What do US Society and a Rotten Red Delicious have in Common?
The United States is a dysfunctional society. It is impossible for a truly functional society, meaning one that works for everyone, to exist under capitalism, and it is all the more impossible when free-market ideologues, neoliberal and neoconservative leaders, and libertarian Freedmanites are empowered to prescribe their economic structural doctrine and regulate, or deregulate, this fundamental aspect of society to their myopic and greedy whims.
Much has been made, especially over the last four years, of the importance of normalcy, the need for things to return to the way they used to be, without regard for the fact that “normal” led to catastrophe, “normal” was a downward spiral. But of course, we crave normal. Even when normal will kill us inevitably, we prefer it to radical. Radical is what will save us, but it’s not comfortable, and many would choose a comfortable gradual death over an uncomfortable and difficult rebirth.
Our society currently provides us with, or makes available for a cost that enough of us can afford, securities and comforts which keep us in that comfortable and complacent state, and prevent us from taking the radical action of demanding and taking more. Enough of us are served that we don’t fight for the radical changes necessary for an actual functioning society.
Having clean drinking water on tap in our homes is great, a hell of an advance over most societies throughout history, and something to be proud of even in modern contexts, unfortunately. It’s hard to appreciate what an exception it is to the rule that we have clean drinking water at all, let alone that we have it pouring on demand from our sinks and showerheads. For the majority of human history, having drinking water that wasn’t lousy with bacteria and parasites was an anomaly. Having water that not only didn’t make you sick or kill you was one thing, but for it to also be clear and not taste like dirt would have been amazing. Do a little reading into the standard of water for the majority of people for the majority of history. You will be disgusted, and adore your treated and Brita filtered tap water all the more.
Though even in our great society, where many of us take clean drinking water for granted as the norm, we know that there are shameful exceptions to the rule. The United States has the rare and unenviable distinction of being one of few places in the “developed” world where one’s access to clean drinking water is decided by wealth and geography. Flint, Michigan is the most infamous example, where the local government and corporate interests made the decision to poison their citizens, but there are areas of the country unreached by even malicious and corrupt infrastructure management. There are areas of the US where one’s access to clean water is dependent on whether one owns or has affordable access to a clean well or spring.
Medical treatment is terrific. It would suck to have an illness or a disabling injury and not have the resources of society to lean on. Imagine drinking some non-potable water, all filthy with e coli and hookworms, getting sick, and then there being the added misfortune of not having anywhere you can go and have professionals make it better for you.
But of course, the existence of medical resources is not the same as their being accessible. Again, particularly in rural areas of the country, you’d have to drive many miles and hours to see a doctor. Even then, having access to that care does not mean necessarily that you are able to receive it. All over the country, the notion of access to healthcare is conflated with the actual ability to receive it. If you’re turned away from a hospital because you’re unable to pay for care, or driven into life-threatening poverty when unable to pay after the fact, then access is meaningless.
Ideal societies are often portrayed as ones in which leisure dominates and we spend all our time being entertained. Entertainment is good, but most of it soulless and disposable. The purpose of most of it is to distract us from the aforementioned, and many other comparably disastrous, flaws of our great modern “developed” society, while further extracting wealth in the process. It’s meant to keep us, if not happy, then sedate, so that we are complacent and pliable and easier to fuck. Beyond that, it’s generally a waste of time. While I try not to get too caught up in what is and isn’t productive and placing undue value upon that, there is virtually nothing productive about and very little benefit to most forms of entertainment.
A problem with our society at present is a complete misapportionment of services and resources due to the flawed and morally corrupt leadership making decisions on our behalf. At our expense, they choose to starve funding for the things we need and which actually benefit society. From healthcare and basic infrastructure to housing and food assistance, our government robs communities across the country of every essential service required of a functioning and sustainable society. Instead, they shower our money onto corporations and the military. Though it can’t exactly be called military spending, because a huge portion of “defense” spending goes to corporations, to contractors and weapons manufacturers, not the actual enlisted servicepeople. This libertarian conservative structure is one in which the glut of resources is devoted to “protecting” the country; from what or whom ranges from unclear to dubious to stupid, while the country itself is left to die from within. It’s like waxing fruit to keep it looking pretty, while it’s already rotted on the inside. We’re going to come to a point where the nation is a dysfunctional and festering pit of pestilence, violence, and death, surrounded by the pinnacle of destructive military might keeping us in and everyone else out, and towering walls to hide the shameful crime from the world.
The US government and military and the corporate oligarchs which control them are like an abusive partner or parent. They hurt us and kill us, while insisting that they’re the only ones who care about us and will keep us safe. They make us afraid to go outside and meet new people by inventing horror stories about other countries and people while bombing and screwing people all over the place to ensure they hate us.
Our society has the veneer of a healthy, functioning society. It looks just good enough on the surface, with just enough people getting by that all those suffering and dying at the bottom slip from notice. Trouble is, that illusion is falling apart past the point where its flaws can be hidden. The wealthy have always been a minority overwhelmed by the poor, but the gulf is growing rapidly now. The “middle class” model that was for decades taken for granted has become aspirational and all but disappeared. Families and individuals that were in that relatively comfortable position of not living extravagantly but not needing to struggle are on a knife’s edge today, more and more of them falling into poverty. We are approaching the point where there will literally be two classes in this country, the obscenely wealthy and the miserably poor, with no inbetween.
