Denial on the swine flu

Until the WHO announcement of a global pandemic yesterday, news of the swine flu was drifting off the media radar screen. This, even as the virus continued to -- and continues to -- establish itself around the world, ready to potentially unleash a much more deadly outcome than it has thus far when the next flu season hits the Northern hemisphere.

Despite the deadly seriousness of the swine flu, media coverage has paid scant attention to the most important questions swirling around the swine flu – How and why did the outbreak occur when and where it did?, and, What can and should be done to prevent another such outbreak?

It's worth noting that at the same time we have essentially no coverage of the how and why behind the swine flu -- which could potentially crash the whole of humanity -- we have an absolute media obsession with the how and why on the Air France crash.

There are a number of reasons why the how and why questions behind the swine flu pandemic have failed to garner much coverage. First, the how and why questions are typically the most difficult for journalists to pursue and answer within the constraints of "objectivity". Second, increasingly severe economic constraints on journalism limit journalists’ ability to fully address the often extremely complex and difficult to probe how and why questions.

However, the problem extends far beyond news media norms and economics. The lack of focus on how and why -- and a restricted focus in terms of the crucial “what next?” question -- reflect larger tendencies in American society. One might term these the four D’s, or Defense, Denial, Dollars, and Dehumanization.

In fact, a pretty clear – and very narrow -- answer to ‘What next?’ has been delivered. Create a vaccination and inoculate.

No one would deny the importance of creating a medical defense against H1N1. The trouble is, offense – or prevention – falls from view. Instead of investing ourselves in figuring out how the outbreak occurred, why it occurred, and what we can do to prevent another such outbreak, we gloss over these issues and employ a back-end solution, or a solution grounded in defense rather than offense.

We opt for a defensive approach in part because we do not want to consider the possibility that our food production system might be responsible for breeding deadly pathogens. In other words, we deny the possibility that we are potentially creating the conditions of our own demise.

Denial – a powerful human trait -- is deeply ingrained when it comes to meat consumption. We don’t want to know where our hot dog came from, and woe betide the person who dares discuss this. Our denial is understandable. But it could also be dangerous if, for instance, we allow it to prevent us from taking a close, sustained, and informed look at the possible link between H1N1 and the mass production of meat.

That we are reluctant to “go there” is not just a matter of denial but also of dollars. Mass production methods typically push consumer costs down and producer profits up. Yet the apparent benefits of modern, mass-produced meat could potentially end up costing us in the long run, both in economic and human terms. In other words, short-term advantages might be outweighed by long-term disadvantages.

The balance between short-term and long-term costs is also worth examining in terms of the approach we have taken with respect to the spread of H1N1. Economic savings has been one of the basic rationales for the current approach, which appears to be let H1N1 spread and then address it in those places to which it has spread. If the pandemic intensifies, it could turn out that trying to save money in the short-term -- and seemingly crossing our fingers that the virus won’t mutate into a deadlier form -- might end up costing us far more in the long-term.

H1N1 carries current and potential economic and human costs. Sadly, we tend to dehumanize those who have died from the swine flu by treating them as statistics rather than as fellow human beings. It is as if in denying swine flu victims their individual humanity we believe we will miraculously reduce our own chances of becoming a victim ourselves.

There is a certain selfish rationality in appealing to numbers rather than to our collective humanity when confronted by the death of a fellow human being. It reduces our own fear that we might have the bad luck of becoming a “statistic”. But it seems to me that we somehow can, or at least ought to, try to keep our wits about us while also acknowledging that, as human beings, each us could fall victim to H1N1. Indeed, because so much is clearly at stake for all of us, we ought to vigorously investigate and pursue the conditions that led to the emergence of H1N1. This, so that we might be better prepared to prevent the next global pandemic from taking flight, hopefully before it has ever had a chance to take off.

Obama's words unbelievably sweet to hear!

It's almost unbelievable -- but incredibly exciting, too! Soon, we'll have someone in the White House who actually believes in things like education, renewable energy, and investing in America, and Americans.

Obama said his plan would launch “a two-year nationwide effort to jump-start job creation in America and lay the foundation for a strong and growing economy. We’ll put people back to work rebuilding our crumbling roads and bridges, modernizing schools that are failing our children, and building wind farms and solar panels,” as well as producing fuel-efficient cars.

