Let me begin this rant by stating my principles as straightforwardly as I can:
- All people who suffer deserve our assistance and aid.
- All people means all people, regardless of political ideology, religious beliefs or non-beliefs, ethnicity, skin color or who they choose to love.
- Collective action in times of disaster is more effective than private action
- No one should profit from the misfortune of others
- Benefits provided to those affected by a disaster should not result in the loss of benefits to others who are suffering.
- The only moral standard we should recognize is that we are all each other’s neighbor and act out of love and compassion for those in need. To act otherwise is immoral, and makes us a society of petty, barbarous and cruel individuals rather than a community of caring human beings.
- Government is not perfect, but it is the best mechanism we have to provide help to those who need it.
- Our response to the suffering of others is a political issue, one of the major political issues in every generation. We can choose to offer compassion or aid to those who require it, or we can ignore the plight of those who suffer and choose to benefit the wealthy among us who are do not need our help.
- Our political system can either provide opportunity and justice for all, or it can limit opportunity and justice to a privileged few.
- At present, the crisis of our political system is its failure to promote the general good over what is good only for the elites.
Tom Coburn does not share my principles. Sadly, the dominant political force in American society is to promote the welfare of the wealthy and the largest corporations over the general welfare of all our people. Tom Coburn is a symbol of a wider problem that infects both parties. That Tom Coburn would suggest that benefits for the people who suffer in Oklahoma or in the Northeast or anywhere else in America from disasters should come at the expense of those who are the most vulnerable in society is a metaphor for the politics of cruelty and inequality.
The wealthy are benefiting from this mindset and the policies fostered by it. They seek to generate profits for their patrons by making the lives of everyone else more difficult; in effect by expanding the misery of those without wealth, power or influence. In the short term this is hugely beneficial for a small number of corporations and individuals. In the long run it is a recipe for instability, increased misery and the dissolution for a civilized society. The problems that we face in this century cannot be solved or addressed by private interests because those private interests do not have an interest in solving the problems human civilization faces.
Private interests have only one ethical principle: to maximize profits and benefits for those who own and control them. They have no interest in the welfare of others. We have seen this time after time in other areas: the bailouts of our financial institutions whose greed caused their own failures. The benefits we provide to industries that pollute and endanger our planet. The grip that the military industrial complex has over the allocation of government resources. The laws and trade agreements passed at the expense of worker’s rights and jobs. A health care system designed to raise prices on the many, and drive anyone facing a health crisis into bankruptcy, so that large insurance and pharmaceutical companies can prosper beyond all reasonable bounds.
We should be appalled that even in the area of disaster relief the political powers that be seek to provide profits for their benefactors. However, we should not be surprised. This is what are political system does. This is how our political leaders and officials operate. They are, for all intents and purposes, well compensated employees of the wealthiest people among us, and the large corporations those people control.
It would be easy to blame the people of Oklahoma and other “red” states for creating this system, but they did not. They are the victims of our ongoing political crisis as much as we who understand the mendacity and corruption of our political leaders. WE are all victims of a movement, financed by wealthy, greedy and immoral individuals, to divide us as a people, to split us into separate “tribes,” to foster hatred and animus, while they steal and plunder our communal resources. It has been a long war they have waged against their fellow Americans, and now that they have won that war, we are finally awakening to the consequences. More for them, less, much less for us. They have us fighting over the crumbs while squabbling amongst ourselves as to who is most deserving of the few resources they are still willing to provide to us.
So how should we react to the disasters in Oklahoma? Not with schadenfreude. Not with political gamesmanship such as Senator Coburn and his colleagues play at every day of every week. That way lies more misery, and more suffering, and more divisiveness. It serves only to benefit the elites who control our political process, our media and who have made our current government among the most corrupt and un-democratic in recent times.
It would be easy to castigate our fellow Americans who have swallowed the conservative industrialized complex’s Kool-Aid, but that will win no converts, open no eyes, or provide us with the power of numbers necessary to combat and evict those who have suborned our government and our society for their own purposes. All of us are each others keeper. The sooner more of us recognize that essential moral truth, and make the effort to act accordingly, the better. As the famous quote attributed to Benjamin Franklin stated: ” We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”
Right now the nooses are being tightened around the necks of all of us. Many have already died as a result of the indifference of the political class to the vast increased harm and pain the current state of affairs, the current neglect of the general welfare, which they support, has engendered. Now is not the time to make the case that our enemy is some poor soul who votes for these Tea Party Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats, for such infighting among the disadvantaged in our society only benefits the people who hold the leashes of our elected officials.
Now is the time to assert our core beliefs and our common interests. Now is the time to educate the people who have fallen under the sway of the true enemies of the people, those who would make our lives “nasty, brutish and short” while they feast on the riches they squeeze from our half dead carcasses on a daily basis.
Now is the time not only to profess compassion, but to act on it, and to demand it from our politicians if only to shame them and expose them for the servile vassals of the rich they have become.
To the people of Oklahoma I say, regardless of our differences, I love you and care for you, and want to make you my friend. How can I help?
So well said. And yes, I don’t want to have my pride in my country be culled down to moments of watching the heroes of these disasters wade into today’s disaster.
