Letter to the Healthcare Team

I wrote a tiny letter to President Obama's Healthcare Team today.
You should try it.
Writing a letter, I mean.
I used to write letters to my senators and representatives all the time and then realized they weren't really listening at all, just sending automatically generated "We Care About You!" form letters that only got more and more depressing.
And, y'know, this may still be the case with the new administration.
Howevah.
I watched some videos from the Environmental Team the other day, and the speaker actually read several people's letters and commented on them.
It was amazing!
I mean, maybe this whole democracy dream might actually be able to solidify a little bit within the rotting corpse of our stinky old U.S. plutocracy.
How cool would that be?!
So, yeah:
Write em a letter.
Tell em how you really feel and why.
There might actually be somebody listening.

_______________________________
Healthcare Team's Query:
"What worries you most about the healthcare system in our country?"

RumDoxy's Reply:
My concerns about the U.S. healthcare system are rooted deeply within my much larger concerns about the U.S.' food systems. For those of us who cannot afford any medical care whatsoever (not even the "affordable" $44 per month, per couple plan my employer generously offers), medical attention for our illnesses is nowhere near as important as preventing those illnesses from occurring in the first place. Many people have commented on our current medical ideology needing to refocus on treating the whole individual, as opposed to treating (and creating and treating) symptoms. I wholeheartedly agree with this holistic view and, at the same time, do not believe it digs deeply enough around the colossal taproot of our overwhelming crises.

We absolutely must adamantly disallow myriad Big Business' tyrannical dictation of our options when it comes to caring for ourselves and our families. In the interests of Big Business, consumer-oriented labeling was deregulated in the 1970s to begin allowing imitation foods to be advertised as equivalent to the "real thing," which they certainly are not. It is Big Business that promotes (by)products as nutritious and healthy (like false fats and false sugars), (by)products that are now recognized as being actively toxic to human health. It was/is/has been Big Business that has promoted the ludicrous excesses of meat and dairy consumption that are now destroying not only our health (increasing risks of heart disease, cancer, stroke, and etc.), but are destroying our environment, our very planet, at an alarming rate.

Powerful people in business suits, in offices, in any environment not directly connected to the living environment they claim to serve, have absolutely no pragmatic ground on which to stand when they claim to be able to determine what is best for us. Not where our health is concerned.

I would suggest incorporating farmers - not agribusiness giants, you understand, but Real Farmers - into the fold of our healthcare brain trust. Farmers know, better than anyone, that what is good for the planet is also good for us. They understand the connections between the health of the soil, of the grass and fruit and vegetables that grow in it, of the animals that feed on and fertilize the plants, of the humans that, ideally, function as caretakers of our cyclic planet. Leaving out the people who daily struggle to lay the very foundation of our food chain, putting the creators and keepers of our preventative medicine out of the healthcare loop would be, inarguably, a terribly grave mistake.

I also suggest the new Healthcare Team give some serious thought to consulting with Michael Pollan on the U.S. food system. He has done more research, has put his findings more accessibly, than perhaps any other academic author. He is a valuable resource, and should not be taken for granted.

Thank you for allowing us this space to speak directly to/with you.
I hope you are truly listening.
It means everything.
Everything.

biological initiative

Guilt.
Fear.
Anger.
...meet the men that rule the world.

They are so deeply entrenched in our primordial DNA that we don't have much chance fighting them hand.to.hand. We don't stand a chance trying to reason with them. They are part and parcel of our early evolutionary iterations and cannot, unfortunately, just be convinced away, out of their cozy first.class cabins, just over from Fight and Flight.

Instead of bashing skulls with our troglodytic instincts, we must boldly craft internal alternatives, related to the original instincts only in their completely antonymical qualities.

Of all the natural world, humans are the Kings and Queens of the Pendulum Swing. We have contradicted ourselves in almost every way possible, thereby adding to (and not destroying, as so many fear) our species' complexity and consequent ability to adapt. It is time, while we have a chance, to Step Up and Save Ourselves, to willfully shape our evolutionary progress. We must, without any dependence on outside forces, learn to Hope where we have feared, to acknowledge Joy where we have before seen only anger, and to holyholy most important replace our hideborne guilt with openarmed and openminded Love.

These changes require us to be active in our species' progress.
They require us to take initiative, take the first step, take a second to look around with open eyes and say, "What we've been doing for the last aeon hasn't worked, has given us ulcers, and has made us suspicious of anything that has tried to help us. We need Something Else."
This new evolution demands that we look at our current path with an unflinching eye toward its past and future misery, that we look at the possibilities before us and are open to their opportunities, and that we effectively say, "Ah, what the hell? What's it gonna hurt to not be frightened and pissed off, for a change?"
We need to plunge headlong, with the determination of centuries of our forebears, directly into the path of Something Better.

