I would like to ask the reader a question: What are the biggest problems our society faces today?
Worldwide, the ones that come to mind for me are: Environmental collapse(universal destruction of land, air and water), Economic repression(unemployment, poverty, starvation and homelessness), and Political tyranny(wars over resources, suppression of independent views in mass media, incarceration of nonviolent members of society). These are HUGE, and I'd like to give my thoughts on them in a later blog. For now I'll stick to the country I'm stuck in.
Specific to America, we have the very unique situation of having the most atrocious health that grossly misappropriated tax money can buy. Obesity in this country is out of control, largely due to tax money being used to subsidize Monsanto's genetically modified corn and soy (I've heard parts of Europe have banned GM crops, indicating again that USA is "number one" in ignoring what the hell is going on), making it the only type of food affordable for them asses. Obesity kills in the same neighborhood as tobacco and nothing useful is getting done about either of these extremely preventable causes. Diabetes numbers are rising from poor diet. Cancer, heart disease... poor diet.
Alzheimer's is on the rise: "From 2000-2006, Alzheimer's disease deaths increased 46.1 percent, while other selected causes of death decreased."(from http://www.alz.org/alzheimers_disease_facts_figures.asp) which causes me to recall the book International Meat Crisis(link to full PDF) where I first read "there is clear evidence that many people, dying in America and elsewhere from Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, are being misdiagnosed as the victims of Alzheimer’s"... I'm going to re-paste this point in hopes it will cause someone to get it who otherwise may have skimmed past:
"there is clear evidence that many people, dying in America and elsewhere from Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, are being misdiagnosed as the victims of Alzheimer’s" and then..."From 2000-2006, Alzheimer's disease deaths increased 46.1 percent" ...You just think about that.
Your tax money also subsidizes the meat industry whose practices(of feeding cows blended with GM corn to other cows)are directly responsible for CJD(or "Mad-Cow"disease). Your tax money also subsidizes bovine growth hormone(BGH, another Monsanto concoction banned in Europe) that causes blood, puss and antibiotics to enter the milk supply, and has been linked to cancer (http://www.ejnet.org/bgh/nogood.html). Every time you punch the clock at your job, a percentage of your money is being deducted for the sake of poisoning you, and charging you further for it at the register later on and recycling the sales tax into the same mess.
Air pollution is a big concern for densely populated areas. I realize how this must sound to many people, but the fact is this is very much because of the clear corporate conspiracy to buy up and shut down many efficient forms of public transportation. There wouldn't be millions of cars sucking up oil and choking us to death if automotive companies were footing the bill for all our paved roads.
We STILL have the only exclusively for-profit insurance system I've heard of, which to me indicates that the policy makers have been convinced the term "preventative care" means preventing people from receiving care. If our government were acting in favor of public interest, we would have something loosely resembling these countries.(The focus of the article in that link is more on the healthy choices people in those countries make, but don't forget the point is that they are choices not promoted or readily affordable in most of the US... Who's eating range-fed steaks here? Who can afford fish that isn't heavily processed and mercury-dense on a daily basis? Has the US government ever once attempted to make public fitness centers?)
I'm going to shift gears and talk about something that people nationally spend BILLIONS of dollars on annually and is completely untaxed. The widely used term is "marijuana", but more accurately it's called cannabis, have you heard of it? This is a plant which kills 100% less people than those who choose its legal counterpart: tobacco. This plant also kills 100% less people than its medical counterpart: prescription drugs. Cannabis can be used therapeutically to treat... pretty much anything painful or consistently bothersome(barring perhaps right-wing conservatives... or state-supporting liberals, ZING!). I've even heard accounts from individuals with multiple sclerosis and epilepsy who claim it eliminates seizures, but others claim it triggers them(for what my opinion is worth: I would wager the ones who claim it's a trigger would have experienced that, not because of pot, but because the added paranoia of getting caught... which is fallaciously attributed to cannabis, but is only caused by the moronic laws against it). The side effects of cannabis vary, but generally range from hunger and sleepiness to the more dangerous spectrum of critical thinking and nonrecognition of tyrannical authority(which seems to come from some misguided idea that people are equal to one another... anyone who ever claims to believe that is probably high. Report all such encounters to King George, I mean... the Dept. of Homeland Security. My bad.) The danger of these side effects is that if they were to spread too wide we would have a shared, sustainable planet inhabited by contented loafers with no one in charge to tell them what they want every waking second.
*deep breath* Sigh...
Okay, somewhere in that little rant I mentioned prescription drugs. Prescription Drugs Kill 300 Percent More Americans Than Illegal Drugs. It is pure idiocy to think that prohibiting anything will make it less of a danger. Look how long alcohol was prohibited. 1920-1933, thirteen years for our great-grandparents to figure out it was better to let people have their vice than to fight it and deal with rising murder and robbery. Instead we find ourselves in the midst of Reagan's "war on drugs" which has made USA the number 1 country as far as number of people jailed. Has anyone noticed that people on average have been getting progressively more insane? And I'm not talking like in a fun, mostly reasonable way like I consider myself to be... I mean like VIOLENT. Well here's an idea... MAYBE if we let go of everyone in jail for nonviolent offenses we wouldn't have so many broken homes and incapable parents... maybe if we stopped paying cops to try busting innocent people they could actually focus on serving and protecting.
...I can't do this anymore right now. Later people.
