Let’s take the very, very long view of America’s decision to make health care available to eight million or more vulnerable and uninsured children. The crude political compromises that led to passage of imperfect health care reform might have obscured a grand achievement: an end to the sacrifice of American children on the altar of insurance industry greed and a moral setback for the bankrupt ideology that justified it.
So, let’s talk about Isaac, son of the Biblical patriarch Abraham, and Iphigenia, daughter of the ancient Greek King Agamemnon. These children lie beneath the sharpened butcher-blades of their fathers and warn humankind of the karmic catastrophe that is the willful sacrifice of children.
The images and narratives are deeply embedded in the roots of Western Civilization: Isaac and Abraham atop the dry, windswept land of Moriah; Iphigenia and Agamemnon across the waters on the rocky shore of Aulis. The “Binding of Isaac” was first written down in the 9th or 8th Century B.C. Iphigenia’s tragedy first appears in the Kypria, probably written in the 7th Century B.C. Both oral legends date to the far distant past of the Ancient Near East. Two great epics of Western culture pivot upon the theme of child murder.
Isaac and Iphigenia speak with literature’s most profoundly innocent voices. Isaac asks, “Father! Here is the fire and the wood but where is the sheep for the offering?” And Iphigenia: “I must say goodbye to the light.” Their words undam the heart and roll like a river through the troubled conscience of humankind.
Hear their voices as you consider this. In Crowley, Texas, the very week the health care reform bill was approved, Blue Cross/Blue Shield denied coverage to a newborn baby, Houston Tracy, saying he was born with an uncovered pre-existing condition. Without emergency heart surgery, Houston would die. One shudders to think that this ritual sacrifice was commonplace, and might be again if we are not vigilant.
And sacrifice it would have been, to Mammon and Moloch. Millions of children have been denied care to serve the profits of the health insurance industry. We are told the deaths are an actuarial necessity so that we may live, not so different from the ancient rationale of human sacrifice condemned by the Greeks, by the Hebrew Bible’s Yahweh and by Jesus. The Qur’an says flatly: “Kill not your children.” This ought to cause contented insurance actuaries to do a little soul searching, however much they want to gloat over a 2010 study that ranked them as holding the very best jobs in the country.
Despite the ethical injunctions, our history is strewn with the bones of children sacrificed to power-mad ambition or some ideology or another. Most of us honor the inherited moral imperative. Billions of children are raised in love and nurturance, one of our best proofs that goodness survives among us. Isaac was saved from Abraham’s cleaver; a ram took his place on the altar of death. According to legend (explored by Euripides), the goddess Artemis intervened in Iphigenia’s sacrifice, replaced her with a deer and spirited her away to Tauris.
Blue Cross/Blue Shield, facing a storm of bad publicity over Baby Houston, relented and paid for the child’s urgent care. Also, the health insurance industry backed off its threat to use a loophole in the reform bill to deny coverage to children. Innocent Isaac and Iphigenia live yet in our hearts, or in enough of our hearts that the insurance moguls drop their sharpened knives when caught in the act.
But this begs the question: how has the sacrifice of children continued at all, whether in war, by neglect, or by bureaucratic insurance company edict? “We’ll buy back our own harm with what is most dear to us,” said Iphigenia’s mother, Clytemnestra, to Agamemnon. We have bought ourselves a lot of harm over the millennia.
Last year, UNICEF reported that global childhood deaths had fallen below nine million a year. Another UNICEF report tells us that between 1986 and 1996, two million children were killed in war. Four to five million were disabled and 12 million left homeless. I couldn’t find figures for the last 14 years, but it’s a safe bet that there’s been no decline.
The fundamentalists and absolutists will blame original sin for the slaughter, arguing that it’s the fault of those who refuse to follow their Law. Their oaths are hollow. It’s the fundamentalists and absolutists who are deeply implicated in the awful crimes. I can hear them screaming already at the question, but what is the moral difference between the free market fundamentalists of the insurance industry who have condemned children to death in the name of the Invisible Hand and those who bomb innocents in the name of Allah, or Yahweh, or Jesus, or the Fatherland?
“We’ll buy back our own harm with what is most dear to us,” Clytemnestra said. Her words are a warning to nations in war who shrug off the deaths of civilians, including children, with the euphemism, “collateral damage.” Violent zealots who blow up schools and markets in the name of their god or ideology should consider Agamemnon’s fate, as should insurance executives and their empowering politicians.
