ensure that never happens to anyone else.

Voters oppose Warren and Sanders’ plans not because they are skeptical of the merits of them, but because they don’t think they are possible to enact. And they are possibly to enact because voters will not support seeing their taxes increase, no matter the benefit. There is no other explanation. Government-run health care and health insurance is a proven concept. It works better than what we have. These are facts. It’s not a debate. Americans should support the idea in droves because it’s morally reprehensible for a country as rich as ours to allow its citizens to die because they can’t afford to see a doctor.

Americans are selfish. We refuse to pay more so that others can have a better life. We’ll shoot our own nose off to spite our face. The debate over Medicare for All is not a debate over health insurance or health care. It’s a debate about taxes and American greed.

Look, if you have issues with their specific plans, fine. It’s worth a healthy debate over whether the Sanders or Warren plan is the best way to achieve universal coverage. But if you don’t support Sanders or Warren as candidates because they want Medicare for All, you need to be honest with yourself why. You need to stand up and admit that you simply don’t want to pay more in taxes, even if it means 45,000 of your fellow citizens get to live.

#bernie sanders #elizabeth warren #medicare for all #taxes

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vakariaan · 5 years

Note

I'd like to send you an ask about healthcare in America, but my character limit ran out. If you don't mind, I will divide it in parts...?

Part 1) I follow your blog for Poldark, but as an American, I noticed your reblog about the healthcare crisis in our country. This is personal to me, because my family has experienced the greed of our insurance companies and pharmaceutical industry firsthand.Part 2) My dad was diagnosed with colon cancer last year, and the cost of surgery and chemo almost bankrupt him. My mother has hyperthyroidism but has no health insurance and doesn’t take her medicine because the cost is too high. I myself lost health insurance for two years after my father retired.Part 3) I don’t know how you feel about Bernie Sanders, but I support him for his lifelong and genuine concern of the gap between the very wealthy and the very poor, and his tireless fight to bring a national healthcare system to our country. Older generations say millenialls support him because we want everything for free - I say I support him because I don’t want my parents to die just because they’re poor. Part 4) Lastly, I wonder from across the pond, what are your thoughts about the healthcare crisis in my country, and what has your experience been with healthcare in your own country?

——-

Well first of all I’m so sorry for you and for your family. Illness is already its own burden that brings worries about money, never mind having the worry of medical bills on TOP of those too.

I’m going to be honest and tell you I don’t know a whole lot about the US election candidates - maybe once the election is imminent I’ll take more of an interest but the process is sooo long and it’s still so far away. I will say that anyone who is advocating for universal healthcare is worth supporting.

I’ll tell you a bit about my experience with the NHS in Scotland.

Our healthcare is free at the point of care and I can guarantee I would not be alive today if it wasn’t for the NHS. Not because I’ve had life threatening conditions but because I would literally have made sure I wasn’t alive. (Suicide TW) It may not seem like much (especially given what others go through with chronic conditions etc) but I was getting treatment for acne since I was 12 years old. I’ve detailed my treatments in my ‘Skin Troubles with Scabby Legs McGee’ tag so I won’t run through the meds again here. Dentistry in this country is free until you’re 18, I needed multiple teeth pulled, braces etc. Optometry appointments are free, and I had to wear glasses to correct an astigmatism for 4 at least 4 years as a young teen.My family would not have been able afford all of this and my self esteem (which is already affected enough by it) would not have allowed ME to survive it.

As for life threatening, my mum had treatment for breast cancer, a mastectomy and a reconstruction 19 years ago. We had very little income as it was because she couldn’t work, but we didn’t have medical bills hanging over us which would not have been the case without the NHS. This year in January we found out my mum’s cancer had come back and she has been receiving treatment ever since - again, while money is tight and the pressure of future finances are hanging over us, I’m at least working now and we don’t have those medical bills to pay. We would have gone bankrupt when my mum first had cancer, there is no doubt about that.

My aunt had a cardiac arrest in February and was attended to by two ambulances and a medical car (and has been getting treatment ever since). I think I read somewhere it’s like over $1000 bill for an ambulance in the US and that is, quite frankly, horrific. In the past 5 years alone my dad has needed 3 ambulances.I have a diabetic aunt who has severe arthritis. She has had a partial leg amputation and surgery on both of her elbows. She has been unable to work for years, but she doesn’t have medical bills hanging over her.

It’s all very well me saying it’s ‘free’ by the way, it is definitely not free. So anti-millennial folk don’t know what they’re talking about. The NHS is funded through taxes and in Scotland we’re lucky enough to have no prescription charges but that isn’t the case for England. We pay for dental work after 18 (off the top of my head I needed a filling a few months ago, I paid for private treatment in order to get a white filling and it cost me £60, if I’d taken the NHS treatment it would have been a silver filling costing £16). There are allowances for people on benefits/full time education etc

People complain and complain about the NHS and the wait times etc but they don’t blame the government and systems like the Tory party systematically dismantling the NHS by reducing funding and causing staff shortages etc. The option to go private is always there if you can afford it of course and many people choose to go private to reduce their waiting times but my mum started treatment within (at most) 4 weeks of her cancer diagnosis. She saw the GP for a persistent cough and was sent to hospital the same day for an xray, within a week she had the diagnosis and within another week she had started treatment. People complain about having to wait a week to see a GP but I have worked in a doctor’s office and having been on the ‘front lines’ as it were, emergencies are ALWAYS seen to. The scare mongering stories the anti-universal healthcare people push are absolute nonsense

You asked about my views on the healthcare crisis in your country from an outsiders perspective and I can honestly say it terrifies me. Like…terrifies me all the way to my bones. I can’t imagine living somewhere where I could be charged thousands of pounds for something I cannot control. It’s horrific and draconian and I genuinely feel for you and the people of your country.

