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SEP 03, 2017

Diseases of Despair

DIG THIS
 Chris Hedges
Columnist

The opioid crisis, the frequent mass shootings, the rising rates of suicide, especially among
middle-aged white males, the morbid obesity, the obsession with gambling, the investment
of our emotional and intellectual life in tawdry spectacles and the allure of magical
thinking, from the absurd promises of the Christian right to the belief that reality is never
an impediment to our desires, are the pathologies of a diseased culture. They have risen
from a decayed world where opportunity, which confers status, self-esteem and dignity,
has dried up for most Americans. They are expressions of acute desperation and morbidity.

A loss of income causes more than financial distress. It severs, as the sociologist Émile
Durkheim pointed out, the vital social bonds that give us meaning. A decline in status and
power, an inability to advance, a lack of education and health care and a loss of hope are
crippling forms of humiliation. This humiliation fuels loneliness, frustration, anger and
feelings of worthlessness. In short, when you are marginalized and rejected by society, life
often has little meaning.

“When life is not worth living, everything becomes a pretext for ridding ourselves of it … ,”
Durkheim wrote. “There is a collective mood, as there is an individual mood, that inclines
nations to sadness. … For individuals are too closely involved in the life of society for it to
be sick without their being affected. Its suffering inevitably becomes theirs.”

White men, more easily seduced by the myth of the American dream than people of color
who understand how the capitalist system is rigged against them, often suffer feelings of
failure and betrayal, in many cases when they are in their middle years. They expect,
because of notions of white supremacy and capitalist platitudes about hard work leading to
advancement, to be ascendant. They believe in success. When the American dream
becomes a nightmare they are vulnerable to psychological collapse. This collapse, more
than any political agenda, propelled Donald Trump into power. Trump embodies the
decayed soul of America. He, like many of those who support him, has a childish yearning
to be as omnipotent as the gods. This impossibility, as the cultural anthropologist Ernest
Becker wrote, leads to a dark alternative: destroying like the gods.

In “Hitler and the Germans” the political philosopher Eric Voegelin dismissed the myth that
Hitler—an uneducated mediocrity whose only strength was an ability to exploit political
opportunities—mesmerized and seduced the German people. The Germans, he wrote,
voted for Hitler and the “grotesque, marginal figures” surrounding him because he
embodied the pathologies of a diseased society, one beset by economic collapse,
hopelessness and violence. This sickness found its expression in the Nazis, as it has found
its expression in the United States in Trump.

Hannah Arendt said the rise of radical evil is caused by collective “thoughtlessness.”
Desperate to escape from the prison of a failed society, willing to do anything and abuse
anyone to advance, those who feel trapped see the people around them as objects to be
exploited for self-advancement. This exploitation mirrors that carried out by corrupt
ruling elites. Turning people into objects to be used to achieve wealth, power or sexual
gratification is the core practice espoused by popular culture, from reality television to
casino capitalism. Trump personifies this practice.

Plato wrote that the moral character of a society is determined by its members. When the
society abandons the common good it unleashes amoral lusts—violence, greed and sexual
exploitation—and fosters magical thinking. The Greek philosopher Heraclitus called those
who severed themselves from the moral and reality-based universe idiotes. When these
idiotes, whose worldview is often the product of relentless indoctrination, form a majority
or a powerful minority, the demagogue rises from the morass.

The demagogue is the public face of collective stupidity. Voegelin defined stupidity as a
“loss of reality.” This loss of reality meant people could not “rightly orient his [or her] action
in the world, in which he [or she] lives.” The demagogue, who is always an idiote, is not a
freak or a social mutation. The demagogue expresses the society’s demented zeitgeist. This
was true in Nazi Germany. It is true in the United States.

“The fool in Hebrew, the nabal, who because of his folly, nebala, creates disorder in the
society, is the man who is not a believer, in the Israelite terms of revelation,” Voegelin
wrote. “The amathes, the irrationally ignorant man, is for Plato the man who just does not
have the authority of reason or who cannot bow to it. The stultus for Thomas [Aquinas] is
the fool, in the same sense as the amathia of Plato and the nebala of the Israelite prophets.
This stultus now has suffered loss of reality and acts on the basis of a defective image of
reality and thereby creates disorder. … If I have lost certain sectors of reality from my
range of experience, I will also be lacking the language for appropriately characterizing
them. That means that parallel to the loss of reality and to stupidity there is always the
phenomenon of illiteracy.”

A society convulsed by disorder and chaos, as Voegelin pointed out, elevates and even
celebrates the morally degenerate, those who are cunning, manipulative, deceitful and
violent. In an open society these attributes are despised and criminalized. Those who
exhibit them are condemned as stupid—“a man [or woman] who behaves in this way,”
Voegelin notes, “will be socially boycotted.” But the social, cultural and moral norms in a
diseased society are inverted. The attributes that sustain an open society—a concern for
the common good, honesty, trust and self-sacrifice—are detrimental to existence in a
diseased society. Today, those who exhibit these attributes are targeted and silenced.

