At South By South West, something actually unscripted happened. Fat Mike actually went off the rails. Not just what you’d expect from the perpetually-juvenile NOFX frontman, but exactly what you wouldn’t expect from him. He gets up on stage in full Cokie the Clown gear with an acoustic guitar, brings some tequila to the front row and then starts talking about rape.

Past this point, we are assuming that the Cokie character is nothing more than window dressing for Fat Mike to express things that are too heavy for him to put forward at a NOFX show. Understand that last sentence isn’t a swipe at NOFX. NOFX is a very specific kind of vehicle for a very specific kind of expression. Stuff like this would kill the mood at a NOFX show. For example, hearing about how Thomas has a very specific fondness for S&M lesbians and obscure South Asian hallucinogens would be incredibly uncomfortable and mood-killing at a Strike Anywhere gig.

Also, I have no idea what to make of the urine in the tequila thing except that while the potential for a lawsuit is there it’s not dangerous so much as disgusting and that’s not how I’d want to treat my fans.

But the rape is the most interesting. Here, we have Fat Mike, a guy known for not taking terribly much seriously except for drugs and drugs, talking about something that happened when he was a teenager that haunts him to this day.

Past this point, I am assuming that this story is true, though because memory lies, who knows how accurate it is.

These are the important facts: Mike, (16) and Melvin (17) were in a stairwell at a Vandals show in 1984, when two known gang members (two of 40 at the gig) were carrying a girl across their shoulder to be raped. The girl grabs Melvin and says “help me”. The gang members tell the kids that they didn’t see a fucking thing. Mike and Melvin go upstairs, knowing there is a rape happening directly below them.

It is theoretically possible that Mike and Melvin could have stopped the rape by force, but it’s highly unlikely. However, let’s say, for the sake of argument, that somehow, Mike and Melvin beat up the two gang members, and they’re knocked out. The girl, Mike and Melvin, need to escape from the venue, where there are 38 gang members, presumably who know what’s going on. Therein lies another problem. Let’s say a quarter of those people know what’s going on. Again, being optimistic. If any of them get spotted by any of those nine gang members, the gang members get their buddies together and suddenly, it’s a mad dash for the door.

In something that reflects reality, two teenagers were intimidated by gang members, with a plausible threat of violence from saying anything about the rape. It is also theoretically possible, that between the two teenagers, they could have convinced the two gang members not to rape this girl using words. This possibility is so remote, it almost doesn’t seem worth mentioning, but it’s a possibility.

Given anything resembling reasonable odds, this girl’s rape was sealed. Put more directly: It was not within Mike’s or Melvin’s power to (again, ages 16 and 17 respectively) stop the two men from raping that girl when they passed the two teenagers in the stairwell using force. Should Mike and Melvin spoken up and invited violence against themselves even if there is no demonstrable reason to believe that life would improve for the person they’re trying to help?

Yes. Of course. Doing good deeds isn’t always easy.

That said, I can’t personally fault the two teenagers for not standing up to the two gang members. I’d have shit my pants, placed in that position. I’m not sure I would have enough backbone to interpose myself even briefly, between the gang members and the rape. According to a survivor, they don’t teach women to yell HELP in self defense classes, but instead to yell FIRE, because it gets people’s attention. It means that Mike and Melvin are with the majority of people when they went back upstairs to watch the Vandals.

“They were powerless to stop it, but perhaps they should have tried.” It’s an excellent thing to say and certainly something that ought to be felt, but hardly ever is it acted upon. In short, it’s easier to say on the internet (or otherwise removed from the event) that one would do the right thing than it is to do it. Put differently, I don’t think even a quarter of the people railing on Mike would stand up if they were placed in his shoes at the time. I believe they would value not getting their body beaten and broken more than they value their ethical stance. I think they’d be too intimidated to move.

