Occasionally I wonder if one of the biggest stumbling blocks to health care reform isn’t our American inability to accept the fact that we’re all going to die one day.

We’ve been trying, with some progress.

“Occasionally I wonder if one of the biggest stumbling blocks to health care reform isn’t our American inability to accept the fact that we’re all going to die one day.”

As a nation we really are in denial about our ultimate fate.  We cannot accept the “defeat” that is death, regardless of the fact that it is inevitable.  We believe somehow that we are beyond such petty things, that somehow dying is a kind of personal failure or something (we always have room for victim-blaming), “If only they didn’t do X, they would still be alive!”.

But, of course, why should we be any more mature about Death then any of the other lunacies we believe: America has the Best Healthcare System in the World!, We have always and will always be at the cutting edge of medical technology!, Those evil, socialist healthcare systems in those other countries (where they save money and still get better results) could never, ever work here!, Those uninsured Americans could easily get insurance because of the Miracle of Market Capitalism, if they wanted to, but they choose not to have it!...

I’ll bet that she has been playing the sweet little old lady card for years and years to get away with nasty stuff.  I see this sort of woman in court all the time: presents like your grandma, but is a landlord who’d turn off the heat in an apartment with a baby in it because she didn’t like you.  And then, in front of a judge, looks like she doesn’t understand anything and oh so helpless, blah, blah, but once out of the court’s eye makes the pre-ghost Scrooge look like Mother Theresa.

Oh—I left out the part about Judy Shepard actually being in the House chamber when Foxx hurled out that hateful sh*t - pious Virginia knew she was there, because a presser was held beforehand.

WTF is it with wingnuts? If you want to live and need medical care, they want to to die. If you’re ready to die, they want to hook you up to a bunch of tubes and machines.

(I still remember my grandmother, at 92, saying that all her friends were gone, she’d had a good life, and she was tired and ready to go. It probably would have helped her to have some professional advice.)

What I’ve always wondered is how do crazy people like Foxx & Michele Bachmann get elected in the first place. They’re clearly wack jobs.

Oops. guess I should have read seeker’s comments before posting.

What a wretched person.

I once came across a study that suggested that it was Americans’ more limited access to healthcare and the subsequent mortal terror this causes (consciously or not) which contributed in large part to the rise of Xian fundamentalism in the US since the 1980s.  This study traced an apparent decline in church attendance that was concommitant every time with the institution of socialized medicine in Britain, Canada, Oz, and a few other European countries. 

I have no idea how valid the study is (or where the heck I read it—anyone?), and it’s a little pat-sounding.  But intriguing, nevertheless.  Pandagon has already pointed to the connection in wingnuts’ minds between universal healthcare and abortion and euthanasia—wonder if there is also some deeply mired understanding that, once more Americans have cheaper access to medicine (esp. preventative), higher infant survival rates, longer lifespans, less terror of routine infections, etc, that their dependence on religion will begin to wane.  That might be giving them too much credit, though. It might also be stating the frakking obvious, too.

Ranylt:
Don’t forget the spread of higher education (especially post-secondary) to wider and wider swathes of the population.  People exposed to the whole wide world of ideas tend to stray from whatever closet of religious belief that they were brought up in.  It’s not just a religious phenomenon, either.  Quebec separatism is very much a belief-based ideology akin to religious fundamentalism; support for it tends to drop precipitously among those who have lived abroad and seen other cultures.

That’s exactly why I used the word “pat”, seeker.  I agree there are probably other factors.  The intrigue just comes in at the coincidence of medicare/church drop timing, which differed from nation to nation often by decades (when other factors like higher ed and cosmopolitanism and standard of living were more equitable).

I’ll bet that she has been playing the sweet little old lady card for years and years to get away with nasty stuff.  I see this sort of woman in court all the time: presents like your grandma, but is a landlord who’d turn off the heat in an apartment with a baby in it because she didn’t like you.

Balzac nailed this unpleasant type in the title character of La Cousine Bette. It’s also what women like Sarah Palin turn into when they can’t rely on their looks anymore.

Quebec separatism is very much a belief-based ideology akin to religious fundamentalism; support for it tends to drop precipitously among those who have lived abroad and seen other cultures.

This is a patent falsehood. It is so far removed from my reality that I can only attribute this belief to the Great Solitudes, the fact that in Canada the realities lived by Anglophones and Francophones are separated by a wide chasm.

You have to define Quebec separatism only to its chauvinist ethnic nationalist expression to even attempt to make this sound true. Then yes, I would say you’re right that contact with other cultures tends to diminish the preponderence of this belief. However when it comes to youth leadership, most of the activists I know have direct contact with other cultures, in particular groups that participate in anti-colonial struggles. I know so many lefty separatists who’ve done years of work in latin America, it’s a cliche and a common joke (trying to take the shit of bourgie leftists) in our circles to say that if you’re not rich enough to have been to Guatemala you’re not a good ally for the cause. Some of them worked in East Timor (a friend of mine basically lost her nationalist beliefs *because* even when the nationalist struggle ‘worked out’ for East Timor, it ended up being such shit that she couldn’t believe ever again that separatism for Quebec would resolve anything).