Conservatives -- who want to pour all of our money into the U.S. military instead -- might call it pie-in-the-sky. I call it focusing on the real-world issues that matter most, to most Americans, and to most of the world, or transforming so-called "idealism" into "realism."

Wow, I almost can't believe it's happening!

A little dose of Nader reality?

After spending the last four hours surfing the internet and reading about Obama's win, both from American and foreign media, I came across a Real News Network interview with Ralph Nader that was quite sobering, and rubbed some of the sheen off the warm, fuzzy, giddy feeling I was having about the Obama win.

Basically, Nader points out that Obama hasn't shown a propensity to take on power, and that he received millions in donations from corporate America, which, along with the weapons contractors, ultimately runs America. He also points to Obama's flip on oil drilling, and to the fact that Obama has consistently left the poor, which Nader says accounts for 100 million Americans, off his rhetorical radar, and has referred only to the middle class (which, Nader points out, continues to shrink). Anyway, here's the link to the sobering interview with Ralph (whom I did vote for in the 2000 election, an election which saw George Bush win Colorado by 10 percentage points over Gore).

• Ralph Nader speaks on an Obama presidency

Beautifully blue!

I truly believe the world is a better place tonight (as corny as it sounds), and I once again have faith in the United States, and hope for global humanity. The graphic above -- from MSNBC.com -- with a few words pasted in by me, says it all!

Blind free-market ideology sinks America

Three years ago, I remember wondering the following out loud -- to my wife, friends, a few co-workers --> How could mortgage brokers/lenders actually believe that Americans who took out a home loan/mortgage at, say 3-6% interest for the first 3 to 5 years, would, in year 6, be able to pay 10, 12, 15 percent interest, or that they would be able to afford monthly house payments that doubled over night?!

It doesn't take an economist -- and I'm surely not one -- to see that this was a disaster waiting to happen. I also couldn't figure out, at first, how the lenders thought they were going to make money, when they knew that many people that they lent the money to, wouldn't be able to make the payments in year 6. Then, I was told that the mortgages/loans are packaged and re-sold -- at a profit to the original "owners" of the loans -- to other companies/financial speculators etc.
In other words, it was all about short term -- very, very short term -- profit.

Anyone with half a brain must have known that when the loans came due, that many, many homeowners would default, and that this, of course, would spell economic disaster for the housing industry, and the U.S. economy. But, apparently, many of those in power don't have half a brain. Either that, or they've been blinded completely and totally by free-market economics, which holds, essentially, at its core, that we ought to let the folks with the money do whatever they want, even, if it's shortsighted, greedy, and -- as anyone with a half a brain can see in the case of the morgage crisis -- just plain dumb and stupid.

I only hope that we learn from our mistakes, change our ways, and do not let short-sighted profiteers hijack our economy, and the world's economy, again

Green jobs economy -- and the future of America

Improving the economy, bettering the environment, reducing American dependency on foreign oil, and making sure America remains as one of the world leaders are all connected.

They are all connected by the strands of renewable energy and conservation. If the U.S. doesn't invest significantly in renewable energy and really commit to energy conservation -- we will continue to be a major world polluter, a huge contributor to greenhouse gases, and repeatedly find ourselves in wars over oil around the world. We will also fall behind the true innovators and leaders -- Denmark, Germany, The Netherlands, Sweden, etc. --who are already deeply committed to building a renewable energy economy, and thereby disproving the myth that environmentalism is "bad" for the economy.

McCain's record on environmental issues is highly questionable -- for example, he has consistently voted against higher fuel economy standards for trucks and cars. McCain gives lip service to wind and solar energy, and supports an in-direct, free-market, tax rebate approach, but he has not outlined specifically what he would do with respect to renewable energy sources such as solar and wind.

Worse, in my view, he wants to build 45 new nuclear power plants in the U.S. in the next 20 years. You can say what you will about the safety of nuclear power plants -- McCain, of course, claims they're 100% safe -- but the problem of radiocative waste won't ever go away.

The life of radioactive waste produced by nuclear power plants is literally 100,000s of thousands of years. Why we should leave the next 1,500 generations of Americans a legacy of radioactive waste, when we can tap the most powerful "nuclear power" source -- the sun itself -- without producing dangerous waste is beyond me. (Actually, it's not beyond me -- it's about money and power, and there are powerful people who will make lots of money if 45 nuclear power plants go up in the U.S. in the next 20 years).

