How Sick is Sicko?

Sicko may have its detractors, but their rhetoric seems to be rolling out on retreads. The mindless rightwing rants grow wearisome. Michael Moore and his plans for a health care revolution can only be labeled "socialist" so many times. The rhetoric gets worse as Satan and Bill Clinton are offered as the real brains behind the movie. But a coherent, powerful counterattack on Sicko is not to be seen. Could it be the oligarchy has no worries because they have no cause to worry.

Regardless, the forecast is grim. They are confident that the legislative branch of the U.S. government has been rendered dysfunctional.[6] The judicial branch (that gang of five plus four) has been bought and paid for.[7] And, lest we forget, though the oligarchy won't, it must be mentioned that the death-grid for activism is still firmly in place and growing stronger. I'm referring to over 120 years of corporate-state settled law that resounds with the prerogatives of a profit motive in health care. It cannot be pushed back without fundamental constitutional changes.[8] There is no chance that any serious movement toward socialized medicine could happen in the next ten years. For the remainder of this presidential term and the coming two full terms, the executives and the legislators, whomever they may be, can annihilate each other over the health care issue, or not. Corruption is so deep in the U.S. and health care is at the heart of it. No capitalist, not even one with heavy investments in the health care industries, has a thing to worry about.

With Sicko Michael Moore lays down a well-reasoned case for changing health care. But he naively places it at the doorstep of UNreason. Reason, especially when rooted in human decency, has no currency in the corridors of global corporate power. No significant change can happen. Not in the U.S. Not now. And the oligarchy knows it.

In closing, that question raised at the start can be considered: How sick is Sicko?. Perfectly. It can be seen as the product of dark cultural engineering -- an effort designed to fail. A defense for this madcap statement can only be sketched here. How do you make a movement fail? You begin by erecting a hero who is especially vulnerable to ad hominem attacks, then you associate her or him with that movement. Then you put the corporate media to work directing yet another American hero cycles where the hero is raised up high only to come crashing down. You make sure that the movement is fueled from the start with raw emotion (Sicko excels at this) so that the proper ground work is never tended to before rushing toward the prize. You place the prize high and far away. Eyes on the prize, those in the movement don't take the terrain at their feet seriously.

The game is fixed. The playing field is tilted, with the oligarchy holding the high ground. This is not metaphoric. The tilt to the playing field is in more than a century of settle law, it's in a corrupt congress, it's in a duplicitous executive. With high aspirations fueled by high emotions the movement goes running up hill toward the prize not noticing the terrain underfoot. Anarchists can tell us what happens when you rush off in such inorganic, rational ways. You will trip. You will end up face down in shit.[9]

That is one posture in which liberals and progressive can learn, maybe. What they need to do is peel back several layers of denial and acknowledge the central role of organized neocrime. That is the first required step in formulating the beginning of a viable revolution in health care. But it is the zone where leftwing gate keepers like Michael Moore do not tread.

[0] It can be argued, for example, that this essay does not acknowledge that Sicko is more an indictment of the insurance industry than medicine. There is merit to this line of reasoning, but it falls outside the bounds of this particular effort.

[1] Fox News, Sunday, May 20, 2007
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,273875,00.html

[2] Rotten Tomatoes, Sicko (2007), movie review by Brandon Judell, New York Theatre Wire, June 27, 2007
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/click/author-1033/reviews.php?rid=1643083

[3] Socialist Worker, Who’s killing health care in America?, June 22, 2007
http://www.socialistworker.org/2007-2/636/636_04_Killing.shtml
Will Sicko spark a movement? http://www.socialistworker.org/2007-2/637/637_04_Movement.shtml

[4] Not a hoax, and remarkably grotesque.
YouTube, snake eats a hippo
http://youtube.com/watch?v=SJCM-sdfB0w

[5] By my reckoning, total health care spending is considerably more than twice the 0.6 trillion the U.S. hemorrhages for military spending annually. (expert advise on this point is welcome.)

[6] Look no further than Congress. Impeachment is off the table. Rhetoric says "end the war" while policy says "fund it."

[7] The twenty-year freak show of right wing extremist judges has just begun.
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/06/29/1419252

[8] "Over 120 years" comes by counting from 1886 (Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company) when corporations (juristic persons) were given protection under the Fourteenth Amendment. For more on corporate-state law see
Is "Rights-Based" Organizing a Future Strategy for Environmental Activism? and The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF)

[9] The last line is a reference to a band the anarchist group CrimethInc likes. (Dis)Orgs like CrimethInc might possibly help convince the ossified Left that an assault on tyrannical power cannot be made on the basis of reason alone and certainly cannot be done with conventional dignity.

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