What comes after that, I’m not so sure. We don’t know to what extent Fat Mike and Melvin followed up on the issue. A call (from a pay phone) or tip to the police would be in order, even if the famously antagonistic police would laugh it off. This is California in the 80’s and punk rock before THE DROPKICK MURPHYS. If police and punks saw eye to eye at the time, it was with a riot stick or tear gas between them. Going to the owner of the venue might be another recourse for the guys, but again, that’s only post facto.

There’s other thing that Mike admitted to, being hard-hearted around his dying father that tried to reconnect before his death, stealing a friend’s vinyl record after that friend hung himself but I find that less powerful than the staircase episode, because of the rubber meets road nature of the incident.

I find the hostility aimed at Mike for admitting that something he did 26 years ago still haunts him is…not terribly powerful because of their distance from the experience. Aside from not believing anyone who said they’d try to stop it, my belief is that for the words to have any meaning, the speaker has to be placed in that moment, with their back against the wall. The terror is integral! There has to be the vivid, clear and distinct probability of crippling, permanent injury (and possibility of death) in the decision making process for anyone to plausibly make the claim they’d stop that rape.

In short: It’s one thing to say you would stop the rape on the internet. It’s another thing to say you would stop the rape with no cell phone, outnumbered, surrounded and with no one coming to help you.

I dislike the new Re-Education Through Labor video by Rise Against, a band that has influenced my perspective on the world immensely.

Recently, the band posted the new video with more footage for “Re-Education Through Labor” on their website. It added a bunch of scary statistics, not sourced, but that’s secondary. The video consists of young white people coming together and committing acts of domestic terrorism aimed at downtown Chicago. It’s a nice visual, Chicago burning after dark but honestly, I feel like that’s a pretty easy way to make an “edgy” video. It’s an easy way to make an edgy video because it answers no questions.

There wasn’t a particular direction for the anger of the kids, just pictures of “resistant” people making, distributing and setting off homemade explosives near buildings in LaSalle Street, in downtown Chicago. There wasn’t a why and that’s disappointing. My guess is the statistics are supposed to match up to some kind of discontent, but they don’t. They’re liberal boilerplate, cast as wide as possible without regard to depth. There is worldwide discontent at exploitation by the military industrial complex, propped up by disaster capitalism. We agree. Lots of traditional GOP voters eat meat and believe in a male God looking down on them. Not the end of the world. Maybe I’m being too precious. A lot of the Earth’s wildlife/non-developed areas are being razed and destroyed. How one gets from that to blowing up downtown Chicago in retaliation is beyond me.

In short: The video, when it was released in 2008 (just before the election of Barack Hussein Obama, a fact which a year and a half out still fills me with pride) and now still feels intellectually weak. In 2008, the political climate was heating up, I’ll give you that, but when isn’t it? The anger, while presumably sincere, feels generic to me.

Specifically: I expect more from Rise Against than a video about romanticizing indiscriminate domestic terrorism as a way to let off steam against the crushing claustrophobia and alienation of modern urban life. The band has made more thoughtful videos before. Hell, the video for “Diaspora” (sorry, “Prayer of the Refugee”) got the band lost in a supermark…Wal-Mart, surrounded by the obscene amounts of cheap shit made by exploited persons halfway across the world. “Ready to Fall” put the band literally on top of the striking images of human neglect, sprawl and consumption. Comparatively, the image of young nubile white kids saying “let’s make suitcase bombs and put them on LaSalle Street” rings kind of hollow.

Hell, the statistics aren’t bad (but unsourced and mysterious), but why not put those over a performance video? There’s no apocalyptic imagery but at least the band would be tying itself to the real misery and overlooked suffering of modern life. Instead, suitcase bombs and LaSalle St.

Additionally (and this counts for more of my focus than is fashionable), my father works in an office on that street. He spends most of his time pulling teeth from insurance companies for records that are about to be disappeared. As a punk, I know the value in using real streets and real places to anchor the discontent to something tangible. As a son? That’s my dad in that building. But even if you don’t have parents working on LaSalle St, you too can still be uneasy with the video. There’s janitors in that building. There’s secretaries in that building. There’s doormen in that building. There’s typists in that building.