The deep alienation experienced by most Americans, the loss of self-esteem and hope, has
engendered what Durkheim referred to as a collective state of anomie. Anomie is a
psychological imbalance that leads to prolonged despair, lethargy and yearnings for self-
annihilation. It is caused by a collapse of societal norms, ideals, values and standards. It is,
in short, a loss of faith in the structures and beliefs that define a functioning democracy.
The result is an obliteration of purpose and direction. It leads to what Friedrich Nietzsche
called an aggressive despiritualized nihilism. As Durkheim wrote in his book “On Suicide”:

“
It is sometimes said that, by virtue of his psychological make-up, man cannot live
unless he attaches himself to an object that is greater than himself and outlives him,
and this necessity has been attributed to a supposedly common need not to perish
entirely. Life, they say, is only tolerable if one can see some purpose in it, if it has a
goal and one that is worth pursuing. But the individual in himself is not sufficient as
an end for himself. He is too small a thing. Not only is he confined in space, he is also
narrowly limited in time. So when we have no other objective than ourselves, we
cannot escape from the feeling our efforts are finally destined to vanish into
nothing, since that is where we must return. But we recoil from the idea of
annihilation. In such a state, we should not have the strength to live, that is to say to
act and struggle, since nothing is to remain of all the trouble that we take. In a word,
the state of egoism is in contradiction with human nature and hence too precarious
to endure.
Pope John Paul II in 1981 issued an encyclical titled “Laborem exercens,” or “Through Work.”
He attacked the idea, fundamental to capitalism, that work was merely an exchange of
money for labor. Work, he wrote, should not be reduced to the commodification of human
beings through wages. Workers were not impersonal instruments to be manipulated like
inanimate objects to increase profit. Work was essential to human dignity and self-
fulfillment. It gave us a sense of empowerment and identity. It allowed us to build a
relationship with society in which we could feel we contributed to social harmony and
social cohesion, a relationship in which we had purpose.

The pope castigated unemployment, underemployment, inadequate wages, automation

and a lack of job security as violations of human dignity. These conditions, he wrote, were
forces that negated self-esteem, personal satisfaction, responsibility and creativity. The
exaltation of the machine, he warned, reduced human beings to the status of slaves. He
called for full employment, a minimum wage large enough to support a family, the right of
a parent to stay home with children, and jobs and a living wage for the disabled. He
advocated, in order to sustain strong families, universal health insurance, pensions,
accident insurance and work schedules that permitted free time and vacations. He wrote
that all workers should have the right to form unions with the ability to strike.

The encyclical said:

“
[In spite of toil]—perhaps, in a sense, because of it—work is a good thing for man.
Even though it bears the mark of a bonum arduum, in the terminology of Saint
Thomas, this does not take away the fact that, as such, it is a good thing for man. It
is not only good in the sense that it is useful or something to enjoy; it is also good as
being something worthy, that is to say, something that corresponds to man’s dignity,
that expresses this dignity and increases it. If one wishes to define more clearly the
ethical meaning of work, it is this truth that one must particularly keep in mind.
Work is a good thing for man—a good thing for his humanity—because through work
man not only transforms nature, adapting it to his own needs, but he also achieves
fulfillment as a human being and indeed, in a sense, becomes “more a human being.”

Work, the pope pointed out, “constitutes a foundation for the formation of family life,
 which is a natural right and something that man is called to. These two spheres of values—
one linked to work and the other consequent on the family nature of human life—must be
properly united and must properly permeate each other. In a way, work is a condition for
making it possible to found a family, since the family requires the means of subsistence
which man normally gains through work. Work and industriousness also influence the
whole process of education in the family, for the very reason that everyone ‘becomes a
human being’ through, among other things, work, and becoming a human being is precisely
the main purpose of the whole process of education. Obviously, two aspects of work in a
sense come into play here: the one making family life and its upkeep possible, and the
other making possible the achievement of the purposes of the family, especially education.
Nevertheless, these two aspects of work are linked to one another and are mutually
complementary in various points.”

“It must be remembered and affirmed that the family constitutes one of the most
important terms of reference for shaping the social and ethical order of human work,” the
encyclical continued. “The teaching of the Church has always devoted special attention to
this question, and in the present document we shall have to return to it. In fact, the family
is simultaneously a community made possible by work and the first school of work, within
the home, for every person.”

We will not bring those who have fled a reality-based world back into our fold through
argument. We will not coerce them into submission. We will not find salvation for them or
ourselves by supporting the Democratic Party. Whole segments of American society are
bent on self-immolation. They despise this world and what it has done to them. Their
personal and political behavior is willfully suicidal. They seek to destroy, even if destruction
leads to death. We must organize our communities to create a new socialist order and
overthrow the corporate state through sustained acts of mass civil disobedience. We must
achieve full employment, guaranteed minimum incomes, health insurance, free education
at all levels, robust protection of the natural world and an end to militarism and
imperialism. We must create the possibility for a life of dignity, purpose and self-esteem. If
we do not, the idiotes will ensure our obliteration.

