There’s no nice way to say it these days: America is pretty fucked the fuck up right now and it’s EVERYONE’s fault.
That’s right, you heard me. I said it.
Stop trying to put absolutely ALL the blame on Barack Obama or ALL the blame on George W. Bush or Reagan or Clinton or WHOEVER suits your preferred political narrative (although both the Bush presidents did fuck up pretty spectacularly, I must admit). Anyway, though, we’re the ones who voted for these people, aren’t we? We could have easily voted in a third party candidate who may have actually given a crap about us, but noooooo we were all too lazy and voted for one of the two highly visible guys that we hated the least and who was “most likely to win.” Correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t WE decide who is most likely to win? Isn’t that how this whole shebang-a-bang works? Why do we sit back and let money and television dictate who we choose to lead us?
We are in the midst of what Benjamin R. Barber eloquently calls “civic schizophrenia.”
This term simply means that we are torn between our responsibilities as citizens in a community and our desires as individuals and consumers.
You can think of it as being similar to the conflict of the id and the superego, if you are familiar with those basic psychological terms. The id is the part of the inner self that screams “I want! I want!” with no regards for reason or the good of others while the superego shushes the childish id, imposes morals, and tells it what it SHOULD want.
In America, obviously, we are all about feeding our ids. We are all obsessed with food, sex, material goods, and with our own personal experiences and happiness. While all of this inward focus does make for some interesting and proud individuals, it also provides a perfect atmosphere for raging narcissism and pigheadedness.
This brings me to the problem we face today.
No one can seem to agree on how to fix our economy or the hot mess that can only laughably be called a health care system.
Well, even though no one important will listen to me, I have a solution. Not everyone will agree with it, obviously, but you can’t please everyone and I believe that it is dangerous to try to do so. After all, how can you even trust someone who pretends that everyone has a good point and refuses to take a stand for his or her beliefs? Not to mention, it is futile to try to please America as a whole, because Americans these days will seemingly end friendships and verbally abuse each other over such inane questions as “boxers vs. briefs?” or “Does Miley Cyrus have weird gums?”
(By the way: yes, yes she does. But I digress…)
After doing a bit of research which included reading numerous BBC News stories (both positive and negative) about the NHS, watching a PBS documentary called Sick Around the World (a very objective look at the health care systems of several other countries including Germany, Japan, and Great Britain), watching the decidedly less-objective (but much more exciting) Michael Moore documentary Sicko, reading blog after blog after blog written by real people in real countries with real universal health care, AND talking at length and in person to several friends who have lived abroad or in America’s Hat (aka Canada), I have come to a conclusion….
America needs universal health care. Period.
To most, my conclusion may seem painfully obvious and simplistic, but there are so many people who are adamantly against such a concept in this country.
Not all Americans consider health care to be a human right and many who do still do not want to pay for the health care of others with what they see as inevitable higher taxes or an even more staggering deficit. Americans, in general, have a cultural aversion to what they consider to be “freeloaders.” However, if you look closer at the way things have been working, you will see that a society of sick and uninsured people obviously creates much greater financial strain than does paying for much simpler, cheaper preventative care. Sick people who do not have insurance frequently wait until they are forced to go to an emergency room to seek treatment for an illness. If these same people could afford to go to the doctor when they first notice a condition that they cannot treat at home, then they would save themselves and us a LOT more money.
In my ideal scenario, the American government would not only set up its own federally-funded health insurance (i.e: a REAL public option), but it would also set up its own hospitals, similar to the hospitals on military bases. This may sound a bit Orwellian or daunting to some, but I have grown up going to military hospitals and honestly I prefer them greatly to civilian hospitals. The care is quick, efficient, and since the government is footing the bill, it is in their best interest to keep you well and out of their hospitals.
Now, for most people, this is frightening. They see it as too much government control and oversight. However, in my opinion, this the best way to solve two big problems that we face right now. It would not only give health insurance to the poor and lower middle class thus keeping them from going to emergency rooms and subsequently going bankrupt. It would also create a multitude of jobs for doctors, nurses, and various medical technicians. Not to mention, there would be big and juicy construction contracts to build the hospitals. In order to staff these government hospitals, scholarships could be awarded to medical students who agree to work in these hospitals during their residency and when they become actual doctors. It would be an automatic boost to the economy and would undoubtedly take a large chunk out of the unemployment rate.
Now some of you may be screaming incoherently and throwing tea bags at your computer screen at this point or just thinking to yourself: “That sounds utterly utopian in theory, but just who is going to pay for all of that construction and all those salaries and all that expensive medical treatment, hmmm, little missy?”
Well, I have a plan for that, too. Ha! Weren’t expecting that, now were you? Unfortunately, it is a plan that probably no one will ever consider, despite the fact that it would bring in huge revenues and would eliminate a lot of the problem of overcrowded prisons.
My plan is nothing new. It is something that has been touted for years as a solution to America’s debt: the legalization and taxation of marijuana.
Oh, I know, I know.
This is the point where eyes will roll and a lot of people will brush me off as “just another stoner looking to get high without punishment”, but I assure you that is most certainly not the case.
