The Cox Section: March 2008

The CoxSection takes advantage of travel days (like Tuesday) to read The New York Times on the plane, if only to comment on it the next day and have The CoxSection readers say, "Impressive, he reads 'The...Times' regularly."
This assay is predicated, of course on the assumption that "All the News That's Fit to Print" is not either the product of someone's imagination or a politically aimed arrow with the nation's heart and soul as its target. We have the likes of Jayson Blair and, more nafariously, Judith Miller to thank for that.
And then there's the guilt by association derived from the fraudulence of James Frey's "A Million Little Pieces," and now Margaret B. Jones' gangland memoir, "Love and Consequences." (Ironic note: Jones, whose real name is Seltzer, admitted her guilt in The New York Times. "...aaaaaaand Doctor.")
But should anyone be so surprised? It frequently seems that The...Times barely knows what is going in its own pages. Case in point: Tuesday's Times "A" section. Page A-23 featured a rejoinding editorial by Timothy Egan, titled "Lords of Higher Learning," in which the writer rails against colleges and universities that have massive endowments yet offer no break on tuition. "In just a single year, 2006," Egan says, "Harvard added more wealth than the combined total endowments of 188 schools at the bottom of the college money race." He goes on to say "let's not pick on the Ivies..." but his point is clear. And the reader might whole-heartedly agree with him. It's all there in black and white, after all.
Unless the reader flips back nine pages to read Jonathan D. Glater's story headlined, "Harvard Law Hoping Students Will Consider Public Service, Offers Tuition Break." The story also mentions "a sharp increase in financial aid to Harvard's undergraduates."
Again, I cannot disagree with Egan's assertion that in many cases, "tuition costs have tripled in the past 20 years." I would also agree that many schools with enormous capital should use that money to offer more students a better deal. I also believe The...Times' left hand ought to know what its right hand is writing. That way, the paper speaks with one voice -- or, if you prefer, many voices, but not from a split personality.

But that is not the central issue I want to discuss. This is.

Michael Moore's latest film, "Sicko" presents the dichotomy of the American health care system and those of other developed, Western countries (and one less-developed, but whose health care system seems to leave ours in a wheelchair with one wheel spinning). Among the issues the film covers is that of "over-medication;" keep a patient on so many medications, the theory goes, and the patient will become dependent upon the medications and never become healthy enough not to contribute dollars to the industry. One of the people featured in Moore's film is in this circumstance; she over-comes it, to the delight of the viewer. The film is essencially about other issues that comprise the American health care debacle, but this particular woman's case is of utility in understanding the cancer that afflicts the American economy, the American political system, and, indeed the American (or at least the Bush Administration's) approach to the "War on Terrorism."

There is a Western approach to medicine that is different from the Eastern approach. In the Eastern approach, the doctor and patient attack the fundamental cause of the ailment. Treatment for a sprained ankle might include a reorganization of one's morning schedule, as it was rushing out the door and running to catch the bus that resulted in not seeing the peach on the sidewalk, stepping on the peach and twisting the ankle. In the Western approach, the physician swiftly tapes up the ankle to hold it steady, and prescribes thousands of dollars worth of anti-inflammatories, pain-killers and physical therapy, and then waits exactly seven seconds for the next over-stressed, rushing cubicle-tennant to hobble in. The woman in the film was taking a variety of medications to treat a variety of symptoms, but nothing in her treatment sought to eliminate the root cause of her dis-ease. The lesson: we treat the symptoms; not the cause. And by all means, we maintain the status quo -- upon which our health care, economic, political and military axis spin.

The lessons from Moore's film are clear enough. Greed runs the game. Everything is privatized; only those who can afford health-care can try to get it in the face of a health-care industry doing everything in its power to take in more money while providing the least actual health care. Profits go up (and they are way, way up). The health of people does not (our healthfulness is ranked 66th in the world, just ahead of Slovenia). We must abandon this approach that ignores the root cause of illness and offers only treatment of symptoms, and withholds them at any cost at that. The American health care system is nothing short of national suicide.