Today, we can celebrate some signs of an awakening, here and around the globe. According to UNICEF, the number of global, under-five deaths fell from 12.5 million in 1990 to 2008 less than 9 million in 2008. Global measles deaths have fallen 74 percent.
We should be proud of extending health care to millions of children once excluded. Still, it is just a beginning, an acknowledgment of a moral responsibility too long ignored by too many. The United States ranked last among the 21 developed nations in children’s well-being. Around the world, one billion children are deprived of services essential to survival and development.
The lion sleeps tonight, but the lion is not yet tamed. Maybe we should let the children sing that song to us.
This is a depressing time to be a progressive. Like during the primary, people’s nerves are raw. It’s probably true that everyone has been unfairly attacked – opponents of the bill have been attacked as perfectionists who don’t actually care about providing health care, supporters of the bill have been attacked as unprincipled corporatists who are more interested in a win for the president than health care. Those of us who were more torn or who felt that those with a different position were still well meaning have probably been attacked for both reasons. Once people have found themselves subject to unfair attacks, there is a temptation to care less about arguing in good faith – as though the things some people say who hold a position can undermine all of the people who hold that position.
When the primary ended, the news cycle shifted to the general election, and most people were able to come together against the common enemy of Republicans. This helped heal many of those wounds, even if occasionally someone feels the need to take a dig at Clinton or Obama that rehashes the primary wars.
The battle over health care was similar to the primary wars in a number of ways. But what is missing is that shift that helped change the conversation. Instead of relying on the corporate media to help us turn the page, we have to do it ourselves. And how to do that remains uncertain.
That said, this one reason I appreciate your posts. Talking about what it is that brings progressives together (indeed, most Americans together) is a good thing. Trying to ensure that this flawed bill ends up being the best policy it can be, and can be a bridge towards something better, regardless of the intentions of those who drafted it or how much it fails to live up to what was promised, is a good thing. Many people, pro and con and mixed, may not be ready for that. But when they are, words like this will help them move forward.
This post right here is exactly what was missing from the health care debate. As a society, we simply never had much of a conversation about our moral responsibilities. For the most part, we argued policy (exchanges, public option, single payer) not values. You were a voice calling for a different sort of conversation long before the current debate, and if more people had listened we would be in a much better place. I don’t know if it’s warranted, but I still have hope that voices calling for this better way will actually be listened to, not just heard.
I have hope for the better voices, too. Thanks for posting here, David, ’cause I woke up this morning still dismayed at the hatred and vitriol encountered in the comments over at FDL. I really am rather suspicious, ’cause if I consider who really has a tactical incentive to spew such demoralizing hatred, it’s the insurance industry and the GOP. Just doesn’t make much sense, however unread, uncouth, uncivil and self-hating they might be, that even misguided progressives would see much to gain from such utter nonsense. I sincerely hope it’s not the case that we have managed to empower our own tea partiers,
As I noted in one comment, my first draft of the piece was entirely negative, that is, it focused only on the frame of sacrifice. Then I thought, you know, this frame could be tied to one positive outcome of the bill, and what’s the point of reframing it if not accompanied by hope?
How to turn the page? Assuming some of the vitriol was from disappointed progressives, I’m not sure. I really don’t want to dismiss their voices, but I think it may be an inner fatalism, a self-destructive, “all hope is lost” mentality that may be driving it. I have no idea how to cope with that in the public arena, because it is at bottom a very personal, psychological thing.
I really don’t want to engage with them, but the only therapy I can think of is to keep talking. Feeding the trolls is questionable, though. I dunno. I’m just happy that thoughtful people like yourself remain engaged. Thanks so much.
I have many thoughts about the post and even more about the comments on FDL, but I’ll try to keep it to a few short observations from my own perspective.
One thing that struck me was your willingness to engage with people. Too often, I think, authors of posts (especially controversial ones) don’t do that enough. When you do that, in a thoughtful way, as you did, I think it brings to light some of the underlying challenges we face. It does take courage though. Human reactions are human reactions, they don’t necessarily mean anything. By definition reactions are not well thought out. In the immediacy (that I often feel) of communication (verbal and blog discussions), it seems I often just have to say what pops into my head at that moment. Reaction, emotion etc. I don’t think reactions are necessarily wrong either, but I do think, when I realize they are wrong, I should try to clean them up, as honestly as I can.