#Anonymous #A Response #long post

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politicalprof · 5 years

Text

A letter to my former student:

This is going to be a long post, and I realize almost no one will actually bother to read it. But I need to say it. So let’s begin.

------------------

Recently, I had a Twitter exchange with a former student. He’s a really good guy; I like him a lot, and always have. Our interactions are positive and respectful. He’s a veteran of the Persian Gulf War who has gone on to be a teacher, an administrator, and a coach at at a high school. He has been a servant to the nation and the community and deserves nothing but respect for that.

In the course of our exchange, he volunteered the following comment:

“and, please understand that it is possible to be a conservative without being a supporter of our president - in fact, I've been waiting for a while to cast a vote for someone I actually favored as opposed to against someone I do not!”

What follows is my response:

Of course it it possible to be a conservative without being a supporter of our president -- in theory. In theory, there might be a credible conservative alternative to Donald Trump who might advance a conservative political agenda that you might agree with.

But we don’t live in the world of “in theory.” We live in this world, at this time. And the conservative politics you wish to support no longer exists. Rather, conservatism in its American sense -- belief in limited government, support for independent businesses, a confidence in the rights and capacity of the individual to make choices for themselves and to live with the consequences of those choices (at least in matters not related to abortion rights, which American conservatives do not seem to trust women to exercise) -- has been dying for at least 30 years. Modern conservatism is a mere shadow of its former self, and there is no evidence that there is a credible conservative core inside the Republican Party around which a contemporary conservative movement that looks like the older one might form.

My concern with your impulse to vote against candidates you don’t like (Democrats, I presume) is with the unchallengeable fact that Donald Trump and his enablers now constitute an existential threat to the survival of American democracy itself. Voting for Trump OR his Republican enablers makes one complicit in advancing that threat. Indeed, so long as no serious challenger to Trump and his enablers emerges from within the Republican Party, there is no moral or ethical way to support the party’s candidates -- at least for federal office. (Federalism still allows the possibility of credible Republican choices at the state and local level, at least in some regions.)

I can’t possibly describe all the ways Trump and his enablers have made the Republican Party an existential threat to American democracy. I will focus on five: 1) Trump’s demonization of the media; 2) Trump’s demonization of the weak and defenseless in society; 3) Trump’s demand for the prosecution of his political opponents; 4) Trump’s delegitimation of elections; and 5) Trump’s delegitimation of the rule of law.

Please note that none of these topics has anything to do with daily disputes about regular political issues. I am not addressing the wrong-headedness of Trump’s actions that have undermined NATO. I am not focusing on the stupidity of his unconcern about global climate change, or about his failures in healthcare reform, or his appointment of federal judges. I might critique all of those things, but those are the stuff of ordinary politics. Rather, I am focusing on forces that pull democracies apart. Supporting Trump -- and his Republican allies today -- constitutes a threat to the American republic.

--1. The demonization of the media. OK: all presidents dislike the press. Some, like Nixon, hated the press. But they all seemed to understand that the press was part of the system. They (mostly) all seemed to understand that the often antagonistic relationship between the press and the politicians was a key component of a functioning democracy. They seemed to understand that, as Justice Black put it in his concurrence in NY Times v United States (the Pentagon Papers case), “In the First Amendment the Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to fulfill its essential role in our democracy. The press was to serve the governed, not the governors. The Government's power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the Government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government.”

Donald Trump does not believe this. In fact, he has openly stated as much, telling 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl, “You know why I do it? [Attack the press?] I do it to discredit you all and demean you all so that when you write negative stories about me no one will believe you.” In other words, Donald Trump is engaged in an open, unrestrained effort to undermine the press in order to serve his own power and advance his own agenda.

In undermining the possibility of a free, critical press Trump is damaging the prospects that any future American people will believe that the press can do the job it needs to do. Once all media is framed as partisan, the notion of information, of facts, dies. And no future president will face constraint by a free press either: what is good for the goose is good for the gander. Trump will not be the last president to rely on the “lyin’ media” frame if Trump manages to convince the American people that no one should believe the press, however imperfect it may be.

Notably, no significant part of the Republican party or its leaders are challenging Trump’s attacks on the media in any meaningful way. They are, if anything, promoting it. As a consequence, supporting either Trump or his Republican enablers threatens a linchpin of American democracy. It cannot be justified.

--2. The demonization of the weak and the vulnerable: The savageness with which Donald Trump treats his targets is remarkable. It has been a long time coming, of course: recall the infamous scenes in which Tea Party activists mocked a homeless veteran for seeking help during the 2010 midterms. But Trump seems to delight, indeed to positively revel, in punching downwards. Like most bullies, Trump focuses on people who can’t really fight back as he spews bile, hate, and mockery at them. His targets don’t just include minorities and immigrants, of course, but disabled persons, people -- usually women -- Trump decides aren’t attractive, victims of natural disasters, and, of course, even war heroes/prisoners/soldiers killed in combat serving the United States.

