Corporations writing laws, neocons running the Defense Dept., Big Oil defining the terms of scientific inquiry, Democrats behaving like Republicans. Rampant wingnuttery. Massive, wholesale obfuscation of every important defining collective issue of our time.
What's it all have in common, how did it get started, how did we get where we are? When did public discourse become a series of "W.T.F. moments"?
Media manipulation? It's both easier to spread misinformation, and easier to counterpunch than it used to be.
The world has become too complex? As a practical matter, our overall need for food, water, clothing and shelter; and peace, love and understanding and community haven't changed. It's as complex as you care to make it, or not.
I think our current problems represent a failure to come to grips with the fluid dynamics of the changes we're grappling with, while clotheslining what used to seem like a natural inquisitiveness about motivations and relationships.
Consider telecommunications. We all used to have land line phones, the working infrastructure and service contracting owned by regional corporations, or city-owned utilities; heavily regulated and subject to price controls and anti-trust laws. Technology delivered a more appealing solution in the cell phone, but we gave up price controls and engendered a host of other problems [mass plastic waste; health concerns; safety problems; dysfunctional socializing] in process of switching over. We took our eyes off the prize, right? We were better at realizing the technological breakthroughs and development, than coming to grips with its appropriate and ethical limits. Maybe every message didn't really need to be instant? Maybe the infrastructure construction and maintenance didn't really need to be privatized, offshored and un-unionized?
I am a designer for an architectural firm. For awhile [not as much lately] I worked on a lot of house projects [both new homes and additions]. A few years back, according to legend the architect made every important decision about the house in consultation with the owner, and the contractor implemented the architect's vision exactly according to plans and specs. In so doing, the owner's interests were protected against the contractor's tendency to want to cut corners and substitute less expensive but inferior materials and methods. The triangular relationship ensured that the owner got what he or she was paying for. At some point in history, the contractor started to talk to the owner directly [even though that was forbidden, or at least considered bad form]. This resulted in agreements between the owner and contractor that cut the designer out of the reckoning. It was over small items at first, then larger ones. The contractor would convince the owner that some aspect of the house as designed was extravagant, difficult to build, required an effort out of proportion to its value. And the change would be implemented, without the designer's input and the cost savings split between the owner and contractor. Over the years these relations between major partners degraded to the point where it was pretty clear at project commencement that the contractor would take the lead in decisionmaking, and the architect's oversight ability was reduced to matters of structural integrity, life safety and overall code compliance; while the contractor was granted wide latitude to oversee all other aspects of the project's execution.
Watching the health care reform debate unfold was instructive. The part about the de facto territory agreements between the seven major providers made me wonder, when did Congress stop regulating interstate commerce? Or, it wasn't so much they stopped, as just came to the conclusion they wouldn't, in the case of Big Insurance. And the lack of said regulation even became a bargaining chip in negotiations over the content of the legislation, incredibly! Corporations have always been influence peddling, and finding loopholes, but wasn't it Congress's job to at least make a pretense of consumer protection and public service? Why was single payer taken off the table in the beginning? Because that's what Big Insurance wanted, and they are now calling the shots.
The way the problem is stated is always, "several million U.S. citizens lack health insurance", when it really is: several million lack access to affordable health care. Congress needs to acknowledge that private health insurance isn't even a necessary cog in the wheel, let alone IS the wheel. Why do they appear so deathly afraid of losing the support of Big Insurance? If this happens, all their boats are lowered on the receding tide, and it's a more or less level playing field -- they may well believe they need that cash to get elected, but none of them will have it. Trying to argue that places like Montana, Nebraska and South Dakota will be effectively over-penalized seems like splitting hairs to me. [And the largest state, California seems to be perennially in the worst shape, overall.]
I'm always more interested in reading extremist rants here at dKos, than reasoned, incremental strategy; even while I realize that's how it will really be done -- because they always contain the germ of the truth about why we should be upset and what really is the source of the problem. The ramping up of the message of Grayson isn't so remarkable because he says what he says -- it's that no one was saying it as plainly and forcefully before. So we need to support our most progressive politicians with all our might, and shame the rest of them -- with a persistent barrage of Columbo-style questioning, demonstrations or whatever it takes -- into doing well by us all.