All the evil in our world is based upon perceptions rooted in Guilt, Fear, and Anger. While our countries' powerful may still believe themselves bound by these invectives (and even President Obama is talking continued militarism), we here at the Low End have got the leeway to make our lives, our leaders, our loves...Different.

We are not bound by pretension and protocol.

We are bound only by our biological initiative to survive.

Guilt, Fear, and Anger are no longer tools we need.
They are antiquated.
Backward.
Obtuse.

We need Hope, Joy, and Love.
We need em like we need fresh air.
Like we need sunshine.
Like we need real food.
Like we need to Live.

Truth and Power

(1/one)

Meet The Kid From Brooklyn.
While I strongly disagree with some of his obviously post-911, NYC propaganda-infected views, his balls-out take on the injustices in his world are fuckin beautiful.
These days, when we so obsessively obsess about politically correct speech, when we pretend so hard that we Really Do Care whether or not we hurt other people's feelings, it's a wonderful thing to see a guy so joyfully, fuckin gleefully! sink his teeth into so many fleshy flanks. Not because he's afraid (as so many evangelicals and propaganda anchors are), but because he does not shy away from the sight of what he sees as injustice. He does not hesitate, at least in this instance, to speak truth about power.*

...And he totally says "fuck" way more than I do.
Color me impressed.

(2/two)

Concerning Truth and Power:
While Speaking Truth to Power is incredibly important,
I believe it is even more imperative to Speak Truth About Power.
To wit,
Power already has a pretty good idea how corrupt and malicious it is. I mean, it can dance the Verbal Justify all it wants; at the end of the day, it knows that both Side Effects and Results of its blind pursuit of questionable priorities are Remarkably Shitty for whatever's on the sidelines of its goals. Speaking Truth to Power is only so effective when Power knows the story already and has decided it doesn't give a shit.

Speaking Truth About Power, on the other hand, is actually starting to have some positive effect again. There was a time in 'Merican history when muckraking was viewed as a valuable service to the public.
Muckrakers went where the vast hordes of the public could not;
they exposed injustices and indecencies to which the public might not otherwise be privy;
they saved a lot of fuckin lives, when it comes down to it, and should have statues and plaques and fawning Thank Yous plastered all over every town square left in the corporation-infested, rotting corpses of our country's once diversely wealthy towns.
However,
since the early 1970s, I would say,
since Watergate,
folks speaking Truth About Power have become just another form of entertainment. They have been manipulated into just another tool of the 'Merican School of Instigatory Mockery. It's another part of what is now the Same Old ('Merican) Story: the Big Guys have finally figured out that fighting the Little Guys head on, hand to hand, isn't very effective. There's way too many of us Little'uns, and, really, there's only so many of us they can kill before we go all Freaked Out Angry Mob on their asses and start marching to our local Wal-Marts and houses of corrupted Government with torches clenched in our vilified and vitriolic fists.
Y'know?
Big Guys found out, most obviously during the 1960s and early 70s, that the best way to fight us is to delegitimize us between and amongst ourselves.
Single us out and make us appear to be crackpots with no discernible grasp on Reality (another thing they've recreated for us).
Turn us into clowns.
Into fools.
Into entertainment.

It's a divisive device that's been working for the Rich and Powered since the foundation of this country. ...Well, it's worked for lots of empires, large and small, for milennia before our inception, but the U.S. really has polished it up, made it shiny and marketably legitimate.
Divide and Subjugate was the big tool used to keep 'Merican slavery in place for so goddamned long. It's what keeps wage slavery in place now.
It's the prybar between skin colors and political parties and religions and all the town-to-country regions of this vast tract of land.
It is the smoke screen between Us and the Truth.
It is what makes and keeps us poor.
It is what destroys our communities.
Our neighborhoods.
Our ways, our means of living.
Our food.
Our health.
Our lives and our children's lives.

And now,
we're catching on
and we're getting pissed off.
We're finally starting to realize how much we've been lied to.
We're dying of the things we were told would save us.
We are beginning to wonder if maybe there's something to some of those crazy doomsayers and old-wives' quacks.
We're maybe, hopefully beginning to remember that,
no matter how vociferously anyone claims to have the corner on Truth,
Truth is always found in the eyes.
It is found in the bones.

::: And where are the bones of Propaganda? :::
::: Where are its shifty eyes? :::

Instead of listening to the Experts, to the Majority, to the Scientists,
we must listen to each other.
Instead of telling the corporations that have invaded our countryside and our cities, instead of telling them how much their practices are hurting our communities,
we must tell each other how we and our communities are being hurt and
we must take action to protect ourselves.
In this age of demonization of anyone who would stand up to power, we are finally beginning to revalue the Muckraker.
We are remembering that the Muckraker is fighting for us.
That the Muckraker is one of us.
Is
us.

Speak Truth About Power
between ourselves, between each other.
Where we can do something about it.
On a scale we can manage.
Speak Truth where it will count.
Where it will truly matter.
Where it will make a real difference.