Please note that the research here is clear: when presidents demonize one group or other, many in the president’s audience end up hating the targeted groups more than they were already predisposed to. In other words, when presidents attack, public opinion measurably shifts in ways that reflect and amplify the president’s rhetoric.

Trump’s disgusting, hate-filled rhetoric harms the vulnerable and marginalized in society in ways that you and I, who are after all middle class white guys, simply cannot understand -- even as we can empathize with them. And so long as no serious Republican challenger emerges to resist Trump’s vile perversion of our politics, so long as Republican doctrine -- not just Trump’s -- is to serve the powerful and afflict the afflicted, then supporting Republicans, at least at the federal level, is immoral. It also erodes the promise of the American civic experiment to discover if people of different races and creeds and ideas and histories can live together in some semblance of freedom.

--3. The demand for the prosecution of political opponents: Politics is a blood sport, and at least in elections it is zero-sum. My win is your loss. Yet most democracies manage to survive because a norm develops that win or lose, we have to respect others’ rights to participate, advocate their policies, and promote their points of view. Opponents are not enemies. They are competitors.

There has been an undeniable trend over the last 30 years to shift the language of political competition from “opponents” to “enemies.” Not all this shift has been concocted by Republicans, or by Trump, by any means. But Trump is the first president in modern US history to respond to political opponents by insisting that they need to be imprisoned for crimes against the nation. He is the first to systematically incite his supporters to openly chant for the jailing of a political opponent. He is the first since Richard Nixon to demand that the law enforcement agencies of the United States serve his partisan political agenda by investigating his opponents for crimes that they have already been cleared of.

This is the stuff that happens in crackpot countries. Newly-installed dictators purge their opponents, using the levers of power to confirm their authority. But in so doing, they make the stakes of any moment of political transition extraordinarily high: the game literally becomes all or nothing, since the consequences of losing can mean imprisonment. And since the stakes are so high, so is the conflict: no one can afford to lose, so they fight it out to the last breath.

“Lock her up” isn’t funny. It isn’t cute. Weaponizing law enforcement for political ends has profound consequences for the stability of democracy.

Trump’s claims that Hillary Clinton and other opponents ought to be imprisoned undermines confidence in the possibility of peaceful transitions of power in the United States. Until I see evidence that anyone on the Republican side is fighting back against Trump’s gross abuse of federal power, supporting him or the party that enables his abuses undermines the possibility of democratic governance as such.

--4. The deligitimation of elections: No one likes to lose. And gerrymandering, and manipulated vote counts, and other forms of voter suppression have been an unfortunate part of our political life since the Republic was formed.

But Trump has exceeded any other president in his all out assault on the norms of electoral politics. He claims he won the popular vote in 2016 ... once you discount the 3,000,000+ votes cast by illegal aliens. Against all evidence he continues to assert that in-person voter fraud is vast -- but only in those elections that he and his party members lose. In 2018 he described legally-prescribed recounts as efforts to “steal” the elections from his team.

All this, meanwhile, is happening when it is clear that the majority of vote shenanigans in the US are perpetrated by Republicans: North Carolina’s Voter ID law was overturned for its explicit racial bias, while both North Carolina’s and Pennsylvania’s Congressional districts were declared unconstitutionally gerrymandered. (Pennsylvania’s redrawn districts produced a balanced outcome; North Carolina’s were not redrawn due to time concerns, and Republicans in North Carolina perpetuated their 10-3 majority in Congressional seats despite the fact that Democrats in North Carolina got 100,000 more votes statewide than Republicans did.) And this doesn’t even begin to touch on the closing of vote stations in minority dominant districts, the purging of voter rolls, and the like -- all of which have been shown to be disproportionately burdensome on people of color.

Given that NO Republican leaders AT ALL have in any way challenged any of this, the entire Republican party is culpable in undermining American democracy as manifested in the need for free and fair elections. There is simply no way to vote for Republicans and also vote for the protection of properly run, properly managed elections. Voting for Republicans today is to support the undermining of free and fair elections in the United States.

--5. The delegitimation of the rule of law: Criticism is one thing. It is unpleasant, but it is fundamentally healthy. But demonization is another thing altogether. Asserting that law enforcement agencies are corrupt -- without evidence -- is corrosive to political legitimacy.

Trump, of course, is engaged in the systematic delegitmation of the rule of law. His understanding of the law is that it should serve his interests and his political purposes. His understanding of any investigation he doesn’t like is that it is a witch hunt.

This, too, is the enterprise of dictators. If the law only works for the powerful, who at the same time insist that they are victims of the law, then democracy cannot function.

And again, the actual Republican party, the one that actually exists right now, has wholly abetted this abuse. They have cravenly cowed to Trump’s rhetoric for fear of facing his tweets, the talking parrots at FOX News, and the hordes of Trumpizoidal maniacs who are likely to show up in primary elections. Lindsay Graham prosecuted the Clinton impeachment for charges ultimately derived from the fact that Bill Clinton lied about getting a blowjob from a woman who was not his wife. Today, he insists that campaign finance payoffs running to hundreds of thousands of dollars illegally spent as part of a scheme to protect a presidential candidate’s election chances are no big deal -- merely lies told to protect the candidate’s family. The hypocrisy would stagger ... at any other time than this one.

Voting for Republicans today inevitably means supporting the subversion of the rule of law. It means supporting the erosion of American democracy.