IN THIS ARTICLE:
#chris hedges #economy #employment #encyclical #extremism #health care #jobs
#Laborem exercens #politics #pope #president #society #wages #work

SEP 03, 2017

Frustration Mounts Over Health Care Premiums

 Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar / AP

WASHINGTON — Millions of people who buy individual health insurance policies and get
no financial help from the Affordable Care Act are bracing for another year of double-digit
premium increases, and their frustration is boiling over.

Some are expecting premiums for 2018 to rival a mortgage payment.

What they pay is tied to the price of coverage on the health insurance markets created by
the Obama-era law, but these consumers get no protection from the law’s tax credits,
which cushion against rising premiums. Instead they pay full freight and bear the brunt of
market problems such as high costs and diminished competition.

On Capitol Hill, there’s a chance that upcoming bipartisan hearings by Sens. Lamar
Alexander, R-Tenn., and Patty Murray, D-Wash., can produce legislation offering some
relief. But it depends on Republicans and Democrats working together despite a seven-
year health care battle that has left raw feelings on both sides.

The most exposed consumers tend to be middle-class people who don’t qualify for the
law’s income-based subsidies. They include early retirees, skilled tradespeople, musicians,
self-employed professionals, business owners, and people such as Sharon Thornton, whose
small employer doesn’t provide health insurance.

“We’re caught in the middle-class loophole of no help,” said Thornton, a hairdresser from
Newark, Delaware. She said she’s currently paying about $740 a month in premiums, and
expects her monthly bill next year to be around $1,000, a 35 percent increase.

“It’s like buying two new iPads a month and throwing them in the trash,” said Thornton,
whose policy carries a deductible of $6,000. “To me, $1,000 a month is my beach house
that I wanted to have.”

A suggestion that she could qualify for financial assistance by earning less only irritates her
more. “My whole beef is that the government is telling me: ’If you work less, we’ll give you
more,’” said Thornton, who’s in her 50s.

If people such as Thornton drop out, they not only gamble with their own health. Their
departure also means the group left behind gets costlier to cover as healthier customers
bail out. That’s counter to the whole idea of insurance, which involves pooling risk.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way.

Buying health insurance has always been a challenge for people getting their own policies
outside the workplace. Before “Obamacare,” insurers could turn away those with health
problems or charge them more. Former President Barack Obama sold his plan as the long-
awaited fix.

It would guarantee coverage regardless of health problems, provide tax credits and other
subsidies for people of modest means, and generate competition among insurers to keep
premiums in check for all. The overhaul sought to create one big insurance pool for
individual coverage in each state, no matter whether consumers bought plans through
HealthCare.gov or traditional middlemen such as insurance brokers.

But an influx of sicker-than-expected customers drove up costs for insurers, while many
younger, healthier people stayed on the sidelines. Political opposition from Republicans
complicated matters by gumming up the law’s internal financial stabilizers for insurers.

The result was a 25 percent average increase in the price of a midlevel plan on
HealthCare.gov heading into this year. Many states expect a similar scenario for 2018, but
this time insurers say uncertainty about the Trump administration’s intentions is driving
up their bids ahead of the Nov. 1 start of open enrollment.

About 17.6 million people buy individual health insurance policies, and half of them get no
subsidies under the law, according to estimates by the nonpartisan Kaiser Family
Foundation. The number of unsubsidized customers with ACA plans outside the health
insurance marketplaces dropped by 20 percent this year, after the big premium increases.

“The unsubsidized part of the market outside the exchanges has shrunk noticeably as
premiums have increased,” said Kaiser’s Larry Levitt. “It’s likely that the people dropping
out of the market are healthier overall. So the pool has potentially deteriorated.”

It’s time to shift focus in the health care debate, said Sen. Alexander, chairman of the
Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, which plans hearings beginning
this coming week.

“The people who are really getting hammered — they are the ones we need to help,” said
Alexander, R-Tenn. “We’ve got a few weeks to come to consensus in this seven-year-old
partisan stalemate and if we don’t break it, some people will be priced out and badly hurt.”

Alexander envisions limited legislation that guarantees disputed subsidies for copayments
and deductibles another year, while giving states more leeway to design less-costly plans.
Democrats are looking for financing to help insurers with high-cost cases. Experts say that
guaranteeing the subsidies should lead to an immediate cut in premiums in many states.
 Thornton, the Delaware hairdresser, said she doesn’t know what to believe anymore. She
said she voted for Donald Trump---her first time for a Republican---partly out of
frustration with her health care costs.

“I’m ready to stomp on the White House lawn,” she said. “I am fuming.”

IN THIS ARTICLE:
#health insurance #healthcare #premiums
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