Pre-Existing Conditions

As pathological as it is, the current Trump administration is not operating in a vacuum. Its policies on war, institutional racism, and robbing the poor to reward the rich are part of the grand old capitalistic traditions of slavery, neocolonialism, neoconservatism and neoliberalism.

As I've written many times before, Trump and his cronies are just more upfront about braying out the hatred that the ruling class harbors against the rest of us. They take bad pre-existing things and they make them much, more worse.

Take their latest stunt of ripping immigrant children away from their parents at the border and incarcerating them in an abandoned South Texas Walmart warehouse. Since this facility is already overcrowded to bursting thanks to Attorney General Jeff Sessions's unilateral decision that domestic and gang violence are no longer grounds for getting refugee status, the Trumpies are busily planning tent cities to house the children as they await their unilateral deportation orders from overworked immigration rubber-stampers judges.

Don't get me wrong. It's great that liberals and even conservatives from both corporate parties are raising a ruckus about this cruelty. But where were they a couple of years ago when the Obama administration threatened to seize the children incarcerated at the Berks (Pennsylvania) Family Detention Center because their mothers were staging a hunger strike to protest the abysmal living conditions and the lack of due process? Either the women ate or they would lose their kids. So they chose to eat. Thus was the last ounce of personal agency they possessed to fight the system taken away from them. The system crushed them.

The White House press corps certainly did not appeal to Obama flack Josh Earnest's parental status to express their outrage over that particular atrocity.  Then again, Earnest didn't pull a grotesque Sarah Sanders and fall back on the Bible to explain how any cruelty can be legalized. (see: torture, capital punishment, forced feeding and solitary confinement.)

Now, to be fair, it's not that the public or the press never cared about the plight of "illegal" immigrants in this country. As recently as Memorial Day 2014, the residents of Murrieta, California turned out en mass to protest the housing of refugees in a warehouse. But there was a catch: they weren't angry because the newcomers were about to be locked up in a pre-deportation "processing center". The townsfolk were mad because they didn't want the immigrants in their town, period. They forced the Homeland Security buses filled with refugees to turn back at the town line.

Plus, in that particular well-publicized incident, the ensuing national liberal backlash was aimed not so much at Obama's cruel immigration policies, but against the conservative residents of Murrieta -- who, Trump-like, distastefully wore their xenophobia right on their sleeves.

To their credit, the corporate media are now in the forefront of protesting the Trump version of cruelty toward immigrants and refugees. The New York Times published a righteous editorial instructing readers how to "fight back" -- by calling their congress critters and joining protest marches and writing a check. Oh, and by the way, be sure to vote in those righteous Democrats in November. Because unlike the Republicans, they suddenly care so very, very deeply about refugees and immigrants. 

Meanwhile, the editorial offered absolutely no exploration of the root causes of this exodus from Central America: the poverty engendered by NAFTA; the predatory loans from Wall Street banks and the IMF to corrupt governments, often installed after CIA coups against democratic ones; the DEA-ATF-assisted drug and gang wars.

Still, the coverage is a refreshing departure from a 2012 puff piece about Obama's public relations initiative to make jails for migrants charged with minor civil offenses, like traffic tickets, resemble Holiday Inn Expresses. It was a gesture of his punitive good will. Immigration officials gave the media a guided tour of a prototypical complex in South Texas:

 Detainees will be free to move through much of the center 24 hours a day. Unarmed staff members, dressed in blue polo shirts and khaki trousers, are known as “resident advisers,” not guards....

 The 608-bed center, in Karnes County, Tex., will house male detainees who present minimal safety concerns or flight risk, officials said. The first detainees are expected to arrive in about three weeks.

Spread across 29 acres, the center is designed according to the Obama administration’s new mandates calling for greater unescorted movement and recreational opportunities in a less penal setting.

The gentler approach is immediately evident in the center’s modernist facade, which is painted in bright primary colors — a far cry from the dreary bunkerlike structures that have characterized the system.

This article is a prime example of how even a cruel policy can be effectively masked with just the right amount of pretty liberal window-dressing and sugar-coating. It also helps the cause of making punishment look benign when Republicans then turn around and complain that immigrants imprisoned for jaywalking or speeding are just getting it too good. “The administration goes beyond common sense to accommodate illegal immigrants and treats them better than citizens in federal custody,” Sen. Lamar Alexander fumed at the time.

***

Speaking of pre-existing conditions, Republicans are again making the Affordable Care Act look better than it is by threatening to remove the requirement that private insurers give coverage to chronically sick paying customers as well as healthy subscribers.

It's another made-to-order campaign talking point for corporate Democrats desperately seeking midterm votes. So naturally, neoliberal Times pundit Paul Krugman is happy to carry their outraged water for them. He fumes: 

What may seem puzzling about all this is the cruelty. O.K., Donald Trump is obviously a man utterly lacking in empathy. But don’t other Republicans feel a bit bad about the prospect of taking health care away from millions of Americans who have done nothing wrong besides having past medical problems?

Actually, no. Consider Rick Scott, the governor of Florida (and current Senate candidate), whose attorney general has joined the lawsuit to eliminate protection for pre-existing conditions. While refusing to say whether he supports the suit, Scott declared, “We’ve got to reward people for caring for themselves.” Right, because if you get cancer, or arthritis, or multiple sclerosis — all among the pre-existing conditions for which people used to be denied coverage — it must be your own fault.

It's all according to how the cruelty is marketed. Republicans sell it to their base in the form of resentment against both internal interlopers and enemies at the gate, while Democrats market it as the lesser evil. Things are of necessity unpleasant now, but be patient and all will miraculously morph into the Greater Good at some fuzzy unspecified time but certainly not right this very minute. At least 30 million Americans will have to remain grossly underinsured or completely uninsured, while nearly half the population who literally can't afford to live should write a check to candidates and tide themselves over by hating Russia.

 To expect timely change or relief is to be unhealthily fixated on puppies and unicorns. So give Dems your vote!

But unhealthy obsessive ingrate that I am, I published this response to Krugman:  

The trouble with the GOP opposition to the inaptly named "Affordable" Care Act is that they're opposing a plan originally devised by the conservative Heritage Foundation. In order to distance themselves from anything with the word "Obama" in it, therefore, they have to distance themselves from themselves and move ever farther to the right.

It's the Democratic Party that is now the party of the center-right. The wealthy donors funding it wouldn't have it any other way. With more than half of the US population now favoring single payer health care, what does the DCCC do? They direct midterm candidates to refrain from using the term "single payer" in their campaign ads. They are instead tiptoeing around bait-and-switches, like Medicare buy-ins for a chosen lucky few, or a public "option" - just more opportunity for the GOP to punish the sickest and for private insurers to rake it in.

With friends like the predatory insurance cartel, who needs the GOP? Maybe that's why Nancy "Pay-Go" Pelosi posed with a Blue Cross executive this week, tweeting out: "We're fighting for you!"

Yes, the GOP is every Dickens villain rolled into one. But cathartic as it may feel to rail against the Blob from hell, doing so absent a new New Deal will not win liberals many majorities. I'm even starting to wonder if the corporate Dems are having too much fun being virtue-signaling neoliberal #Resistance fighters to care.

So I'll say it loud, say it proud, say it often: Single Payer Or Bust.