At this point, Trump apologists usually offer some version of the comment, “both sides do it.” Well, no they don’t. Not to anything close to this scale. Not organized at the very top of the political system, where now the Trump reelection team is being completely integrated with the RNC’s fundraising operation -- for the first time in US history. (The grift is about to get vastly bigger than anyone can even fantasize.)

America is in trouble. It is time to recalibrate “voting against people you don’t like.” It is time to kill the modern Republican Party. It’s the only way to bring it back to life.

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craby-bouquet · 5 years

Text

Interruption {CH}

~part 1 ~

Xu Minghao x Reader

Romance, Royal!AU

3000 words

check notes for masterlist and more parts

Prince Minghao woke up, getting his schedule read to him by Yodi, his butler. He listened in silence to his busy schedule that day, while getting dressed.

He had a meeting in half an hour about tax raises, a thing he wouldn't agree on; living in Voulux was expensive enough as it was. After that meeting he had about two hours to himself, two hours he would spend doing paperwork, before he had to get ready to go to the Voulux Fine Art exhibition where he was supposed to give a speech.

Voulux was one of the most respected countries of Pledis, maybe even the most respected. The whole world knew of its existence, mainly for its art. The old masters of Voulux had left quite the impression on the country, and even now the artist who lived here were outstanding.

Prince Minghao couldn't say he wasn't proud of his country. Expensive as it was to live here, Voulux had a good reputation. Wonderful art and a respected heir to the throne.

But, as the people said, with an example as the current king, it was impossible for the crown prince not to be perfect. The only thing missing was a great wife to guide the king to be.

It was a thing the advisors always turned to talk about at meetings. And, of course, this meeting was like every other;

“We have discussed the matter and your highness, we're of the opinion that tax raises are indeed necessary.” Mister Lee prompted, he didn't smile but Minghao could clearly see a smug look on his face.

Mister Chang made a noise indicating he thought that mister Lee’s idea wasn't very good “And why, Lee, do you think that is necessary? I don't see why a tax raise is in order.”

Lee sighed and turned to Chang “The money we get from it can go to other things. Important things like-”

At this mister Yin stood up “Like healthcare!”

Lee pointed at Yin and smiled “Like healthcare! Exactly Yin! And to police academies, the army and other important inquiries like that.”

Mister Tao chuckled softly “Last time I checked those departments got enough money to last a lifetime. We took care of those at the previous meeting.”

Prince Minghao turned his attention from the men to Yodi, who was taking notes from beside him. Minghao noticed him, Yodi, rolling his eyes whenever one of the men started talking about reasons why taxes should raise. It made Minghao chuckle.

Mister Lee turned to his prince “Your highness, please, what do you think?”

Minghao sat up straight, Intertwining the fingers of his hands while laying them on the table before him. He scanned the inquisitive faces from his advisors and sighed deeply “I agree with mister Tao on this. Last meeting we decided our tax money should go to those inquiries. I personally don't think tax raises would make sense this time.” He looked around the table at the nodding faces and stopped at mister Lee's face. He clearly didn't agree.

“Unless…” Minghao raised an eyebrow “You had something else in mind to spend the money on, mister Lee?”

Mister Lee bit his lip, eyes focused on Minghao’s chin rather than his eyes “Well… your highness I… I just thought we could use the money for, maybe, a wedding?”

Minghao had known the conversation was bound to go this way, it had done so over and over.

Minghao sighed and sat back in his chair “How generous I find your will to use our taxes for a wedding, I doubt it will be necessary. Seeing as there is no one I find worthy to wed.” Harsh as it may sound, it was the truth. Minghao hadn't fallen in love yet. They had gone over this last time as he had told them he would let them know as soon as he thought a wedding would be in order.

It seemed mister Lee wasn't sure what to do with his hands for a second “I am aware of that, your highness…” He looked Minghao in the eye again “You know, your highness, my daughter is a very eligible woman. I think you two would get along very well…”

Minghao made a mocking sound, though he hadn't meant to make it “I'm sure that is true mister Lee. I think she will make for a fine wife for a man who loves her.” He looked around again “As for me, I'm quite enjoying my title as third most eligible bachelor of the Pledis union.”

The men at the table didn't say a word.

Minghao stood up after a couple of minutes of silence “I think we've decided tax raises would be rather otiose. Let us keep them at the height they are now. Thank you for coming here today gentlemen, you are dismissed.”

Yodi stood up from beside him, bowed to the men and followed prince Minghao out of the room.

“The nerve.” Minghao mumbled, shaking his head as he was far from the room where the meeting had been. Those men didn't at all seem to know what they word respect meant. They didn't listen, they didn't seem to think straight. All they thought about were their daughters, their own well-being. And, of course, prince Minghao was sure those ladies were great and all but he wanted to wed someone more than great. Someone amazing.

Yodi chuckled “They sure don't know how annoying they are, huh? You've told them what? 67 times before that you're not getting married to someone random? And they still don't seem to get it. How they became advisors is a miracle to me.”

Prince Minghao wasn't sure if Yodi was talking to himself or to Minghao. But who ever it was, Minghao agreed with him. They either were to ignorant to understand that when the words “not” and anything close to “wedding” are in the same sentence it usually means there's not going to be a wedding. Or they were really stubborn and wanted to see the perfect crown prince annoyed. Whatever it was, prince Minghao hated it.