Those people have as much to do with the rape and exploitation of our earth as I do with the next mission to Mars. And that’s really the problem. Usually, Rise Against has been on point in terms of videos, but the wrong one got the new lease on life.

(P.S. Yes, I know it’s disingenuous to use the phrase nubile white kids in the essay because that’s what punk rock was built on, whether we like it or not. It’s directed at central casting rather than the band.)

I have faithfully been doing these lists since 2004 and each year that passes, I feel a stronger and deeper connection to music. I never understand the concept of “growing out” of music, especially if you are deeply involved with it at one point or another. It may be a bad experience (which I can understand) or the lack of connection to new music coming out, but all it takes is a little bit of time and effort, then it pulls you right back in.

This year personally was full of ups and downs (more so than recent years), and as I began to wind down my touring schedule and focus on my home life, it became clear that this is what I want to do and where I want to be. A nomad’s life has a certain appeal for a certain time and place, that place for me was dying. The satisfaction of developing my relationships at home and in my professional life left me feeling more full than ever.

I digress; music is in my blood and running through my veins. It identifies me and keeps me connected to so many wonderful people, experiences and memories. This year was no exception and I love that I have something to share with everyone.

10. Touché Amore – To The Beat of a Dead Horse Watching a typical hardcore kid with no real connection to many of the bands that Touche Amore are directly influenced by (i.e., Orchid, You And I) lose their minds to this band is inspiring. A great hope for where our music can go when we listen with an open mind.

9. Propagandhi – Supporting Caste If these guys put out a record, I am listening. Never gets old and will always remain relevant.

8. POS – Never Better POS keeps the hope of independent hip-hop alive with every record he releases and exposes to kids who typically don’t listen to hip-hop (the pop punk crowd). Keeping it more real than most, I love POS.

7. Cobalt – Gin This proves that black metal doesn’t have to sound like it was recorded on a tape deck in a steel room. This two-man project keeps things fresh, dark, and most certainly evil. Most full bands wish they had this much talent.

6. Thrice – Beggars A further continuation of their musical experiments and Thrice continue down their own path to ensure their proper place in independent music history.

5. Architects – Hollow Crown Hands down, the band everyone has to watch out for in the coming years. Combining everything that is right about metal/hardcore/rock into a compelling package is a difficult task, but they manage to do it. Don’t sleep on this, I urge you to check them out.

4. It Prevails – Capture and Embrace Although I am very partial to this style of music (melodic hardcore), this part-time band showcases how fun it is to listen to a well-crafted record, This had me singing along in my car on many occasions.

3. Isis – Waving Radiant Talk about focus. While many feel that Isis lost their heads on the last release, this just goes to show what happens when you put talented musicians in a room that all have a single focus. Hauntingly hypnotic.

2. Phoenix – Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix I got into these guys through the ‘Lost In Translation’ soundtrack and watched them struggle with their identity on each subsequent release. Finally, these Frenchies show that they have had it in them all along. You would have to be living under a rock if you didn’t hear this record.