And it’s not just this generation. Top FLQ members were part of Maoist groups or had direct contact (social, and theoretical) with the Black Panthers Party in the USA and groups of national liberation in the Third World.

If it was as simple as Quebec nationalism = ethnic chauvinism, our internationalist brigade wouldn’t have so much work cut out for them trying to convince the Left here to just drop the whole separatist pipe dream, and that nationalism is not the only, or even the best, anti-colonial approach. The legacy of the Maoists is very present here and has colored the theoretical framework so much that it seems self-evident to most young lefties in the province that separatism is a precondition of any sort of left-wing/socialist revolution.

It’s bad enough that lefties embrace the MNLQ “big tent” without any critical thought, even though it’s a big enough tent that actual fascists (not ‘I don’t like you so you’re a fascist’, self-avowed ones) are members…

While BlackBloc and seeker kill each other over Canada’s language/culture/political problems…while still getting good healthcare to bind any resulting wounds…

***

Looking at Foxx and listening to her unhinged rants, I’m reminded for some reason that Soylent Green is made from people.  I don’t know why I thought of that, but I guess that’s just how my sick mind works…

Well, I dunno, she is kind of the poster child for euthanasia for senile dementia.

it’s yet another reich wing talking point making it’s way up the ranks based on a provision in one of the proposed health care bills that proposes to train doctors in counseling for aging people - such as “Do you have a will?” “Do you know who will be making medical decisions for you should you become incapapble of making them for yourself?” “Do you know what a DNR is”, discussing palliative care for those who are dying (yes, certain people are medically beyond help - happens everyday - might ahppen to my dad soon since his cancer is beyond chemo now) etc.

NOWHERE in that provision does it mention that they will counsel on medically assisted suicide. NOWHERE.
And yet, it’s incredibly threatening to these people to have themselves or a relation have their “ducks in a row” when it comes to end of life care. It’s denial & hysteria of the highest order.

Ah, the magical Republican avoidance technique:  if we just don’t talk about something, it will never happen!  If you don’t talk about sex, teenagers won’t have sex!  If you don’t talk about gay people, no one will ever be gay!  As long as you don’t prepare a living will to stipulate what you want to have happen if/when you’re incapacitated, you’ll never die!

How many aspects of life can they apply this technique to?

MikeEss: I don’t want to kill seeker. But just because he’s got this huge mancrush on me (reciprocated!) doesn’t mean I’ll just sit there and let him spout Wrongness.

Ranyit, I also read that same study and it was definitely observational. They didn’t pretend to demonstrate cause, just that in every country that once developed universal health care, church attendance steadily declined. I can’t find a link to the study, and I don’t think it offered much detailed info.

Yes, that jibes with my recollection, LCforevah.

gah, I wish I was eloquent/organized to jump in with a discussion of how different some flavours of quebec seperatist thought (as held by kids who had been brought up by parents who had learned the talking points of the rhetoric) is from actual political movements. I think that’s where the disconnect between seeker and BlackBloc lies… but I certainly don’t have enough knowledge to go up against/for either side. I’m just a kid who worked with other kids out in the Alberta hospitality industry with kids from all the other provinces and spent some time disucssing the influence of media and other cultures on the kids who had been raised by seperatist parents who were otherwise politically indifferent.

Back to the issue, I hope that someone is keeping some high-quality captures of all the speeches this representative is making so that they can be easily tossed onto DVD and given to the campaign managers of any and everyone who chooses to run against her. This kind of ignorance shouldn’t be allowed to stand.

Black Bloc, I think it takes about one hour spent in a place where there’s a real anti-colonialist struggle happening - and you don’t need to go that far from Montreal to do it - to see that the Francophones of Quebec, as a nation, are the colonizers in their peculiar situation, not the colonized, and that all the stuff about solidarity with struggles around the world that the left fringe of the seperatist movement spouts is all smoke and mirrors, and the FLQ were a bunch of terrorist lunatics who don’t deserve any association with the legacy of the Black Panther party.

That’s not to say there aren’t reasonable, decent people in the seperatist movement - hell, part of the reason that Quebec’s got better social services than the rest of the country is that seperatists tend to lean left. I don’t think seperatists are bad people, but I do think you have to buy into a belief in mythologized history where everything becomes about the conquest and you just sort of ignore the process that actually led to confederation. I think Seeker’s analogy was apt.

That isn’t to say that any other political movement isn’t also based on some myths. Some are more blatant than others, and of course there’s some truth to all of them.

the Francophones of Quebec, as a nation, are the colonizers in their peculiar situation, not the colonized

Both/And, not Either/Or.

Um, Virginia Foxx - killing seniors is considered *murder* here in Canada, you demented old liar.