Hope In Antithesis
Saturday, July 29, 2017
Glendale, California
Hope In Antithesis
Hope thrives in recent Trump failures.
It thrives in the Hegelian idea of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis.
The Trumpcare bill, full, skinny, and never understood, failed yesterday.
Hope abounds!
Even Republicans now call for working with Democrats to solve the healthcare problem. And, if Sanders succeeds in his promise to introduce such a bill this fall, the country can move towards the universal health care it deserves. The US is the only major industrialized nation without healthcare for all its citizens.
It’s a national shame, a tragedy, a farce.
The solution seems obvious:
Extend Medicare to birth.
The Medicare system works extremely well.
Lest we abandon the major insurance companies which, like the Mafia, shake us down every time we seek medical treatment, we could still give them a role. They could offer supplemental coverage, like they do now for citizens over age 65.
Class distinctions, which will never disappear, can still exist. The rich will purchase platinum plans covering everything from vision to podiatry; the poor will have basic coverage as will all Americans.
I also find hope in the concepts of thesis, antithesis and synthesis. Often attributed to Hegel, who used the concepts to describe the progression of history, he never actually uttered or wrote the phrase. It originated in the work of another German idealist, Johann Fichte.
Let me explain.
Using recent history as an example, our country enjoyed the liberal leadership of Obama for eight years. That period displays a thesis, a trend.
The country then elected Trump, who fabulously demonstrates the idea of antithesis. Not a day goes by without a sampling of how different Trump is from Obama. He is his diametrical opposite.
According to the LA Times, Trump said this yesterday in remarks to recruits at the Suffolk County Community College in Brentwood, a heavily Latino suburb of New York.
(Ready yourself for irony given the audience):
Please don’t be too nice… Like when you guys put somebody in the car and you’re protecting their head, you know the way you put their hand so they don’t hit their head and they’ve just killed somebody … you can take that hand away.
Trump urged police to be “rough” with suspected gang members to rid the country of “animals.”
Need any more examples?
Read any newspaper; watch any TV news show.
The defeat of even the skinniest, nonsensical healthcare bill yesterday may well mark the beginning of a synthesis.
Even Republicans wishing to return healthcare to pure market control, allowing insurance companies to charge what they like and exclude people with pre-existing conditions, are facing the truth:
You don’t take healthcare away from people.
Further, most Americans view healthcare as a basic right, like education, police and fire protection, and social security benefits.
Obama swung the country to the left.
Trump swings the country to the right, but in a meandering, foolish, impulsive way.
The flaming defeat of the Senate healthcare bill yesterday signals a new beginning.
In his speech to the AFL-CIO in 1961, Martin Luther King, Jr. urged regarding racial discrimination:
If we do not advance, the crushing burden of centuries of neglect and economic deprivation will destroy our will, our spirits and our hope.
May the hope for a true social democracy, one seeking equal rights for all, march forward.
(If you like this blog, please tell your friends, family, and pets to subscribe by opening up alankarbelnig.com, clicking on any blog, scrolling to the bottom, and sign up. Like any selfless writer, I always seek more readers. Thanks so much! – Alan)
Like this post? Subscribe to Psychoanalyzing Life.