1. Mastodon – Crack The Skye The record I listened to most this year. This is what every independent band should strive to be in 2010. Musically courageous, fiercely independent and insanely talented. I wish I was in Mastodon. Honorable Mentions: Earth Crisis – To The Death Defeater – Travels Silversun Pickups – Swoon Buried Inside – Spoils Of Failure Pains Of Being Pure at Heart – s/t Polar Bear Club – Chasing Hamburg Heartsounds – Until We Surrender Ritual – Beneath Aging Flesh and Bone Empire! Empire! (I Was A Lonely Estate) – What It Takes To Move Forward Katatonia – Night Is The New Day fun – Aim and Ignite This Town Needs Guns – Animals Converge – Axe To Fall Blacklisted – No One Deserves To Be Here More Than Me The xx - x EPs Pianos Become The Teeth – Old Pride Transit – Stay Home Title Fight – The Last Thing You Forget Defeater – Lost Ground Foundation – Hang Your Head Tigers Jaw – s/t Movies Watchmen District 9 Up In The Air The Cove The Hangover Inglorious Basterds Until The Light Takes Us Best TV Show Friday Night Lights Best Book Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer Top 5 Podcasts 1. This American Life 2. Issue Oriented 3. Sound Of Young America 4. Sound Opinions 5. You Look Nice Today Life: -Being married for 4 years strong and getting better by the moment -Modern Warfare 2 -midnight events -Burning Fight -Unbroken/Undertow in Seattle and Pomona -Japan and Hawaii on tour -not having to tour the US -Sound and Fury -still being a kid -6131 Records -weddings with friends.

Not long ago I wrote a blog entry here at Issue Oriented about how health care reform was about to become to a huge issue for the country. Though I was expecting an onslaught of misinformation and anger from the Right, I never thought things would develop quite like they have thus far.

First, a few facts about the issue: There is no “Obama plan”. Unlike the 1994-94 “Clinton health plan,” which famously turned Hillary Clinton into the caricature the Right loves to hate, President Obama made an early decision to leave the development of the plan’s specifics to Congress. Obama laid out what he wanted in health reform (a public plan, various new regulations on insurers, a new health care “exchange”, etc.), but rather than create a plan for which he would be directly accountable, he gave that responsibility to the House and Senate, many of whom are up for re-election next year. The result of that decision has been two separate bills that are different from each other in a number of ways – and a lot of back-and-forth on the financing and the reforms. The House plan is ready for a floor vote and (as of this blog) the Senate plan is still stuck in the Finance Committee.

On one side of this debate you have the opponents of health care reform. We have all seen them on tv and YouTube this past week, showing up at town hall meetings and turning discussions into rallies against reform. Though it is true that some of these folks are being turned out by the Republican establishment (conservative “tea party groups” and groups funded by insurance companies) most of the anger and fear being expressed at these town halls is genuine. Misinformation is being spread on talk radio, cable tv news shows and the internet; this bad info ranges from the ridiculous notion that the elderly will be forced to choose how to die, to the claim that liberty itself is at stake. Who wouldn’t be afraid of that if you didn’t know any better? With the government taking larger-than-usual steps to handle the financial and economic problems of the last year and getting little return, the public is offering a slimmer-than-usual margin of error on health care reform. Add in some horror stories about big government and “socialized medicine,” and you have a lot of genuine fear.

But just because something is genuine, doesn’t mean that it is legitimate. Let’s face it, health policy is very complicated and most people do not understand the basics of our health care system – not to mention the extent to which government is already involved in the system. This has been illustrated by a scenario which has played out at numerous town halls already – the senior citizen shouting that “the government needs to keep its hands off my Medicare.” (Medicare, of course, is a government insurance program that covers tens of millions of people.) For the members of Congress holding these town halls, it is a difficult challenge – how does one deal with a constituent who clearly does not understand the issue, but do so without coming off as an elitist?

The Republicans and conservative groups understand all this too well and are taking full advantage of it. And they are shameless in their spread of misinformation because the political stakes are so high. They know that if the Democrats win health care reform, it will be yet another nail in the Republican coffin. Though we Americans tend to pride ourselves on our “can do” spirit, deep down inside we want a safety net available for when we need it. Once it is provided, Washington dare not try to take it away. That is why even the most passionate conservative Republican in the House supports keeping Medicare in place – the seniors in their district would vote them out of office in a heartbeat if their Medicare was threatened, let alone taken away. When it comes to health care reform, the same principle holds true, and whichever party solves the health care crisis will enjoy decades of political dividends.