It seems extremely difficult to admit mistakes in this society. For some reason, when you do, one’s credibility on everything is in question. Therefore, absolutism, denial and willful ignorance. Big problems on this planet, I think.
“How to turn the page?” I don’t know.
But when one tries to thoughtfully engage people, as you did, it helps in making more clear that many of us are not really thinking enough about solutions. Those who are more interested in being “right” and looking good, rather than actually thinking about solving some of the underlying problems (like reactionary communication, the inability to admit mistakes, and all the societal influences on us…) become more obvious.
A few words on the idea of “trolls”.
I think my own strongly held beliefs and ideas are often closely tied to my own self interests. It seems extremely difficult to judge anyone’s sincerity and credibility these days. Especially so on the internet. There was a front page article in the Wash Post 3/29 (“PR Firms find fertile ground in world of online reviews”) about corporate influence in online review sites with phony reviews. There is no question that corporations have a huge presence online. I don’t think it’s a stretch to assume corporations and political parties… make their presence felt,in manipulative and deceptive ways, on blogs as well. I don’t know what to say about it other than it is helping to destroy any remaining trust and credibility in themselves. Somehow, I think if I just keep trying to identify the (underlying) problems and challenges and focus on connections to other, larger, problems and challenges, and try to think for myself about solutions, that’s better than adding to the distrust. Who knows?
Oh well, so much for the “short observations.”
All the best Glenn.
Thanks for taking the time to post such a thoughtful and honest comment. Sorry it took a moment to post, because I was away at a meeting and have to do it manually.
I enjoy the engagement with others on my writing, and usually learn more from others than they could ever learn from me. That’s not an idle remark. It’s true. One of the great blessings of the internet is its interactivity, and I’d think many writers would benefit from the immediate engagement with readers. Everyone benefits, because, as you say, thoughts can be clarified, different opinions heard, multiple sides of an argument considered.
I was surprised at the reaction at FDL (and I’m afraid lost my patience toward the end) largely because the real point of the post should have found agreement with progressives. Doesn’t seem like they’d take issue with framing the unnecessary illness and death caused by the insurance industry in terms of ritual sacrifice, something long condemned by our most fundamental cultural and religious traditions. But by putting something positive about the bill in the post — the extension of health care to millions of children — I either set off some very doctrinaire progressives, or made myself a target for the paid trolls of the insurance industry/GOP. Either way, I have thick skin. Also, either way is very disappointing. The lack of civility, the raw hatred and disregard of others is very hard to see, whatever the source.
Thanks again for your comments, shocker. Sure hope to have more exchanges with you in the future.
Not sure how much I have to contribute in online discussions, but I always look forward to reading your articles.
I can see where the “ritual sacrifice” part would “push some buttons” for “pro” insurance industry people. The medical insurance industry (among other industries) does have a lot to answer for.
A question I struggle with at times:
How do you reconcile the idea of accountability with the ideas of forgiveness and fairness?
Or perhaps: just lock everybody up and sort it out later?
I think there are solutions to many of the challenges we face. They’re just not going to satisfy everyone’s anger and frustration. Probably not going to satisfy everyone’s idea of what accountability and fairness look like either.
And I don’t see where real solutions will happen until corporate/media/government leaders work hard to get our country to a point where enough of our people have more than a grain of trust in them.
You’re not the only one to struggle with the accountability/forgiveness dilemma. I guess as long as humans have been thinking they’ve been fretting about that. Justice can’t be perfect, of course, and simply by seeking justice honestly and openly is, in part, the answer.
I agree we are in a crisis of trust — and it’s urgent that we end that crisis.
Interestingly, it seems that this mess has been replayed in many domains of late. For example, here is an open letter from a number of community moderators at GOS: “Establishing New Posting Standards On Daily Kos.”
They asked assent to this statement:
The attacks on motive are what really troubles me. No one has access to other people’s motives, so why focus so heavily on them, especially on such flimsy evidence (a single claim or even word.)
Moving the discussion to what is observable is both more reality based and more respectful. And since being a progressive means acknowledging that we are all in this together, and treating everyone as a full and equal person, that seems like a worthwhile thing to strive for.
It’s also interesting how talk of sinister motive distracts from having the essential conversion – who are we, and what do we value. While there have been some great answers offered to these questions, it’s clear to me that progressives as a whole have yet to really face these issues with the seriousness they deserve.