Also, as you increase the number of nuclear power plants, and the waste they produce, you introduce additional targets for terrorists, and more raw materials for them as well. But, of course, these issues are not on McCain's radar screen at all.

Obama has put forward many, many specific plans for the economy, for health care, for American foreign policy, and for renewable energy. You can find the specifics on his plans on barackobama.com. In relation to renewable energy, in contrast to McCain -- who's offered a smattering of what I consider to be weak tax rebates, Obama has committed specifically to investing $150 billion dollars in renewable energy over the next 10 years. This is a lot, but a drop in the bucket compare to what we spend on our military annually (more than $500 billion), or what we've spent on the war in Iraq (approach $1 trillion! -- imagine if some of this money had gone to developing solar and wind, geothermal, energy etc.!)

If Obama succeeds in putting forward his specific renewable energy plan -- and I sincerely hope he does (of course, first he needs to get elected) -- rather than being a follower with old ideas, many of which are harmful to the environment and global humanity, America will be a leader on what, to me, is the most important issue in this election: energy and the environment. These are, again, fundamentally tied to the global economy and America's economic future.

I wish more Americans were more in tune with the rest of the world -- which clearly views energy and environment issues as crucial to the future of global humanity. The Pew Global Attitudes Projects surveys show that, for example, while 90 percent of Brazilians and 70 percent of Germans view global warming as an important issue, only 42 percent of Americans do. Depressing...

Spreading the wealth

Wish that Barack Obama had said the following when John -- Seven home -- McCain railed against "spreading the wealth" in last night's presidential debate:

"John, the vast majority of Americans work extremely hard to earn their money. However, some people earn way more money than others, even though those earning far less than they are, sometimes 100s of times less, are working just as hard, if not harder. In fact, a big reason those at the top make so much money, is because they are paying those at the bottom -- who, once again, work every bit as hard as those at the top, if not harder -- so little. This system -- which sees the little guy bust his ass so the rich guy can make more -- is also "spreading the wealth," only it spreads the wealth extremely unevenly, to the point where only a very small percentage of Americans hold most of the wealth. Now, what I'm proposing is simply this: That those at the top, who are making their millions in large part on the backs of the hard-working lower and middle classes, pay their fare share so that more hard-working Americans can make it in today's increasingly helter-skelter economy."

Republican hypocrisy, and the "true" elitists

Isn't it classic that conservatives label liberals as elitists, when, of course, they believe they're more American, more Patriotic, more Godly than those "elistist" liberals. Exactly who are the "true" eltists anyway?

Answer: Both conservatives and liberals have their elitist tendencies. However, unfortunately conservatives have suceeded in blinding people to their elitism while claiming -- falsely -- that liberals are the only elitists.

Please!

GOP sinks bailout -- but McCain blames Dems

Let me see if I have this right: Two-thirds of Republicans in the House vote against a Wall Street bailout plan architected by President Bush, and John McCain blames Barack Obama and the Democrats – 60% of whom voted for the bailout -- for the plan’s defeat.

Apparently Sen. McCain will do anything to get elected, including twisting his own party’s opposition to the bailout to make it seem as though the other guys torpedoed it.

That’s not putting country first. That’s putting, me, John McCain, first, so that I can get elected.

Sure hope the independent and undecided voters see through McCain's outrageous attempt to pin the blame on the other guys, when in fact it was his own party that sank the bailout in the House Monday (9/29/08).

"Obsession" full of contradications

Just viewed the documentary, "Obesssion: Radical Islam's War Against the West."

This is a right-wing documentary, apparently funded at least in part by pro-Israelis, by the way. For more on the funding behind "Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West," check out the entry on "Popular Progressive," another blogger.com blog.

I'm not sure if I'll have time to show my students clips from "Obsession," but if I do, I will be encouraging them to deconstruct some of its fundamental "logic", its decided, really complete, lack of context vis-a-vis Islam and the history of Islam, and, some of the contradictions that riddle this right-wing documentary that was recently distributed in 70 daily newspapers across the U.S., including The Denver Post, and The New York Times.

I won't be deconstructing 'Obsession' in order to indoctrinate my students with so-called liberal propaganda. Contrary to the right-wing dogma -- which completely undersells their intellectual capabilities -- college students are not mindless, ideological sponges, or empty vassals into which doctrine of one kind or another is poured. They are intelligent, critical individuals who come to the classroom with strong viewpoints, and a lifelong set of political, religious, cultural experiences that have transformed them into reflective people fully capable of maintaining points of view at odds with those other students, with those in a given reading assigned by a professor, or those contained within a particular documentary film.

