Crises (1 Viewer)

CRISES
Marc Friedlander

At any given time, in our incredibly complex and close knit world, there are 1 or more major disasters unfolding, a number of potential ones brewing, and a few winding down (or at least we get tired of hearing about them and/or the press gets tired of reporting them). Currently we have the Ebola epidemic and the ISIS war. The crisis in the Ukraine hasn't ended, but it's no longer front page news.


Then there was the Secret Service SNAFU, the EU about to fall apart, and let's not forget about the BP oil spill (as much as they encourage us to). 9/11/2001 remains a searing memory that none of us will ever forget. Going back - I can seldom remember a time - since the Cuban Missile Crisis - that impending doom hasn't seemed almost inevitable.


When a crisis breaks into the news, there is always finger pointing and blame ducking - heroes and villains emerge and heads roll. I've seen it countless times since I became politically aware.


What I want to bring out, is that it's all wrong - the blame game, that is. Of course mistakes are made - but this can be seen only in retrospect. At any given moment, there are an infinity of POSSIBLE catastrophes - both man made and natural - and NOBODY knows what is about to happen in the next moment.


As a society, we can only deal with so many problems at one time. First, the ACTUAL issues have to be addressed, then we can try to ward off a few potential ones, and if we have anything left over, maybe we can entertain ourselves with something like sports or art to help us forget the peril we're always confronting.

No matter how carful we are and how we try to prepare, it's the unimagined disasters that catch us by surprise that really do the damage. Thomas Duncan was a Black man without medical insurance and the fu*kers SENT HIM HOME!!!! Well, who knew what would happen? Now, any uninsured person who shows up at an emergency room and even just had a dream about West Africa, must be attended to with great care. Now - now that it's on the radar. After all, imagine the criticism a hospital would face if they did otherwise. And we must all avoid criticism. A crisis can't be seen as OUR fault. As long as somebody else has to take the blame we're okay.


That's what "we" do. When something terrible happens, we blame whomever is handy (hardly ever ourselves). Usually the pilloried ones resign in ignomy. The more we can blame THEM the more we seem rightous and concerned. Then we take resources away from something else that nobody is really looking at for the moment, and apply those resources to the current disaster. Then some other trouble start to fester and may become hazardous. When (not if) something new happens, and people get hit by something unforeseen, someone gets the blame, and resources are diverted from yet other things to this new thing. Now those other things - without the scrutiny and resources that they once "enjoyed" become far more dangerous, turn into a new crisis, and people suffer.


Blame Obama. Blame the Secret Service director. Or the Supreme Court, the police, the Congress, the Good Humor Man, or the man in the moon. We say that THEY should have known this could happen and THEY should have prevented it. We say that THEY must do SOMETHING about it.


Grow up, people.

Yet again a fact like ...

Thomas Duncan was a Black man without medical insurance

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does not seem to incite any wonderment, at least not in Americans.


I have seen so many American whodunits (from my safe place "infested" by what Americans call "socialized" medicine), where some agent of one of the acronymic organisations got corrupted because of some kidney transplant for his or her kid that the medical insurance would not cover ... in a country that put a man on the moon!

So what do Americans have? The highest per-capita health expenditure. WHat do they get in return? The statistics do not show much in terms of life expectancy or general health of the public.

Well, spikepl - it seems you found an opportunity to take some kind of swipe at the US health care system.

Feel free to address the point of my post, at any time it pleases you.

Libre,

I do not understand what point you wish us to address!!!

Everything you say is perfectly Valid, but what are we to do about it, we have to address each crisis as it happens, the world only has so much resource at it's disposal for a crises, if we try to support everything, we will fail multiple times...

Of course the best course of action is prevention, but how do we prevent Russia invading the Ukraine, how do we stop West Africans, eating Bats and shit that carry the Ebola virus, how do we fight a bunch of religious zealots who apparently have God on their side in ISIS...

I have said this before on other threads, and say it again now, the only way any of this will stop, and be prevented is a quick world threat to everybody, where the world has to unite or die... You could argue that is Climate Change, but that is too slow, to be any kind of perceived threat...

Only something on a quick Global scale will unite the people of this planet in a common Goal, that of Survival and Unification...

Where's a good alien invasion when you need one?

Scott - it's not that I wish anybody to address my post or propose a solution to the issue (although of course I welcome them to do so if they wish). And by the way I agree with what you wrote.
I'm just pointing out that spikrpl's reply seemed to be a reply to some other post, not mine. I thought maybe he missed what I was trying to say - I used a lot of words to say it.

Libre,

I still do not understand.... what was the point of your post, if you did not wish anybody to reply!!

We are never going to change man's Greed, and Lust for Power, it is in our make up, we have been at war with our fellow man since we walked upright on this planet, that is not about to change anytime soon, Religion has just given man another weapon in the pursuit in subjugation of their 'less enlightened' fellow man...

Only something that threatens the existence of all men, whether they be Black, White, Muslin, Catholic, Christian, Atheist, will unite us a people, and maybe, just maybe, as long as we survive the threat, will we be able to move forward and unite...Until then... forget about it...

I still do not understand.... what was the point of your post, if you did not wish anybody to reply!!

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Scott -
Like any other poster in a public forum, I welcome any replies but prefer that they address the issues raised by my posts. Is it really all that difficult to understand this?
My post was about how people react to a crisis, it was not about greed, lust for power, war, the price of bananas, a critique of Americans or the American health care system.
Certainly any responder is entitled to introduce any new point they want or to take the thread in a different direction. I was simply unclear how spikepl's reply addressed my post.