Yodi shook his head as they reached prince Minghao’s room “I will come pick you up in about,” he checked the pocket watch Minghao had given him for his birthday last month. A faint smile tugged on Minghao’s mouth at the thought that Yodi actually used it. “... One and a half hour, your highness. I know you plan on doing paperwork but please, don't overwork yourself, get some rest.” Yodi bowed before walking away.

Minghao had always liked having Yodi around. Ever since he had come round the castle had seemed… less lonely. Before that no one had really known Minghao, he had never let anyone in before Yodi. This meant that Yodi knew everything there was to know about the young prince and could read him like no other. Yodi often knew what Minghao was thinking even before Minghao knew himself.

Though it annoyed him, he had to finish his paperwork by the end of the week, he listened to Yodi and drew in his sketchbook instead of doing his paperwork. He didn't draw often, as crown prince he had way better things to do than drawing. Drawing wasn't for princes, drawing was for people who had way to much time on their hands. For people who didn't have to think like Minghao had to. He had to stay on the ground with both of his legs. He couldn't afford to drift off into his own world.

But in a country as Voulux, who wouldn't draw every once in a while?

His sketchbook had been long gone when Yodi came to pick him up to leave for the fine art exhibition. Imagine a crown prince drawing. That just wouldn't be right. A prince had to be serious. Drawing was for commoners.

“Do you have your speech memorised, sir?” Yodi asked in order to start a conversation in the, until that moment, rather silent limousine.

Prince Minghao nodded, not turning his eyes away from the window “Yes.”

This was a thing Minghao enjoyed doing: speeches. He always wrote his own, which was rare because important people always had their speeches written for them, but Minghao liked writing it himself. Not only because that way he could put his own opinion into it a little, but also because it felt more real. It was more sincere.

He stepped out on the red carpet surrounded by flashes of cameras. People screamed for him to look their way, jumped up and down for him to notice them and even tried to slip past the guards standing on each side on the carpet to keep people from jumping over the surrounding fences. Minghao straightened his back to walk over the carpet into the big, artistic looking building. He didn't really smile, he had to look serious.

He entered the large hal filled with people only to be gaped at by everyone already present. He nodded his head at people in greeting and followed Yodi to where the prince was supposed to be.

The Chairman of the art society came walking towards prince Minghao with open arms and a wide smile. It was a small, round man wearing a nice, black suit “Your Royal highness, it is an honor to make your acquaintance.”

“The honor is mine mister Ren. Thank you for organizing such a fine exhibition.” Prince Minghao looked around out of courtesy, not really seeing anything.

The chairman beamed at the prince's compliment “Thank you, your highness. Why don't you look around a bit before we start your speech? I could give you a quick tour if you'd like?” he straightened his back proudly.

Minghao curled one side of his lips up in a slight smile “You must be busy, mister Ren, I wouldn't want to be a bother.”

The chairman's eyes widened “Oh you wouldn't at all be a bother highness, on the contrary, it would be my honor.” without awaiting the crown prince’s answer, the chairman started his tour “We could start right here, at this wonderful piece of one of the old masters of Voulux. “conversation of death” by miss Zhao Zhi. A remarkable piece by a remarkable woman…” He looked off into the distance as if he was dreaming “Notice how she actually worked with some kind of texture.” He pointed at parts of the painting “You'll see that she used big brush strokes for the hay, using clair obscur, making the strays visible, almost touchable. And how she used a small textured brush for death's cloak to make it look soft and-”

Minghao had actually been listening interestedly when the party got interrupted by guards bursting through the door holding a beautiful girl by her arm. It was obvious that she had tried to tidy her hair for the party, but now there were bits and pieces hanging loose in front of her face, probably because she had tried to hurry away from the guards. In her hand she was holding a quite small, square, canvas. It had clearly been painted on with bright colors.

Your eyes scanned the big room full of people but stopped when they noticed prince Minghao. You pushed your glasses a bit further up your nose with the hand you were holding the painting in, causing your face to disappear behind it. The guards pulled you to where the chairman was, the grip on your wrist increasing a little.

Minghao frowned and followed the chairman as he jogged towards the guards “What is this supposed to mean?” he asked in a harsh voice.

Minghao frowned at the sight of you, you had turned your eyes down, looking at prince Minghao's feet.

“She tried to sneak in... again.” The guard that wasn't holding you said.

The chairman sighed frustratedly “You realise that the crown prince is here? And you bring her here!?” The chairman looked around to where he and Minghao had been standing before they ran over to the guards, expecting to see Minghao still standing there. He jumped when he saw Minghao standing right beside him.

Minghao, however, had been looking at the painting in your hand. Not noticing the crowd of people gathering around to see what was happening.

“Your highness, I-” The chairman started, stuttering nervously. He had clearly not expected prince Minghao to stand behind him “She… she has been trying to get in here the entire evening, despite us sending her away multiple times already.”

You tried to pull your arm out of the guard his grip, sighing as you failed to do so.

“Have you asked her why?” Minghao asked, his gaze moving from your face, to your hand, to the chairman.

The chairman stood dumbfounded “W-well… no but-”

The prince raised his hand, signaling the chairman to stop talking, before turning to you. You had stopped wriggling and looked Minghao straight into his eyes. Though looking royalty into their eyes is seen as rude, there was something about you that made him feel like you could. Something about your eyes made him feel comfortable enough to look into them and feel like he never wanted to look away.