But this is not a war of ideas. The Republican solutions to health care are far out of the mainstream (i.e. weak insurance plans with $5,000+ deductibles and weak consumer protections), so the only thing they can do is drown out the debate with fear and anger, hoping to kill the bills. The same tactic worked for the Democrats and progressive groups back in 2005 when Bush proposed to turn part of Social Security over to Wall Street. The Dems did not have a solution to the Social Security solvency issue, so it made sense to focus on the risks Bush’s plan would create for retirees. Progressive groups – myself included at the time – ran town hall meetings, did district office visits with Congress members and organized press conferences to highlight the fears people had with the proposal. It was just a matter of time before Bush’s plan imploded. No alternative ideas were needed – all you need to do is rile people up, and organize them in a fashion that puts the proponents running for cover. It is a fairly simple concept that happens to work.

On the other side of the health care reform debate, there isn’t so much misinformation – but there is plenty of denial. President Obama is not calling for a Canadian-style single payer system – but he has called for a public plan that would compete with private insurers. Opponents of the public plan say that this is a trojan horse for single-payer -  and they’re correct. I worked for seven years for an organization that supports single-payer, and the public option was always understood to be a way to get your foot in the single payer door. This is supported by recent YouTube video clips of President Obama and Senator Barney Frank admitting that the public plan would eventually lead to the private insurers being forced out of the system and the evolution of a Medicare-style health insurance program that would take over. It is difficult if not impossible to honestly argue that you’re just looking for more “competition” by introducing a public plan in the face of video evidence like that, but yet that’s what the Dems are doing.

Given the failure of private insurance over the decades to make quality coverage affordable (nearly 15,000 people lose their insurance every day), I personally think that real reform cannot happen without a public option of some sort. Health care is so expensive that much of the private coverage is already subsidized in one way or another. Employer-sponsored health insurance would not exist if the government did not help employers by giving them a generous tax break for doing so. “Medicare Advantage” plans (which are private plans) could not offer benefits without relying on taxpayer dollars. Even Mitt Romney’s so-called “free market” health reform in Massachusetts feeds heavily from the public trough. The “free market” people demanding that the “government should stay out of health care” do not know what they are talking about. It is as simple as that.

At the same time, the conservative critics are correct about the state of Medicare funding – it is in horrible shape, and needs to be addressed. Democrats and progressives keep punting the ball because the answer is going to have to involve some combination of raising taxes and cutting benefits, and that is poison even in a non-election year. The Democrats’ hope is to deal with this issue in part by passing health care reform. Include some changes to Medicare and raise some taxes as part of the overall package, and the blowback is muffled by the gains.

Given how things are going, what is likely to happen is that either health care reform will die a very public death or the public option is going to be dropped from the final bill. It currently does not exist within the Senate bill, and it is so controversial in the House that, if it were put to a vote today, it wouldn’t pass. But even if the public option is dropped it would still be an uphill battle for Democrats and other proponents, as the misinformation campaign of the Right has branded everything and all things “health care reform” as poison. Reform may be damaged goods at this point; and if entertainers like that idiot Glen Beck could convince people that the House plan mandated euthanasia for the elderly, then they can convince them of just about anything. Until the bill is finally dead.

In the spring of 2009, nationwide polling in the United States indicated that approximately the same number of people identify themselves as Republicans as support a socialist economic system over capitalism: 20%. It is certainly a difficult time to identify oneself as a member of the Republican Party, while party leaders vocally oppose civil rights, support and defend torture and applaud violence and war – long after their own misguided justifications have faded. But something more significant is happening here in America – something that will not be undone anytime soon.

Certain areas of private life must be subject to the “intrusion” of government.  The roads are paved, licenses are issued, water is tested for toxins before it reaches families. Minimum safety requirements are placed on companies who make products like medicine, food, and automobiles. As a society we recognize that the companies that create the poisons cannot be relied on to determine what amount of poison can enter the water supply before it becomes a public danger.