In fact, I probably won't have to deconstruct it. My students will do it on their own. But if they miss some of the contradictions and argumentative holes (giant chasms, really), I'll be happy to point them out -- in the spirit of inspiring good, critical, reflective thinking on the part of my students, not with the intent of "indoctrinating" them -- which, again, is impossible (and isn't my goal anyhow).

OK, on to a few criticisms of "Obsession" -- whose right to be distributed with 70 newspapers I fully support. (The problem isn't that right-wing documentaries are being distributed in The Denver Post, etc., but that the Left doesn't appear to have the money, or its act together, to distribute its own documentaries in similar fashion).

It's amazing to me that the producers of "Obsession" apparently don't see some of the gaping contradictions which severely undermine the primary points of their own documentary:

1) you have sources criticizing "the" Arab media for demonizing The West, when, of course, one of the primary goals of "Obsession" is to -- you guessed it -- demonize Islam.

2) you have sources in "Obsession" repeatedly saying that one needs to create fear, anxiety, etc. in a public -- they're referring to Muslim publics -- in order to get them to fight (a war). But, of course, "Obsession" is seeking to do exactly the same thing it condemns: Raise fear levels in the U.S. by tapping into stereotypes of Muslims so that "we" will fight "them."

The analogy of "radical Islam" to Hitler and Nazi-ism only loosely holds. That is, there are some parallels in terms of ideologies of indoctrination, but the documentary's analogy falls flat after that. Hitler was the leader of a powerful, industrialized nation-state in the middle of Europe that had the ability to produce a true, meaningful military threat to Europe and the world. Moreover, he wasn't trying to impose a radically different religous ideology on his citizens, which, presumably, so-called "radical islamists" are. In other words, because his material and larger ideological conditions were radically different, he was able to mobilize a true threat to Europe and the world.

So-called "Radical Islamists" simply do not have the same material means at their disposal as Hitler, nor do they enjoy the same geographic location -- they're not located at the heart of a Euro-centric world, geographically speaking."Obsession's" claim that a few "Radical" muslims have now "infiltrated" the U.S. and UK, etc., and that, therefore, "Radical Islam" is on the brink of total and complete world domination is, in a word, laughable.

This is not to say that there won't be more terrorist attacks in the UK, Germany, Spain, etc. in the future. There will be some, and every reasonable effort should be made to stave these off (notice that "Obsession" is very weak on "solutions" -- because it's primary goal is to instill fear, not meaningful, useful dialogue, etc.). But while these attacks will kill people, comparatively few will die in them, especially compared to the numbers of cilivians killed in Iraq in the last 5 years. (That comparatively few will die, doesn't mean that I do not value the lives of those who will die. I do.)

Furthermore, these small terrorist attacks simply do not have a hell's chance of knocking off the entire Western world and turning it into a 'Radical Islamic" empire. After all, 95% of Europeans, Americans, Canadians, etc. simply wouldn't buy into the ideology of "radical" Islam. Indeed, as the documentary clearly shows, this ideology is anti-thetical to their very being. How could you conquer, and maintain control over a population, 95% of which fevertently opposes you? Especially with essentially no military might to do so. It ain't happening!Finally, comparing Hitler's legions of tanks, planes, howitzers, U-boats, millions of soldiers etc. to a handful of suicide bombers? Please!!!!

Those poor unhappy rich people

How many times do we have to hear that "money doesn't/can't buy happiness" -- a grand statement almost inevitably uttered by:

a) some dude who makes a pretty/very/or very very comfortable living

b) and/or some dude who's bought into this religious ideology or that one wholesale

c) and/or some psychologist, or pseudo-psychologist (who also happens to make a very good living)

"Money can't buy you happiness" is WAY too simple. It fails to acknowledge that those with more money have more choices, in many cases, many more choices than those with less money.

It just grates when I read something like the following, from The Wall Street Journal's Jonathan Clements (jonathan.clements@waj.com) from a recent "Getting Going" column, a syndicated column that runs weekly in The Denver Post Business Section:

"Money may not make you happy. But it could make you desperately unhappy. Lots of folks stagger through life, buffeted by credit-card debt, unpaid bills and gnawing fears about their financial future.

