I have had this feeling before, where I could not even begin to think about what was going to happen. I was stuck and could only articulate the question, and no one was able to answer the question, other than to forecast failure, and gloom, and hardship.
It was in March of 2003 when my family had flown off to Ixtapa to vacation for a week at Club Med and George W Bush had just invaded Iran. My brother and I wore little plastic bracelets that let the bartender serve up an endless supply of beer, so, needless to say, we spent A LOT of time sitting in the bar and by the pool, baking in the hot sun, drinking LOTS OF BEER and talking about the invasion. We agreed that no WMDs would ever be found that could have possibly justified such a pre-emptive invasion of another sovereign nation. We joked about the pace of race to Baghdad and the quandary for Rumsfeld and Cheney arising from their having blown up the story of how dangerous Saddam was and then being criticized when our military took more than a couple of days to take Baghdad. Like everyone else, we laughed at Baghdad Bob’s (http://en.wikipedia.org/...) endlessly announcing in the Iraqi media our impending defeat at the hands of Saddam and his irresistible military juggernaut.
But what I couldn’t get my mind around at the time was what the hell we were going to do with Iraq once we had taken it. How were we going to run the entire country once we had destroyed their infrastructure? Electricity? Water? Waste/Trash? Schools? Hospitals? Police? Anything??
Had anybody thought about this? Were there any plans? We wouldn’t know who the Iraqi citizens were, where they were born or when, or where they lived. No data. We would be essentially taking them back to the stone age for all intents and purposes. A functioning economy? Supplies of food? Medicine? How was it all going to work once we had broken it and undertook the responsibility for fixing it?
It seemed impossible and I wondered helplessly why anyone would do what we as a country were doing when it was so fucking obvious, to me and my brother, even after drinking so many beers, that whatever we thought we were going to get out of the invasion was IMPOSSIBLE. FUBAR.
And many many many years later, we now know how it worked out. It turns out we didn’t have any plans at the time, and no one had really thought about it much. So I think it is fair to say we as a country were FUCKING IDIOTS!
And now I have the same feeling. I can’t get my mind around something. Let me outline a few trends and assumptions and then I will try to articulate the question.
First, assume the Republicans on the Supreme Court are going to make new law out of whole cloth and declare the Affordable Healthcare Act unconstitutional, and that it will be 20 more years at least before Congress will be able to act on any kind of meaningful healthcare reform. I think that is a reasonable assumption given how many years it took for Congress to act on the AHA after Clinton’s failed attempts at reform in the 90’s (which led to a Republican takeover of the House of Representatives in 1994, by the way, which worked out so well for the country (if a Republican reads this, note that was sarcasm) that we did it again in 2010 when we let the Republicans win/buy the House, with similarly spectacular results (more sarcasm)).
Next, assume that Medicare and Social Security will be cut back, maybe even “privatized,” which means, I think, as a practical matter, that old people are going to get a lot less security and a lot less healthcare in the foreseeable future. Eligible ages for entitlements will be raised. Benefits will be trimmed or cut completely. Many other elements of any so called safety net at the state and federal level will be cut. I think these assumptions are reasonable. We already have millions and millions of US citizens that have no real access to affordable healthcare services. We read the stories daily of their misery and suffering, their miserable deaths and poverty. And, thanks to the Republicans, we can do no more to solve that or fix that than we could fix Iraq after W broke it.
Next, take note of the aging of the US population. The baby boomers are getting old and getting old is a FUCKING BITCH. And further take note that this group is A LOT poorer than it was a few years ago and that a substantial majority do not have enough wealth saved up to even buy a pot to piss in and job opportunities are less and getting lesser. Any arguments on these points?
So, the question I am having a hard time getting my mind around is:
WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING TO HAPPEN? How is our society going to function? These things are coming at us like a speeding train and we cannot step off the tracks! What is going to happen??
Will we have a World War III, only this time the foot soldiers will be the old and the sick? The problem would certainly go away if enough old people died sooner and if governments spend enough on war to dig us out of this depression.
How about a Soylent Green solution (I should be careful, that movie reference may not mean too much to anyone under 50 years old)( http://en.wikipedia.org/...)?
Seriously. If and when we do what the Republican want us to do with Medicare and Social Security (because, remember, we’re FUCKING IDIOTS), what is going to happen that will be any better by analogy/comparison to what happened in post US invasion of Iraq?
Maybe I’ll take a break, and drink a beer and think of something rosier. Like global warming (more sarcasm).