Though you had just tried to break in to one of the most important events happening this year, you didn't at all look guilty or scared. It was as if you were oblivious to the fact that this was a completely illegal thing to do.

Minghao changed his amazed expression back to his normal, neutral expression and cleared his throat “Good evening, might I ask what you are doing here?”

Your eyes switched from Minghao’s, to the painting in your hand, to Minghao's nose, afraid to look him in the eye. But you didn't answer. You had opened your mouth to say something but closed it again once you realised you didn't know what to say. Or maybe the fact the crown prince of your country was talking to you, flustered you so much you couldn't say anything. Minghao couldn't tell.

Prince Minghao cleared his throat again before his gaze turned stern “I asked you what you were doing here.”

Your widened, scared looking eyes found his again and blinked once before turning to the painting in your hand again. You sighed before stretching your arm to give prince Minghao the painting.

Minghao frowned, had no idea what you wanted, but stretched his arm to take the painting from you anyway.

“Highness!” The chairman exclaimed “Are you sure that's such a good idea? You don't know what that is.”

Prince Minghao really had a hard time to keep himself from sighing annoyed before he turned his head to the chairman “It's a painting mister Ren. I doubt there's anything life threatening to that.”

Having turned around meant prince Minghao's arm had dropped again, he nodded at the painting “What is this?”

Your lip curled up slightly, your eyes turned to the floor “For you.”

You had an accent, as if you weren’t from Voulux. Maybe you had come from one of the other Pledis countries, Voulux was one of the two Pledis countries that spoke in a language different from the language used in the eleven other. But with those two words you had said Minghao couldn’t be sure.

Minghao rolled his eyes, sighed and took the canvas from you. With rough, big brush stripes an expressionist portrait was painted on it. A portrait of a person Minghao recognized as himself. He was painted in bright, warm colors. A crown on his head, his eyes looking to the right. It was gorgeous.

Minghao had no idea how long he stared at the painting before his eyes turned themselves to you again. Seconds, maybe minutes or hours. Never had anyone painted him, and you, a strange girl whom he didn't know, had painted him so beautifully. Out of nowhere, unexpected.

Your eyes inspected him curiously, tried to read him, hoping you could see what he thought of your present. But as a crown prince, Minghao had learned how to keep his face straight. And though he wanted to smile, scream out of happy surprise and hug you, he knew he couldn't.

He let his arm, holding the canvas, hang beside his body and frowned, looking you in your eyes “...Who are you?” he didn't ask it loudly, merely whispered it. Just for you to hear.

But just before you could introduce yourself mister Ren stepped in “Your highness, what did she give you?”

He held out his hand for Minghao to give him the painting, but Minghao pulled the canvas up to his chest so the chairman couldn't take it. He turned to the guards, completely ignoring mister Ren “Could you take her to the back please? Don’t hurt her, I'll handle this later.” Without giving you another look he turned to the chairman again, handing the painting to Yodi, the look in his eyes suggesting he couldn't show anyone “Is it time for my speech yet, Chairman?”

check notes for masterlist

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yeltsinsstar · 4 years

Text

Here we go again...

Apparently, there has been a political debate in the US... again...

(dear God, do their elections EVER end?)

and so my feed starts to get yet more arguments for and against universal healthcare, including people telling me why it would be SOOOO BAD if the dems / libtards force socialist healthcare on me.

Which I find incredibly annoying BECAUSE I AM NOT AN AMERICAN!!!

I also live in a country (New Zealand) that already has universal (i.e: socialist) healthcare and I fucking love it!

So, at the risk of sounding repetitive, I shall attempt to outline some financial benefits to both the public (people) and corporate segments of US society:

Universal or socialist healthcare is cheaper and more efficient than the capitalist healthcare ‘system’ that the USA currently enjoys(??), despite what you may have heard via Fox News or other mainstream & right-wing news sources. Hell, even the Koch brothers own biased report on the cost said that universal healthcare was cheaper.

If you are a large business / corporation, universal healthcare means that you will not have to factor healthcare into your negotiations with your employees or their unions. In fact, you won’t even have to devote any time at all to negotiating that healthcare with health insurance companies at all. Nor will you have to worry about paying exorbitant premiums every year. So, HUGE SAVINGS! True, you will have to contribute to healthcare via taxes, but that should be considerably lower than than any premium you pay now.

If you are a small business or self-employed, guess what? You will have healthcare! So will your staff, if you have any. You will never have to negotiate with health insurers ever again, unless you want to. Major causes of stress gone! Just like that. That means that you can afford to develop your business while not worrying about how you would pay for a ‘health emergency’.

If you are a union, you will be able to devote all the time previously spent wasted on negotiating for health insurance, either as part of an employment negotiation or as a special deal for your membership, to arguing for higher wages and working conditions for said members. This should be doable because the employers won’t have to provide healthcare anymore either.

If you are a worker, blue or white collared, wage or salaried, your healthcare is free at point of service. This means that you can rock up to the ER and never have to open your wallet. This means that childbirth is free. This means that you can spend months in hospital receiving treatment for life threatening illnesses & injuries and it will not bankrupt you. Universal healthcare means that you will not have ration your medications. It means that co-pays & deductibles are not a thing. It means that you do not have to worry about how long your kids can stay on your plan, because they, like you, are covered from the cradle to the grave. It means that the poor do not die because they can’t afford it. It means that you have more money in your pocket every month.