Methinks Mother Nature is reminding us that when we pull together to survive her wrath we can be mighty and that she shouldn’t have to remind us from time to time. Day to day pulling together shouldn’t become a forgotten act of heroism.
Well said, Steven! I couldn’t agree more!
It is time for people to pull together, not just here in Oklahoma, but across the country; not just to address disasters like the past few days tornadoes (with more to come perhaps, today), but to address the political and cultural damages of the past few decades.
Bravo!
I don’t have anything that would add anything to this fine, fine, piece of writing – and, humanity.
“5. No one should profit from the misfortune of others”
Why you socialist pig! You must know modern capitalism at its heart is comprised solely of profiting from the misfortune of others?
It all comes down to what you define as “misfortune”. Some would consider selling at a loss a “misfortune”. A more reasonable take might be holding disaster funds hostage to budget cuts…is it “misfortune” to have a heartless bastard as a U.S. Senator? Who is profiting from their words of political posturing? The (re)-construction industry certainly isn’t.
Someone noted the other day how socialist democrats would wish to nationalize the oil companies. To the capitalist, saying such things is offensive to the ears, how dare you say natural resources are owned by the public!
When the land the natural resources are extracted from is PUBLIC PROPERTY (i.e. Federal lands), then, yes it is owned by the public. Who do they think it is owned by? If Big Oil wants to get compensated for the costs of extraction, fine. But they don’t own the stuff even if their lease says they do, any more than if granite one day became a valuable commodity enough for Big Granite to begin lopping off big chunks of Federal Land and selling it back to us for hideous profits.
no matter how white confederate electorates vote, nor for how long, NEVER CRITICIZE THEM.
that’s why we’re in this mess nationally.
That isn’t my point, but I do think we should be making more of an effort to convince them that they share a common cause with us on the ruinous effects of our current government’s support for all things the 1% wants. Their economic ox is being gored as much as anyone else’s is.
An excellent manifesto and hardly a rant. But I’m not aware of any DC politician who is making this case. Totally verboten.
Repubs politicized federal disaster aid. That has already been done. By Repubs. They now argue that existing federal budgets and programs should suffer cuts whenever unplanned “natural” disasters hit. They are simply using federal disaster aid as a new vehicle to cut federal programs they hate. No Dem points this out. Surely the prez does not. Or the corporate media.
Of course the Oklahomans will quickly get the aid they need. Dems will immediately vote for whatever is requested and Repubs are already making clear that there will be no delays for these (OK) tornado victims. The problem is that Repubs consistently delay and refuse aid to areas of the country that vote for Dems. Fancy that. What is to be done about THAT? I guess it’s just to be ignored.
As for the monster Coburn, he’s not running again, so he can say whatever wingnut insanity he thinks. He wouldn’t be saying this if he were up for re-election—look at Dimhofe.
As for the New Confederacy’s consistent global warming denialism when THEY are going to be directly in the eye of the resulting mega-storm(s) and looking for aid for these (wholly un-natural) disasters, that’s another kettle of (rotting) fish….also to be perpetually ignored by all.
I don’t mean to suggest we should fail to mention the behavior of the Republicans when it comes to holding disaster relief (and every thing else under the sun) hostage. However, to my mind the issue of disaster relief is only symbolic of a much larger problem that infects both parties – the idea that business profits and wealthy interests must be protected from loss at all costs, and that the way to do that is to take away any effort by the government to advance the interests of the vast majority of Americans. There are some Democrats who support progressive policies, but far many who do not or who pay lip service to our interests, and then after elections are over, go back to doing the bidding of their paymasters.
I wonder if they’ll accept the help or if they’ll drive FEMA away with sticks.
They accepted Federal help every other time a disaster has been declared.
Spoken in the only developed country that consciously chose to treat sick people primarily as a business opportunity, the same country that invented disaster capitalism. Good luck with that.
And for commenters focusing on Coburn, Tea Partiers, and their hypocrisy, Steven’s point is larger. That for-profit health care model was decided upon by Democrats – Roosevelt and Truman, especially – at a time when other Western countries were moving to a nationalized health care model. Profiting off the misery of others is a bipartisan ideal in this country, set aside only when the scale of suffering is so massive (and localized) that withholding societal assistance is unthinkable. And even then, not everyone sets it aside, as we’re seeing with Oklahoma.
In the USA, profiting off the misery of others is a way of life. In the broadest sense, it’s how the US became and has continued to be a global power. We live on stolen land and live off of stolen wealth. It’s our national DNA, and it shows up even in natural disasters. Just ask New Orleans.
Please explain.
“…at a time when other Western countries were moving to a nationalized health care model.” That was post-WWII and encouraged by Truman who couldn’t get anything similar in this country because the AMA was really strong and easily duped the dumbasses of yesteryear.
If you want to blame Roosevelt for the WWII emergency wage freeze that exempted health insurance coverage, might as well blame the unions as well because they proceeded for decades to exploit that as a bargaining chip. For a while the UMW resisted that and set up their union owned and funded medical facilities but that do succumbed to the pressure of corporate health insurance.