In 2008 and into 2009, large banking institutions looked to the government  to take a step further, and insure economic stability by providing direct government support to banks, insurance companies and financial institutions; all of this in order to avoid what was widely believed would be a complete economic meltdown. Government assistance extended beyond these institutions to large corporations, which received direct subsidies from the United States Government.

In October 2008 Clinton Administration Secretary of Labor Robert Reich stated what many were thinking about the manner in which these billions of dollars in government funds were being allocated:

“We have socialism for the rich, and capitalism for everyone else.“

But as the large corporations apply for government aid to survive, the nation’s attitude towards so-called “socialism” has begun to change. Less than a generation ago, the idea of universal government healthcare was opposed by many who called it “socialized medicine.” They cited concerns about the quality of care, the availability of treatment options, and the costs of funding a first-payer government funded health care system. When this ideology – publicly funded by professional doctors organizations and large pharmaceutical companies – won, Americans suffered.

Now, every 30 seconds a person in America goes into bankruptcy due to their inability to pay heath care costs. In almost every European country as well as Canada, Japan, Cuba and Iraq – where health care is subsidized by the government – no one is ever forced to make a decision choosing between bankruptcy and lifesaving medical treatment. Here, medical problems are estimated to cause over 60% of all personal bankruptcies.

78% of those people had medical insurance at the start of their illness or medical issue. Even more surprising is that most of these people were living a middle-class lifestyle before their lives were changed by medical bills; over 60% were people that owned homes and had college educations.  Laissez-faire Reganomics and the selective politics of personal responsibility – for the struggling working and middle classes only with bailouts for the rich – have literally had a crushing effect.

The prospects of the next generation re-growing the middle class are dim.  People who are now in their twenties who bought into the myth of middle class prosperity by borrowing student loans from educational funding services, with high interest rates and impossible demands, face an unfavorable job market and with no health insurance and mountains of debt that their parents and grandparents can only imagine.

Young students who attempt college come away with student loans the size of home mortgages.  A whole generation of former students, saddled with a capitalist system of education, have come away owing the prior generations who created and endorsed the system – and will pat with years of salary from their early working lives.  The Republicans endorsed this system, actively looking the other way while the student loan industry was rife with corruption.  As early as 2001, the incoming Bush Administration was warned that lenders were trying to improperly influence college financial aid offices.

The American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers’ Barmak Nassirian put it this way:

“The day Bush was elected was the beginning of the gilded age for the loan industry.”

After years of the financial services industry donating heavily to the campaigns of Republican members of the House Committee on Education and Labor – including leading donor Sallie Mae – who donated a staggering but not surprising three-quarters of its campaign contributions to Republicans.  Ohio Republican Congressman John Boehner – who served as a chairman of the Committee on Education and Labor – has received over $170,000 in combined campaign contributions between direct donations and donations to his “leadership” PAC.  While buying a home can’t be a 10-year goal for young people who are already saddled with repayment of enormous loans, Boehner told a group of Sallie Mae executives a 2004 fundraiser to “Know that I have all of you in my two trusted hands.”

The net result is an entire generation that has only known war and debt, and is ready to accept the virtues of a government-provided health care system.  For every Meghan McCain living on a cloud, spouting rhetoric but never having to worry about money, responsibility or going without, there are thousands of young people who are well educated but who have nothing else – including the prospect of one day living without debt. For many, it will have been more profitable to be less educated and less burdened with high interest loans. Average Americans who are not heiresses now have a financial incentive to avoid being educated or educating their children. That’s the capitalist form of education.

They are living in another world, or living in denial. In the same Rasmussen Poll where 20% of those polled said that socialism was superior to capitalism, adults younger than 30 were essentially evenly divided between socialism and capitalism.

As of 2007, the economic inequality in Atlanta, New Orleans Washington and Miami is similar to that of Nairobi, Kenya and Ivory Coast. The “civil unrest alert line” is used by the United Nations to warn governments when economic inequality is likely to have a “destabilizing effect on societies.”

