The Big Lie: That it's all Your Fault

In a far right society laws are based on the premise that individuals are responsible for things, including things that have “gone wrong”. Obviously, the health insurance system in the US has gone wrong. The new health insurance laws and regulations contain the premise that the individual is responsible for the current mess.

Under right wing doctrine, the fact that the US health system has collapsed; that tens of millions have no insurance; that there have been more than a million preventable deaths in the last few decades while no one was looking or caring, why, all of that is YOUR fault. You sitting there reading this: all of this failure and suffering and death is your fault, at least in the twisted minds of fascists and right wingers.

And it’s your fault if you can’t get a job even if there are no jobs. And it’s your fault and you deserve your low credit score regardless of whether you can get credit or money with which to pay bills or not. It’s your fault if you can not afford health insurance. Officially, everything is your fault in the US, but of course, in the reality zone, none of it is your fault.

But the far right is in full control in the US, and they are out now to force you to start correcting your health insurance failures. They are going to “force” you to buy health insurance via the mandate. (Isn’t “mandate,” a wonderful world, fellow fascists and right wingers? Glorious word, that one.)

Actually, not everyone is being forced to become a slave of the health insurance executives and incompetent employees. The rich and the dirt poor are sort of off the hook. The rich are almost always off the hook in right wing societies, so that is no surprise. The US economy, even from the vantage point of the rich, has partially collapsed, and the mandate is the way that the rich can feed off the decaying corpses of the middle class, which of course is collapsing right along with the economy.

Whereas, in the reputable countries, the premise underlying health laws is, as even just mere common sense informs you, but as the highest quality economics research also informs you, that there are some things that only the government can be responsible for if success is the objective. Unless you want to play pretend, fascist games, which the Europeans outgrew during and after the unpleasantries in the 1940’s.

While components of the US system that the rich need to stay rich have been rescued and artificially propped up, (such as the huge banks and the stock markets) numerous components of the system needed for the non-rich to function have collapsed. The job markets, the credit markets, the health insurance market, these have all collapsed insofar as they do not work for the common man anymore. As just one notable example, there has been no increase in jobs in the States for more than 10 years.

At the root of all right wing societies is this “Big Lie” that the individual is responsible for everything bad. At the risk of stating the obvious, the right is completely wrong with their premise. Unless perhaps if you are born rich, you can not, as the right wing system presupposes, be responsible for this, that, and the other thing. You can not completely control your career, your employment, your credit score, whether or not you have health care, and so on and so forth. True, you can and have to influence those things to one extent or another, but to say that a non-rich individual can really, dependably control those things over the years is absurd and is a right wing lie.

What about right wing laws, in particular, the one regarding health insurance under discussion in 2009? You can not safely assume that you should maintain your status as a slave of the system by being herded by every new law and regulation that comes out because “it will all work out for the best.” Untold millions have died young under that assumption.

There are going to be millions of people who are better off steering clear of far right health insurance laws. There are going to be millions who are better off paying the penalty rather than buying grossly overpriced and undependable private health insurance. There are going to be some people who should work less, so that they are taken off the mandate hook, so that they come out economically ahead overall. There are going to be small business owners who are better off discontinuing offering health insurance to their employees.

There are going to be who knows how many people better off relying on savings and direct cash payments to progressive clinics and physicians for their health care. There will be millions who would be better off if they shed 50 pounds and/or exercise more, while forgetting about the entire health care mess in the States until they are 65, at which time they can get Medicare.

The point is, you have to understand that only fools assume that US laws are all designed to be favorable to everyone. Nothing could be farther from the truth. In right wing societies, laws are usually designed to penalize and punish individuals who are deemed responsible for this or that failure of society. This new law is no exception. In fact, it is an unprecedented example of bad law derived from false premises.

By contrast, in modern, non-right wing societies, such as you have in western or northern European countries, most if not all laws are in fact designed to be as favorable and beneficial as possible for almost everyone. Those societies have their governments take responsibility for things in accordance with what is optimal for society as a whole. Many, I want to say, most Europeans don’t play the blame game or the gotcha game, whereas in the States these are the only games in town.

So in those countries, it is far more often the case that you can safely do what new legislation asks you to do, without ever considering whether you should make big changes in your life in order to avoid this or that provision. Not so in the States. In the States, the one thing you are responsible for is to make sure that you don’t get destroyed by right wing laws and contracts which are trying to force you to be responsible for the failures of society.

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The above was in response to this article at Common Dreams.