I am supporting the legalization movement solely for the money that our country could gain with such a small, simple act. Did you know that marijuana is one of America’s biggest cash crops, second only to the very legal crop known as strawberries? Can you imagine what we could do with ALL of that money if it went towards some sort of beneficial social program like, oh say….universal health care?
Those who argue for various reasons against the legalization of marijuana often cite outdated, often completely fictional “studies” of the drug from the first half of the 20th century, which were used to prohibit marijuana during this time. It has since been discovered that the outrageous claims made by these “champions” of the anti-marijuana movement were fabricated for pure political reasons and these guys were getting a nice little chunk of change for their work.
Hemp, a by-product of marijuana, stood to replace many of the uses of timber as it was cheaper and easier to produce. Obviously, the timber industries were not happy about this. However, this brings about another one of the many benefits of marijuana legalization, though. No pun intended here, but it would really help the “go green” initiative. If we could replace some of our timber usage with hemp products, it would greatly reduce our need to cut down trees and thus reduce our carbon footprint. Hemp is a highly renewable resource and I feel that it would not be all that much of a stretch for the timber companies to become hemp companies. For workers used to cutting down enormous trees, I’m sure that harvesting hemp would be like a walk in the park or a piece of cake or some other cliche in that genre.
As for the medical side of things, it has also been proven time and time again that marijuana is significantly less harmful than alcohol, both in levels of impairment and long-term health effects. Not to mention, it is not a physically addictive substance and it is physically impossible to overdose on THC (the active chemical in marijuana) since a person would literally have to smoke hundreds of pounds in a span of about fifteen minutes in order for this to happen.
Another argument people often seem to use is that it would hurt the people working for the justice system who make money off of prosecuting marijuana offenders and busting distributors. Even though I think this is a stupid argument and that law enforcement officials have much better things to do with their time, I have a solution for this as well. Some higher grade strains of marijuana are particularly potent in their effects (though it should be noted that even the strongest marijuana is still much, much less inebriating than say a dose of NyQuil or Benadryl…not that I’m speaking from personal experience, of course). To a certain degree, I believe that these stronger strains should be controlled and distributed by prescription only to people who need it, such as cancer patients. Run-of-the-mill marijuana commonly known as “schwag”, however, could be sold behind the pharmacy counter for a variety of valid medical or discretionary recreational uses, and obviously, there would be an age limit for purchase. The over the counter stuff could be slapped with a hefty tax a la the exorbitant one recently slapped on packs of cigarettes. The government could also make it illegal to grow unless you have a growing license, which could require enough paperwork that your average Joe Schmo “stoner” would be too lazy to do it. There should also be a similar “open container” law for marijuana so that users cannot imbibe while operating a motor vehicle.
When you take all of my above statements into account, you can see that our legal system would still have plenty of marijuana related cases to prosecute, excluding the harmless one-time offenders caught with small amounts. Ideally, though, one would hope that our country’s illustrious law enforcement could take that opportunity to perhaps focus more of their attention on stopping the more damaging drugs such as methamphetamine instead of continuing to arrest basically harmless marijuana offenders.
The absolute best part about using marijuana taxation to pay for our government health care system is that it might just bring some semblance of peace between the conservatives and the liberals. It is common knowledge to both sides of the aisle that our “war on drugs” is not solving our problems with drug abuse or drug related violence, and marijuana carries much less stigma than it once did. Some of the stodgier, old school Republicans and any of the politicians who get campaign contributions from timber companies, alcohol companies, and tobacco companies, might not be quite so happy, but quite frankly….I just can’t really play a tiny violin for old white guys who would only “suffer” by being slightly less rich if this were to actually happen.
Plus, I feel like using marijuana profits and tax money towards the universal health care system would be the closest way to insure that those who support the public option would be the ones primarily paying for it. Not that I’m trying to draw any correlation between marijuana smoking and a sense of caring and community, but…eh, what can I say, that’s exactly what I’m doing here! Ho ho. In all seriousness, though, think about the American people you know who smoke marijuana and then think about how many of them support the idea of universal health care. It’s just about all of them, oui oui? Sure, naturally there are plenty of people out there who want universal health care who do not smoke marijuana. I suppose they can be branded with the dreaded term “freeloaders”, but I don’t really see the big wigs in the GOP fighting for the rights of stoners. It does not exactly appeal to their base, does it?
(On second thought, though, maybe they would. You never know in politics, after all and Republicans are notorious for doing whatever they can to fight the Democratic agenda, even if it means hurting their own constituents in the process. Hmm. But, again, I digress.)
So, yeah, that’s my plan.
…Ta-da!
Or something.
Hey, you know what? All kidding aside, I really think it would work. After the initial waves of real change rippled across this country, most people would see the positive effects almost immediately in their own cities and towns and they wouldn’t be able to sensibly argue that it was not for the best. On the other hand, “sense” and “arguing” are often strange bedfellows.
See above, re: you can’t please everyone.
Now if only I was not a middle class college student without any real political power.
Aw…poop.