If you are unemployed, regardless of why, your healthcare is guaranteed. Why? Because if fucking is! End of story. If you think otherwise, what the fuck is wrong with you? Universal healthcare means just that: universal. Just because someone is unemployed today, doesn’t mean that they are unemployed tomorrow, or that were unemployed yesterday. Unemployment doesn’t mean they don’t deserve healthcare. Besides, even unemployed people pay taxes and those fund universal healthcare.

The price of medicines is cheaper, because universal healthcare systems usually incorporate a ‘single buyer’ approach to dealing with Big Pharma. This usually prevents them from the rampant, unregulated price gouging that we keep hearing about from the US. Martin ‘Pharma-bro’ Shkreli, anyone?

#rant #healthcare #universal healthcare #social healthcare #being fucking decent

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brookyhobbs-blog · 5 years

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Reducing child poverty: How will Jacinda Ardern do it?

Stories of New Zealand families that can't afford a decent life for their kids led Jacinda Ardern to enter politics at 17. She has staked her political future on reducing child poverty, and given herself a ministerial role to deal with it. Simon Collins explores how the PM can make a difference.

Children with "diseases of poverty" still walk into Dr Russell Wills' clinic in Hastings every day.

The paediatrician who made reducing child poverty his primary goal as Children's Commissioner from 2011-16 is delighted Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has taken the new portfolio of "Minister for Child Poverty Reduction".

Professor Jonathan Boston, who co-led Wills' expert group on solutions to child poverty, has been hired to advise on the legislation to set child poverty reduction targets, promised by the Labour Party for within the first 100 days.

"So the new Government is committed to a policy and legislative agenda on child poverty that will be led by the Prime Minister, and I welcome that," Wills says.

But he also knows the scale of the problem.

Even in a buoyant job market, 4.6 per cent of children were hospitalised in 2015 with poverty-related illnesses such as respiratory and skin conditions, down only fractionally from 2013's all-time high of 4.7 per cent.

"The numbers of children coming through children's wards with respiratory infections, in particular, has not decreased," he says.

"We continue to see very young, particularly Māori and Pasifika children, presenting with severe chest infections and growing numbers of children with bronchiectasis, which is permanent scarring of the lungs."

Ardern has said child poverty is the reason she got into politics at 17. It became a burning topic in the election and how the issue is dealt with may have repercussions on her political future.

But how is she going to reduce it? To work out what is required, we must first understand how we got here.

We have always had people who struggle to cope because of physical or mental impairments, a rough upbringing, illness and mishaps.

In pre-industrial times, and still in much of the world today, helping them was left to the wider family or hapū. Industrialisation and its aftermath have splintered those extended families geographically.

Gradually, over a century or so up to 1984, governments built a welfare safety net to fill the gap - often pushed by unions and other social movements, but also reflecting a realisation by businesses they needed workers who could afford to live and customers who could afford to buy their products.

As well as welfare benefits, the safety net included free or cheap healthcare and education, state-backed wage-fixing and arbitration, state rental housing and subsidised loans for first-home buyers. The state financed more than half of all new housing from 1936 until the late 1960s.

That safety net was dismantled after 1984 in a backlash against the "nanny state".

Ruth Richardson's 1991 Budget imposed part-charges in public hospitals and cut benefit rates to strengthen incentives to work.

The Employment Contracts Act turned wage-fixing over to the market.

The Government stopped lending for housing from 1992. State-house rents were raised to market rates and tenants were only partly compensated by an accommodation supplement.

Not all the reforms persisted. Hospital charges were abandoned quickly and Helen Clark's Labour Government restored subsidised state-house rents from 1999.

Clark's Working for Families package increased tax credits for children from 2005.

Bill English's National Government raised benefits for families with children by $25 a week from April last year.

But Ministry of Social Development (MSD) data shows the real value of the benefit plus tax credits has reduced.

As an example, a sole parent with two children is about $30 a week worse off in real terms than before the 1991 cuts - in 2013 dollars such a family got $500 in 1988 and $469 today.

Moreover, rents and other housing costs have risen much faster than inflation.

The MSD report shows housing cost a quarter of the net incomes of the poorest fifth of working-age households in 1990, but now eats up half of their net incomes.

A Cabinet paper prepared for this year's Budget in May said net incomes after housing costs had fallen by 8 per cent since 2006 for beneficiaries, and by 2 per cent for all households on accommodation supplements.

The proportion of children in households earning below half of median household incomes is now only moderately higher than in the mid-1980s before housing costs - but is still roughly twice as high as it was 30 years ago after paying for housing.

By last year 140,00 children were in households earning below half the median income before housing costs - 210,000 (19 per cent of children) after housing costs.

National's Budget had already signalled dramatic changes to take effect from next April.

Family tax credits for that sole parent with two children under 12 were due to rise by $36 a week, raising their total weekly income to about $504 in 2013 dollars - restoring pre-1991 benefit rates for the first time.

More, National planned astonishing increases in maximum accommodation supplements, ranging up to $140 a week in West and South Auckland, Tauranga and Queenstown - the first increases since 2005.

The Treasury said the total $2 billion package, including tax cuts, would lift 49,000 children above the poverty line measured at 50 per cent of median household income.