"Sure, these worries are more likely to hit those with lower incomes..."

Say what!?

OK, in the first paragraph Clements is probably referring to yuppies who make $100k plus, who are still running up the credit card bills, when they don't "need" to ("need" is a thorny, difficult-to-define term, to say the least).

Trouble is, he collapses everyone into this paragraph, including the folks who Barabra Ehrenreich has clearly shown have been "Nickeled and Dimed" to death.

While I can't claim to be being nickeled and dimed, life can be plenty stressful for those of us well below the $100k mark.

People like us might have no choice other than use credit cards to pay for the replacement of a leaky roof. We had no other (better) choice (cash is the best choice), and we're hardly living the high life. (We live in a modest 3-bedroom, 1600-foot house that eats up 50 percent of our monthly income, and which we bought for $40k less than the median house sells for in metro Denver).

To be fair, with outstanding credit, we were able to use a check from a credit card company that gave us 3.9% interest -- and we were well-versed enough in credit card-ese to know that we had to pay off our entire balance before using the check, and that we can't use that credit card again until we have that $4k debt paid off, or face paying 20% interest on anything we now charge on that card.

In fact, it's Clements' second paragraph that's most patronizing: "Sure, these (credit card, debt) worries are more likely to hit those with lower incomes."

It's hard not to chalk this breezy sentence up to anything but sheer dismissiveness -- and ignorance. It's a good bet that the closest Clements' ever come to "those with lower incomes" is the janitor working the night shift -- and his second job -- at the WSJ offices.

We're not the janitor working two jobs. And I'm not saying that our four person family qualifies for low-income status, though at $50k per year, we are below the median income for a family of four. But our lack of income DOES add considerable stress to our lives, and reduces the number of choices that we have compared to people that are more well off.

For example, while my wife and I have to spend time trying to figure out which lower interest credit card to transfer our several thousand dollar balance to, people with more money can spend their time on other things (yachting in the Bahamas, anyone? anyone?).

While we have to pay $150 in mortgage insurance because we couldn't afford to put 20% down on a house that was $40k below the Denver metro median cost those with more money need not sweat this -- and they can spend the extra $150 per month on say, high speed Internet, cable, and maybe a cellular plan (all things we forego to cut costs).

While I labor away in the garage to fix that broken appliance, and the other, and work hard to maintain a 15-year-old car (our only one), while I spend time cleaning our bathrooms, crawling into our attic to add insulation, while I take out the garbage, put up a fence in our yard and do other yard work, while I dream of the German-speaking nanny I'd like to hire so that my daughters could have someone other than myself teach them German, others simply dig into their cash supply and hire out.

And I bet they don't throw a fit when they mistakenly break the baby crib that they got for free because they're worried about plopping down an extra $150 for a new crib.

Absolutely, we are privileged compared to true low-income folks -- the folks working two, three jobs, with both parents, and possibly all kids working. The people, who despite the long hours and multiple jobs, are still unable to pay the basic housing, food, utility bills, etc. These are the people buying stuff at rent-to-own, and going to pay-day loan outfits so that they can buy their kids Christmas presents, or even, just put clothes on their backs.

Oh yeah, but I forgot: money plays absolutely no role in happiness and life satisfaction. (Right!)

OK, there are relatively happy low-income people working two jobs, who can't pay the bills, the basic bills, that is, who don't have a car, don't have Internet access, who can't even dream of sending their kids to college, or putting away money in a 401k, though I, and I bet Clements, and others who reproduce a "money doesn't really matter" ideology, don't actually know anyone like this.

Ultimately, it's incredibly patronizing, not to mention just plain ridiculous to claim, from a comfortable financial position, that money doesn't play into happiness.

The most accurate thing is to say that:

"Money might not buy happiness (though it may well buy SOME happiness for some of us), but it IS a significant factor in the qualify of life for all of us, and, of course, one's quality of life stands as a crucial aspect of one's overall happiness."

To qualify like this would be to acknowledge the complexity of life, its grayness. Gray doesn't sell well in a country that values simplistic, black-and-white views of life.

In the end, the "money doesn't buy happiness" mantra, is an ideological ploy used to gloss over the huge inequities in wealth that characterize the contemporary American, and global, economic climate. It's a way for the rich, or relatively well off, to feel better about themselves and the many things that they don't ever have to worry about that are everyday stressors for low income people.