This is the sentiment that another thread was used as evidence of Nietzsche's elitism, for example, when he said the same thing -- that he feels like most people are stubbornly unthinking herd animals. Well, a lot of complaints on this list about why the left isn't more powerful basically follow that line. And what's depressing is how this observation really does ring true. Emma Goldman wrote: “I insist that not the handful of parasites, but the mass itself is responsible for this horrible state of affairs. It clings to its masters, loves the whip, and is the first to cry Crucify! The moment a protesting voice is raised against the sacredness of capitalistic authority or any other decayed institution. Yet how long would authority and private property exist, if not for the willingness of the mass to become soldiers, policemen, jailers, and hangmen?"
So, first of all, that's what connects Goldman to Nietzsche (and Murray Bookchin took her to task for that, FYI). And that sentiment is echoed by a lot of folks on this list on the health care issue -- folks here who nonetheless insist they're down with the people, when it seems "the people" are the ones who remain aggressively apathetic.
The irony is, as I mentioned in a previous post, nation-states, corporations, and US private health insurance plans are collectives. They're just highly authoritarian collectives. When you purchase a private insurance plan, you are basically agreeing to subsidize folks on that plan who require more care than you. No one in the US likes to think of it that way because like Doug said, Social Darwinism is basically in our drinking water, and you can't appeal to folks in language like this.
Folks know that one of the "social dues" of being a US citizen is to pay for things like roads, schools, retirement insurance, the military, all that. That's not a far step from making healthcare a part of the social dues. As studies have said, 15% of the GDP in the US already goes to healthcare, with remarkably inefficient results. It's, like, 9% or 11% in France and Canada, right? People need to be told that they are already paying overall than others, who have it far better.
Yet even when told that, I'm pretty sure most folks will still have a "facts be damned, I'll believe whatever I want, so fuck you" attitude. Stubborn ideological resistance, regardless of facts. I've seen this too many times myself. "Screw you, I don't care, I'm believing what I want anyway." That is a massive roadblock to progress in the US. I personally can't stand it. Willful ignorance, as the Catholics said.
-B.
Doug Henwood wrote:
"The anti-government, anti-entitlement position is so much a part of the received common sense of the American elite (and a good bit of the broad population too) that you don't need much conscious organization to propagate it. Social Darwinism is almost in the drinking water around here, even if Darwin isn't."