That's about one-third of the children now below that line.

In a pre-election debate with Ardern, English boasted if he could reduce child poverty by 50,000 once, he could do it again. "We said we'd reduce that number by another 50,000 within two or three years, because under good fiscal management the country could do it," he told Parliament this week.

"So there's the benchmark. Can they reduce it by 100,000 from today? Because there was a plan in place to do that."

Labour has said it will scrap National's tax cuts. Instead, it will match National's changes to accommodation supplements and raise family tax credits even more - by $47 a week for our sole parent with two children, plus $700 a year ($13.46 a week) for energy, lifting the weekly income in constant 2013 dollars to $528, higher than at any time since at least 1980.

On top of that, all families with newborn babies will get an extra $60 a week "Best Start" payment for the first year, regardless of income, and for two further years on an income-tested basis.

Sole parents who can't or won't name the father of their children will no longer have their benefits cut by $22 a week.

Labour will also lift the incomes of the "working poor", who account for almost half the children below the poverty line, by raising the income threshold for reducing family tax credits from $35,000 a year to $42,700.

Beyond the welfare field, other Labour policies should reduce child poverty.

National planned to extend very-low-cost doctors' fees to 600,000 people with community service cards, accommodation supplement or income-related social housing. Labour has promised to match that and cut $10 off all doctors' fees.

Labour's coalition deal with NZ First promises to lift the minimum wage to $16.50 an hour next April and to $20 by 2021 and Labour has promised legislation enabling unions and employers to negotiate industry-wide "fair pay agreements".

Most importantly, its housing policy should reduce house prices by building 100,000 "affordable" homes over the next 10 years, banning foreigners from buying existing homes, taxing capital gains on homes resold within five years, and ending landlords' tax breaks.

Lower house prices will not necessarily mean lower rents, but Labour has agreed with the Greens to create a "rent-to-own scheme" and also promised to limit rent increases to once a year, ban letting fees and speed up requirements for insulating and heating rental homes.

Housing Minister Phil Twyford promised before the election to increase state housing by at least 1000 homes a year, although the party's official policy promised only "substantially increasing the number of state houses".

Wills' expert group in 2012 proposed six "immediate priorities", including subsidising food in schools, a low-interest loan scheme and more support for teen parents.

All of these have either been enacted by National or endorsed by Labour, except for a proposal to pass on to custodial parents $159 million in child support payments that are taken by the state to offset the cost of sole-parent benefits.

Current Children's Commissioner Judge Andrew Becroft is still pushing for this last change.

"It would increase compliance by fathers and it would be good for the children," he says. The experts then proposed four "priorities over the longer term" to cut the numbers of children in poverty by 30-40 per cent.

Their first item, "review all child-related benefits", is under way and the changes are due to take effect next April.

Labour's Best Start policy goes halfway towards the experts' second item, a universal family benefit for all children under 6.

Twyford's promise of at least 1000 extra state houses a year also goes halfway towards the experts' third item, increasing social housing by at least 2000 a year.

Their fourth item was free primary healthcare for all children under 18.

National went halfway by raising the age of free healthcare from 6 to 13 in 2015. Labour has not yet gone further, apart from promising to cut fees by $10.

Although Labour is committed to legislation requiring targets to reduce child poverty, Ardern has not said what her targets will be.

"There won't just be one" was as far as she went in response to English's jibes this week.

Dr Mavis Duncanson, director of an Otago University unit that co-produces the annual Child Poverty Monitor, says New Zealand has signed up to a 2015 United Nations sustainable development goal to halve poverty by 2030.

The graph above shows what that could mean for a poverty line set at 50 per cent of median income.

Victoria University economist Dr Simon Chapple, who co-wrote Child Poverty in New Zealand with Boston, says "eradicating" child poverty will require reviewing the whole structure of welfare benefits as part of Labour's proposed tax review.

Treasury work for this year's Budget found 13,000 families are losing at least 77.5 cents out of every extra dollar - 30c in income tax, 25c in reduced accommodation supplement and 22.5c in reduced family tax credits.

Another 160,000 families are losing tax credits or accommodation supplements out of their extra earnings. And that's not counting anyone repaying student loans at a further 12c out of every dollar.

AUT economist Michael Fletcher called this week for a fundamental shift in the basis of the welfare system from households to individuals, in line with the tax system.

He says the current system scares sole parents off forming new relationships because they could lose their benefit even if the new partner doesn't support them financially.

This matters because 49 per cent of children with sole parents live in homes earning below half the median income, whereas only 11 per cent of children in two-parent families do.

Fletcher dismisses fears that paying individuals benefits would encourage millionaires' partners to sign up for the dole.

"If the person is genuinely actively seeking work and is willing to apply for the dole and be work-tested, I don't have a problem with it," he says. "It's outdated to say because you have a wealthy partner you should be dependent on them."

Wills also believes benefits and taxes need to be reviewed, especially to guarantee adequate incomes for families with children.

"I look forward to the day when we see fewer poor Māori and Pasifika infants in our children's ward with chest infections, when we see fewer children with permanent lung scarring and stunted growth," he says.

"New Zealand is a wealthy country. We love our children. We do a good job of looking after our old people already and we can do the same for our children."

Reference: Reducing child poverty: How will Jacinda Ardern do it? New Zealand Herald, 12 Nov, 2017 5:00am Retrieved from: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11942007

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