Absinthe at the Tea Party
Regarding the apparent collapse of the attempt by the Obama Administration to reform the American medical industry, Jacques Barzun's historical survey From Dawn to Decadence best sums upwhat the failure says about the current state of American politics. To quote from my own review:
Barzun laconically informs us that late medieval Europe was a "decadent" society. I myself had thought that Richard Gilman had permanently retired that word with his study "Decadence: The Strange Life of an Epithet," but Barzun may persuade readers that "decadence" is neither a moral category nor a bit of implicit vitalism. Rather, Barzun says, the term "decadent" may properly be used of any social situation that is blocked, where people entertain goals for which they will not tolerate the means.
Decadent societies tend to become labyrinthine in both their cultures and their styles of government, as people create small accommodations within a larger, admittedly unsatisfactory context. Decadent periods can be sweet, as Talleyrand remarked of pre-Revolutionary France, but partly because they are obviously ephemeral.
The era of sweetness has passed, alas, but the Mexican standoff continues.
The decadence here is of various sorts and agents, not all of them connected with the health issue. Any party that would nominate Martha Coakley to run for a symbolically important Senate seat must be suspected of nipping at the absinthe. (Note to historians and other uninformed persons: her loss of John Kenned'ys old seat in Massachusetts to a Republican also lost the Democrats in Congress the filibuster-proof majority they needed to pass a comprehensive reform.) More important was the quality of the plans being considered by Congress. Either the House or Senate version would have been an improvement over the current system, but neither contemplated the necessary clean break: a national single-payor. That solution really puts the question on its merits; in contrast, the decadent alternatives the Obama Administration was willing to contemplate, fantasticated by insurance-company subversion and legislative horse-trading, were difficult to explain or defend.
As I have noted before in this space, this is an important but not immediately vital issue. It has bulked as large as it has because the culture wants something to fight about. Some new monster of contention will no doubt shamble into view in short order. Still, we must not forget how debilitating the current American medical system is. It trains the people into habits of risk aversion and acquiescence in arbitrary bureaucratic control of their life choices. In the Soviet Union, these were skills needed for the life-strategy known as “hugging the smokestack”; in other words, clinging to an enterprise because it offers a measure of security. The fact that the current system is defended on libertarian grounds is the sort of historical irony that passes for humor in Hell.
As for the American enterprises that find the system convenient, they are chiefly pleased with the fact that another of its heuristic properties is the creation of a workforce that demands nothing more than cost-of-living adjustments to wages. Precisely who these enterprises expect to buy their products when demand is capped by rising health-insurance premiums has so far been a matter of studied indifference.
At this writing, it looks as if the system can be fixed only as an afterthought in the management of some greater crisis. Bank deposit insurance was also impossible until the depression made it into an accomplishment reported below the fold of the daily papers. The same was the case with the convoying of British civilian shipping in World War I, which the Liberal government, the Admiralty, and the shipping industry dismissed as a pipedream until the day it happened. Indeed, the same pattern applies to the federal free-soil policy for the settlement of the West: political insanity, until the Civil War. When the time comes and a critical historical juncture requires the nation to shed ballast, the American medical industry will be absent-mindedly overhauled according to some plan written on the back of an envelope.
* * *
Moving on to the crisis, let us note one of the more charming urban legends of recent weeks:
Hong Kong's Apple Daily reported that the state-run China Film Group had instructed cinemas nationwide to stop showing the 2-D version of Avatar from January 23 on orders from Beijing's propaganda chiefs…It is not just the desire to entertain the masses with a Chinese movie that has prompted the censors to step in and pull James Cameron's hit from 2-D screens. The Government fears that too many citizens might be making a link between the plight of Avatar's Na'vi people as they are thrown off their land and the numerous, often brutal, evictions endured closer to home by residents who get in the way of property developers.
Maybe Avatar really is becoming China's Grapes of Wrath, but this looks to me like a blogger's wisecrack being reported with a straight face by the wire services. The film is being prematurely pulled from some 2-D screens, but it is not at all clear the motivation is political.
Whatever the truth of the matter, the media environment is friendly to such reports now that the mainstream business news contains items
like this:
Jan. 21 (Bloomberg) -- Investors have turned bullish on the U.S. while tempering their enthusiasm for China as they worry about a market bubble there, according to a Bloomberg survey... The number of U.S. investors who see their economy improving has steadily marched upward over the past two quarterly polls, more than doubling since July…China, the world¹s fastest-growing major economy… is viewed as a bubble by 62 percent [of investors]. About one-third of respondents said China offered the best investment opportunities over the coming year, almost tied for first place with the U.S. and Brazil, though down sharply from October, when 44 percent ranked China best...This time, almost three out of 10 investors said China posed the greatest…downside risk, ranking it the second-riskiest market behind the European Union.
On one level, the reason for this shift in investor sentiment is not far to seek. In recent days, the Chinese financial authorities have announced that they are declaring victory and getting out of the war on the economic
downturn: last year's fiscal stimulus is to end and banks will no longer be ordered at gunpoint to lend. The problem, maybe, is that this announcement was made after a report of a 10.7% rise in the GDP for the last quarter of 2009. That report, like all Chinese economic statistics, is met with increasing skepticism, as we see in the views of this Austrailian sage:
Mr Edwards bases his forecast for an implosion of the Chinese economy on several technical factors…He points to data showing China's electric power output declined over the last three months. The data usually correlates with China's GDP.
He also noted the sharp decline during recent months in the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development's leading growth indicator for China's economy…Mr Edwards said reasonable explanations for the decline in China's electric power output, such as the effect of a switch to oil-based power, were belied by sharp declines in industrial production growth and export levels in other Asian economies.
Of course, where the money is supposed to go that is being invested in the US as a safe haven is another mystery. The Obama Administration's recent proposals for reform of the financial system are not without merit, but they make investment in equities problematical just now. Gold is declining because it actually is very risky. And you would have to have a screw loose to invest in real estate. That is not to say it won't happen.
* * *
I finally saw Avatar, by the way. The plot is forgettable but the world is memorable, in part because it holds up almost uniquely well in recent cinema as hard-science
fiction. Director James Cameron lost no time in announcing that Avatar is the beginning of a trilogy, at least. I might make two
suggestions:
(1) Earth and Pandora should wind up on the same side of some conflict;
(2) The Nav'i need to invent organic zeppelins with psychedelically painted hulls.
I'm sorry, I like zeppelins.
* * *
Finally, on an ecclesiastical note:
Pope Benedict on January 18 named Bishop André-Mutien Léonard of Namur, a member of the International Theological Commission, as Archbishop of Malines-Brussels. Succeeding the influential Cardinal Godfried Danneels, Archbishop Léonard is known for his forthright defense of Catholic moral teaching and his support for Summorum Pontificum, Pope Benedict's motu proprio on the extraordinary form of the Mass.
Deputy Prime Minister Laurette Onkelinx condemned the choice. "Church and State are separate in Belgium, but when there are problems in our society, all the social partners sit down around a table, including representatives of secularism and of religion," she said. "Cardinal Danneels was a man of openness, of tolerance and was able to fit in there. Archbishop Léonard has already regularly challenged decisions made by our parliament."
Cardinal Danneels was more accommodating about abortion, euthanasia, and other aspects of the Darwin Award Agenda than his successor is going to be.
This is part of the crisis, too, but maybe not one of the parts that can be solved on the back of an envelope.
