Nowhere is this conflict more evident than in the working of our healthcare system. While attempting to “provide for the common good” with high-quality healthcare, it is also a major source of jobs and, for the privileged few, unimaginable wealth. But the system is dysfunctional and riddled with massive corruption and danger.
In the conflict between “We, the People” and the National Capitalists, the Capitalists have the upper hand with their control of the media. The media furthers their agenda. For example, whenever the concept of Single Payer healthcare financing is mentioned in the media, the coupled message is always presented, “It’s not politically possible.”
What does this mean: “…not politically possible?” It means that the National Capitalists will spare no expense to convince our politicians that their support or even mention of the concept of single payer is dangerous to their political futures. And the media will always dismiss any real discussion of the merits of Federally financed healthcare.
Carl Sandburg’s “The People, Yes” had an idealistic notion of the American experience. Sandburg’s vision of America was that the People would eventually choose leaders and a government that would work for them. Quoting Lincoln, once again, “A Government that would “…do for them what they cannot do for themselves.”
But there is a darker vision for America’s future. Martin Mayer, in They Thought They Were Free (The University of Chicago Press, 1955), notes that upon returning from a defeated Nazi Germany he thought, “What I was not seeing was German Man, but rather Man.” American Man is still Man and we are capable of behaving in ways no less base than the Germans under National Socialism.