Too Much Fat in the Health Care Reform Debate in America

I wrote the message that follows below and posted part of it in response to a blog article in the online journal, The Huffington Post. The article, entitled "Obama's New Hampshire Town Hall Brings Out Birthers, Deathers and More," relates the sad and truly violent situation that has arisen in America as a result of the health care reform debate.

One reader of the article mentions in a "blog comment" how Americans have been "left behind" because of their poor education, and as a result, they don't understand complex issues such as those involved in the health care reform discussion. An example of such ignorance is the number of public statements that have been made by anti-reform advocates who warn that the government should stay clear of their Medicare, itself a government-run medical assistance program for the elderly.

This same ignorance has led to an uninformed, irrational and potentially dangerous reaction to the Obama Administration's proposal for national health care reform. (See the article and the video that accompanies it here to get a clear idea of how dangerous the right wing in America is making this issue.)

Here's my rant on the issue:

Many Americans have been left behind. We have nurtured a society where sports worship and "American idols," TV dramas and superstardom are elevated to the highest level. Goals and values are skewed toward competition, acquisition and materialism in the extreme and away from fairness and empathy. In many neighborhoods kids learn the importance of money, and they are inculcated with the idea that the real heroes are of three types: gun-toting soldiers, flashy TV/movie stars and rich sports idols. Period. The time when being an astronaut or a doctor, an explorer or a teacher or a humanitarian was viewed as a heroic profession has seemingly passed. It's now all about the image and the cash. The more the merrier. Big is beautiful: big house, big car, big boat, big screen, big slice of pizza, big salary, big abs, big boobs, big hair...you get the picture.

High schools have bigger budgets for football and basketball than for their libraries. University coaches make more money than the professors. (In the rest of the world, this would be an absurdity.)

The result: the mentality, both corporate and individual, that what's most important in life is getting all you can get, getting the biggest slice possible from society, hoarding what is yours, with little sense of payback or sharing. It's based on a recipe, maligned though it may be, from the survival of the fittest manual. (You see the results of that in the way that many on Wall Street, during the recent economic crisis, were so clearly in it just for the money, and achieving that end made any means justifiable.) For many Americans, the very idea of government is bad because it represents an intrusion into that process, a chink on the armor of that ethos.

Meanwhile, in countries like Singapore, like China, like Japan, hard work and study are highly valued (maybe to an exaggerated extent!), and egalitarianism is not scorned. Sure, ownership/ materialism is alive and well even in Asia, but there also seems to be a focus on developing in kids and supporting in other citizens a set of social values that exists for the sake of conscientious economic development, a better/safer neighborhood, more lucrative opportunities for the youth and for future generations, not just more money and power and glory for the winners.

A former student of mine, a university graduate now doing an education diploma at the National Institute of Education in Singapore, recently told me that one of her main first-year teacher training courses is "service learning," in which she needs to develop a project that serves some particular community. That sort of focus is precisely what I'm talking about.

I grew up in Ohio and love my homeland for many reasons--but having lived and taught in several different countries in Asia for many years (and in the US before that), I see the difference between "us and them," and the fact is, it's glaring. Individualism in America has finally gone over the top. So much of it is so clearly about ME ME ME getting as MUCH as I possibly can. (Even Michelangelo's David, after doing a tour of the US, returned to Europe looking overfed. See photo above!)

For many in the US, education is seen only as a means to that end. To hell with social awareness, to hell with ensuring that society functions to everyone's benefit (which is why the regulatory bodies created by government are so loathesome to so many Americans). To hell with helping out the other(littler) guy (unless I can show off my generosity to my church group or to my friends). To hell with the big picture and the antiquated ideal of making America a place where even the "tired and the poor" can have a good, clean and safe home, top-notch educational opportunities, and affordable health care!

Where this will lead I don't know. But things aren't looking good.