Mike Doughney

Crossposted at Daily Kos

You’ve probably seen it by now, a two-sentence statement that went viral across Facebook and Twitter over the last day or so:

(name) thinks that no one should die because they cannot afford health care, and no one should go broke because they get sick. If you agree, please post this as your status for the rest of the day.

After seeing this on a Facebook friend’s blog, I commented:

Somehow I think that’s too complicated for many Americans to understand, but I’ll give it a shot. (Am I cynical enough yet?)

Turns out I was right on the money with my comment.

As I expected, some people couldn’t just take the statement at face value. For at least one, it pulled the cork and caused a rather predictable flood of complaint, usually centering on the great American whine, “I’ve got mine and those people can’t have any.”

Like this exchange which resulted on one Facebook friend’s blog, who’d evidently noticed that someone somewhere was being called “unpatriotic” for posting the original status message.

A: what I don’t get is why it’s “unpatriotic” to say that I want ALL Americans to be healthy…even Americans who don’t have any money.
Yesterday at 9:07am

Idiot-boy: I don’t subscribe to the notion that is is unpatriotic regarding ALL AMERICANS. But I have major issues with illegal aliens on any nationality/ethnicity/color getting free anything at the expense of the dues paying members of society.
Yesterday at 9:14am

Me: “No one” means “no one.” Get over it.
Yesterday at 3:53pm

Idiot-boy: Mike, I don’t know you at all. I was agreeing with A’s opinion regarding “unpatriotic”. She stated ALL AMERICANS! I don’t take exception to the poor of this country benefitting from the system. I will say if you truly wish to care for the entire world say so, I have a hard time distingushing China from Norway from Germany from Mexico when it comes to illegals. And if you want to just have our society collapse under that weight of that cost just say you don’t care what’s left for your kids. And just so we don’t get into a constant pissing contest I don’t have a problem with emergency care for people who are in the country LEGALLY. But if they get care and they are illegal….DEPORT THEM!
2 hours ago

Like I said… too complicated for way too many Americans to understand: people who are absolutely, completely certain that some must “die because they cannot afford health care” if they can’t produce proof of legal residency.

Despite Idiot-boy’s preemptive attempt to cast himself as “I’m not a racist” by including Norway as a possible source of a tidal wave of illegal immigrants to the United States, in practice we all know where this goes. All that matters to some are the words written above by Idiot-boy in upper case: “ALL AMERICANS,” “LEGALLY,” “DEPORT THEM.”

No new program could ever be worthwhile for such people unless it further reinforces who does not belong, who’s neck is under the boot. A totally arbitrary process where the most important thing is that there be the neck of a live person under that boot, not the creation and enforcement of a policy that might actually accomplish something positive for anyone beyond the joy and sense of purpose generated by carrying out the act of retribution. In this case, it’s most important, above everything else, that retribution be directed at those whose only offense is to be part of an unregulatable economic resource that can’t ever be admitted to legitimately exist in this country.

The idea that healthcare should be provided for all who are in this country – regardless of other concerns – is a completely alien concept here, which makes the so-called “healthcare debate” more an exercise of displaying to the world what a backward, uncivilized place America is than anything else. Simple things that might actually benefit people here cause “debate” and ultimately go nowhere, while burning a trillion or more dollars in deserts on the other side of the world is an absolutely necessary thing that keep Americans safe and healthy. There is no awareness here that these matters are handled completely differently in other parts of the developed Western world – even just north of America’s own borders – and no willingness to imagine that, as demonstrated elsewhere, things could be much different.

I think healthcare reform here in America is basically impossible because it’s being attempted about a half-century too late, and as we’re seeing today, any attempt at substantial change will be derailed by nonsensical objections like this.

As any significant reform, much less overhaul, of America’s healthcare system looks more and more unlikely, I thought I’d repost this: a brief article that Sabina and I wrote almost 12 years ago, and had published in a small, long-defunct, obscure journal. In recent times it has been clear to me that the anti-abortion movement was just a precursor, a demonstration of how fictional hoaxes could be used to derail access to healthcare. The same tactics are playing out today at the national level. We were right to point out that abortion may be a mere footnote in the context of then-future efforts to eliminate what many had often taken for granted, such as the availability and affordability of healthcare for even a majority of Americans. Abortion was the means to move their people, overcoming inertia to create a broad campaign to broadly marginalize and demonize science, medicine and healthcare.

By Mike Doughney and Lauren Sabina Kneisly

as published in the Body Politic, January/February 1998

Access to abortion services is going to continue disappearing in the next 5 years. While providers are aging, few newcomers are learning the technique. Harassment and vigilante action, along with new restrictions, also contribute to the growing unavailability of the procedure. Even new technologies remain unavailable or difficult to obtain under these conditions.

While it is important to have an understanding of why we got here, we should be talking about what must be done now to stop a very broad
movement that is openly fighting a war across many fronts. The Biblical America movement, which has seldom been taken seriously for the past 25 years, continues to gain real power. While each group threatened by this movement independently works in their own field, opposition is fragmented and ineffective in countering progress toward the goals of BA. Sole focus on abortion, without acknowledging the interconnections to other issues exploited by the Biblical America movement, is a grave strategic mistake.

We fail to notice that they are teaching a whole new generation a set of values alien to us. For instance, they’ve succeded in gaining access to public schools, through so-called “chastity programs,” to teach that abortion is to be avoided at all costs. Not only their own children, but our entire culture, is slowly absorbing and accepting the concept of abortion prohibition.

It’s through 25 years of neglect, of accepting Roe as an end and not one point of a process of legitimizing abortion, that we’ve arrived here.

It’s basically pointless to discuss the particulars of abortion “rights” when we are about to be overrun by an antidemocratic, fascist, theocratic movement that will do away with much of what we take for granted; the loss of abortion will be a minor historical footnote.