This Western approach is also fully-employed in our economic system. Corporations rule the day. They are given the same rights as individuals, such as the right to free speech -- expressed in the backing of a political candidate, for example. So if you , a card-carying member of the "Apples Party," work for Workman's Widgets, and the CEO of Workman's Widgets, a card-carrying member of the "Oranges Party," decides to contribute hundreds of thousands of dollars to his or her favorite Orange candidate, it's his right. After all, Workman's Widgets has a right to express its approval of the Orange Party platform -- the same way you have the right to contribute whatever is left over from your pay -- after mortgage, property tax, health insurance, car payment, car insurance, gasoline, kid's tuition, utilities, DSL, cell phones, food and any miscellaneous costs like maybe seeing a movie or eating out once a month -- to the Apple Party candidate of your choice. Go for it, dude. There are currently more than 35,000 lobbyists working in Washington, D.C. putting policy notes in political ears. There is a word for a system in which corporations create national policy. Fascism. There is some talk about campaign finance reform, but I hear no one calling for the revocation of individual rights for corporations. We want to treat the symptoms (maybe) but ignore the cause of the problem.

To further illustrate the issue, take a look at the 2008 presidential campaign. There is scant coverage of the candidates' policies, positions and plans, but the media are gushing with gossip -- about who in who's camp said what about whom, about reactions to accusations, about the negative campaigning on the parts of the candidates themselves. We gather like moths to the light to witness the latest hokum, God forbid there be any actual substance. We have allowed our political process to become one of insubstantive blathery, rather than the process by which we continue the enormous task of nation-building, and carrying to fruition the vision of the founders of this country. By only treating our immediate need for sensationalist gratification at the expense of truly empowered participation in democracy, we treat the symptom, not the cause, in this case, the Great Cause of this Grand Experiment. We owe it to those who came before us and stood up to their oppressors to turn colonies into states to fight those would oppress us today. It is written on the walls of the National Archives that "Eternal Vigilance is the Cost of Freedom." True it is also that the electorate gets the government it deserves, so the American electorate must visit the candidates websites and read their policies, platforms and plans and vote accordingly, yes, but more: we the people must engage in the democratic process by joining up with other, like-minded people to voice our opinions and demand what we want from our government and ourselves. Google your interest and let your work begin!

Finally, the Western approach is at work in the war-room. In Tuesday's New York Times, reporters Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker describe "the new deterrance," the Bush administration's "what's old is new again" tactic in fighting "the terrorists" (like there's a standing army somewhere with camouflage jerseys with their names on the back and "Terrorists" on the front). Schmitt and Shanker outline the strategy, describing how the Bush administration wants to use "Cold War" tactics against Al Qaeda's on-line army, including pointing out every failure and flaw of the enemy's efforts, planting bogus e-mails and web-postings to create confusion and inhibit fund-rasing, and working with Middle Eastern moderates to diffuse the popularity of Al Qaeda leadership. The list even goes on, and it should, but what's glaringly absent is one single word about how the United States of America is examining itself and its actions and operations around the world with regard to blowback or sowing enmity. The patient who takes all the doctor's pills, but never examines his or her own behaviors outside of the doctor's office is a fool. So is the state that seeks only to alter the actions of others for the enrichment of its own, but lacking the wisdom or courage ever to examine, and change itself.

(Conservatives portend to detest the "if it feels good, do it" mentality of their "Hippy, liberal" counterparts, but it is too frequently the conservative who ignores the crumbling of society, the increase in poverty and crime, distracted by the self-destructive false-euphoria of the quarterly earnings increase. One needn't be Yoda, Mao or Einstein to know that paying too close attention to the short-term will cost one in the long-haul.)

The U.S. must look long and hard at our foreign policies, and must take the lead on moral issues and human issues, where no immediate, big-dollar profit may be apparent, but where others around the world may benefit from having known us. (Christ, doesn't anyone know anything about "building brand?!") We must guide our corporations -- not the other way around -- spread American Peace and Prosperity -- not Pax Americana -- around the world. This will require a dismantling of the grand-daddy of them all, the military-industrial complex. Easier said than done, but then, taking on the British with a rag-tag bunch of undisciplined farmers wern't no picnic neither. To find the way to do that, we must find the cause of its existence, and eliminate that. Simply diverting the manifold components of this -- and any other -- threat to the interests of the American people is merely treating the symptom.