Republican policy, Reganomics, and Bush-Era Deregulation – which fought against government intervention, and for the financial industry, big business and the rich who got richer – has locked America’s children into debt. Not just the debt that the teabag-swinging screamers echo through the Republican party, but personal debt in a way that the wealthy among us will never understand; and which those who claim concern for the debt load on young people have completely and totally ignored.

Beyond the bankruptcies; beyond the alienated and ignored youth; in America, where over 10% of the population (more than 40 million people) have no medical insurance -  that 10% contains absurdly disproportionate numbers of minorities. That number also ignores the 12 million undocumented people within the U.S. who face real fear of deportation and open hostility should they seek care at a hospital. For uninsured people, every preventable illness or accidental injury represents a potential economic life sentence to poverty.

20% of African Americans and 30% of Hispanics in America have no health insurance. Both of these groups comprise the fastest growing demographics of the American population despite the fact that the life expectancy of African American people in the United States is roughly equal to the rates in much poorer countries where premium health care services are not available – places like China, and certain states in India.

American minority women have higher rates of diabetes, heart disease, AIDS and obesity, and in general are more likely to be in fair or poor health.

If Census Bureau projections are correct, by 2050 the number of Hispanics in the United States will double proportionally to the rest of the population.  Where Latinos comprise 15% of the population now, that number will grow to 30%. In two generations, as the population of Hispanics and other minorities, including African-Americans, grows, non-Hispanic whites will be a minority.

As these demographics change, an educated and hopelessly indebted class emerges. And widespread dissatisfaction with the quality and availability of medical care in the U.S. has already soured the country to arguments advanced by doctors and insurance companies that “socialized medicine” will not work.  This dissatisfaction is well founded when the United States’ ranking in areas like infant mortality is 29th in the world in 2008 – well below Japan, Sweden, Netherlands, France, and Canada where medical care is provided by the government.

It is clear that “for profit” medical treatment has not kept the country healthy.  Strong lobbying groups funded by doctors, insurance companies and multinational pharmaceutical corporations are less concerned with the overall health of the nation and patient care than they are with the health of profits. The very idea that insurance companies which exist because of capitalism are relied on to provide the basic human necessity of medical treatment for an entire country is untenable. Not only is it untenable, it is irresponsible. Medical care should not be subjected to a capitalist model, where the rich can afford the best care, and the poor rely on minimal emergency care or treatments which plunge them into debt and bankruptcy.

When 10% of the country has no medical insurance coverage, the emergency treatment centers bear the brunt of unpaid services. Hospitals around the country are closing, leaving fewer options for people in need of care; this weighs most heavily upon those neighborhoods of poor who receive their medical care solely from emergency rooms. The net result is an increase in unemployed and uninsured people who must rely on emergency rooms for all of treatment they receive.

From a pragmatic standpoint, it would seem that the best way to keep one’s massive wealth would be to protect it by sacrificing some wealth to promote widespread growth, economic equality and social stability rather than by hoarding wealth and promoting civil unrest.  While the UN understands that high levels of inequality lead to “negative social, economic and political consequences that have a destabilizing effect on societies,” they do not see this.

Even in difficult times they see growth through inequality, the consolidation of massive wealth, and the continued growth of massive corporate institutions.  The rich get richer, get education, get health care and get access to congressmen to have a say in how the government administers the social programs and regulations for everyone else.  They fight against raising the minimum wage, expanding the availability of healthcare and creating restrictions on the maximum rate that credit card companies can charge.  They believe they deserve this control because their hard work is more valuable than the hard work of everyone else.  It should not be surprising that their response to calls for “change” has been paternalistic vitriol damning any solution incorporating economic balance as “utopian delusions”.

The real delusion is held by a group of people who believe that, by clinging to “values” which are on the verge of extinction, they can revive the influence of failed and outdated ideas. The real delusion is believing that the public call for change represents a “shift,” rather than what it really is: social and political evolution.