The Dish

One of the real benefits of writing a column about America every week for foreigners is that you kind of have to start from scratch sometimes. Explaining the American healthcare debate to a society where universal care is almost part of the collective DNA is tough. But I did my best to explain why America's current system is both amazing in so many ways and yet simultaneously cruel and inefficient:

There are many valid criticisms to be made of American healthcare, but let me tell a story that helps explain its strengths. Only 15 years ago, the retrovirus, HIV, was killing thousands in America — six times as many young Americans have died of Aids as died in Vietnam — and researchers had never found a way to stop such a sophisticated and constantly evolving organism from burying itself in people’s immune systems and slowly destroying them. I was told in 1993 that I had a few years to live. I write this 16 years later with a stronger immune system than I have ever measured before.

America’s much-maligned healthcare system did this.

Without this vast and free market in medical care and pharmaceuticals, without the potential for making large amounts of money from affluent and insured patients, the innovation of treatments and regimens would never have occurred at the pace it did. Yes, publicly funded research was also vital — but it is rightly restricted to basic science, not finessing drugs for humans. Now we have dozens of anti-HIV drugs, from several private companies, competing with each other, and my life is saved. How do I put a price on that?

Here’s the catch. This miraculous process was possible for me only because I had insurance through my employer. When I quit my job editing The New Republic, in part to grapple with HIV’s toll, my employer compassionately allowed me to stay on staff at a low salary solely to protect me from going without insurance at all. You see: once without insurance in America, I would never have been able to get it again. I would have had a “pre-existing condition” and no insurance company would have accepted me.

Continued here.

Boxers before and after fights: a series.

(Hat tip: Kottke)

To this day, religion and politics remain “braided together in my head,” Wieseltier added, “but as a matter of conviction I endeavor to keep them apart. The universal ideas that I learn from my tradition must be transposed into a common American idiom if they are to influence anyone other than me. Anyway, I do not value religion chiefly for its morality. There are moral religious people and moral secular people, immoral religious people and immoral secular people. And the union of religion and politics inevitably injures them both."

This is a very pithy summary of a view of politics and religion that I share and that Leon helped me appreciate and understand. The quote is an hors d'oeuvre before the main course, however, which is this essay: clear, stringent, restrained where necessary, vicious when warranted … and, well, humane. It's an important essay because within it, there pulsates a whole slew of vital issues where some level of contradiction and tension is far more defensible than their opposites: being a Jew and an American, being a conservative who can see the role of liberalism in the West (and vice-versa), and being a secular citizen with profound respect for and engagement with religious truth.

I think it's the best thing Wieseltier has written in memory – and reminds me of what an immense and powerful talent he remains.

The president in fighting mood tonight:

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Rick Santorum calls on higher powers in a theocon forum.

A reader writes:

I attended my 1st tea party in Worcester, Massachusetts 4 months ago. I am a conservative independent and went because I see this country going in the wrong direction FAST. Bailing out car companies. Bailing out Wall Street. The so called "stimulus" debacle. Tripling our deficit in 3 years.

Do you think I was a big George Bush fan? No. I was not. He was a big spender too and he never vetoed anything. But Andrew….comparing the spending of Bush compared to Obama is like saying eating a jelly bean is just as fattening as eating a whole cheesecake. TRIPLING the deficit in 8 months??? Earth to Mars…..do you even get this?? 

Look: the only reason the deficit has tripled in eight months is the recession, which Obama inherited. And I know of no serious person who really believes the federal government should have sat back and let the US economy spiral into the abyss rather than try to stabilize it with a bank bailout and stimulus. To blame Obama for what amounts to inheriting an emergency bequeathed him by his predecessor is plain loopy. And to blame him for future deficits which were a function of all those who came before him, is equally misleading and disingenuous. Yes, blame him for deficit spending once the economy recovers. Yes, perpare a plan for real government downsizing when and if we emerge from the Bush fiscal wreckage. But give the president a fricking break.

The circumstances of this past year have been extraordinary. If the position of the right is going to be: no bailouts at all, no stimulus at all, and spending cuts now to balance the budget, then they should say so. Instead we get this adolescent hysteria, combined with no serious alternative set of proposals.

Really, my fellow small government independents: Grow up.

Peter Bergen reports from Helmand:

During World War II, three percent of American combat deaths were caused by mines or booby traps. By 1967 during the Vietnam War the figure rose to nine percent. In Iraq during the latter half of 2005, IEDs were the leading cause of American combat deaths, responsible for 65 percent of all fatalities and half of all nonfatal injuries. According to Brigadier General Laurence Nicholson, who is in charge of the Marine brigade in Helmand, an astonishing 80 percent of the casualties of the Marines under his command are now caused by IEDs.

In Memphis and Atlanta, two more raids and arrests – after a similarly brutal raid in Texas. I don't know any details about the Memphis case, but the Atlanta one seems to have been prompted by some guys dancing in their tighty-whities:

Numerous patrons at the Eagle at the time of the raid have recounted what they deem harassment and harsh treatment from police, including all patrons being forced to lie on the floor and being searched. Several reported hearing anti-gay and racist comments during the raid….

"I'm dancing [in underwear] and what I think is a SWAT team comes in. Some are telling me to stand still, some are telling me to get down. It was big confusion," he said Friday at the bar.

"The police were really tough, especially on our older customers. I understand police have to be safe, but there was no reason for them to treat people the way they did — especially when someone is 60-65. They weren't even helping them up after making them lay on the ground."

Maybe these reports, after the near-death of another gay man attacked in a gay bar raid in Texas, are just random data points. Or maybe, the Age of Obama is leading some to express their rage at the changing face of this country. Gays, as so often, are among the first victims. Vigilance is necessary. For the first time in 16 years, the South does not have a native president in the White House. For the first time in 45 years, we have a Democrat not from the South in the White House. In trying to understand the passion and hysteria and anger out there, this may be worth taking into account.

Kentucky artist Bill Guffey uses Google Maps' Street View to scout locations for his paintings. More here.

A reader writes:

I disagree with both Noah Millman and Fouad Ajami. We did

not go into Iraq after 9/11 because we had to make a huge military demonstration somewhere, no matter how implausible the aims (Millman); nor did we want to teach "the Arabs" a lesson (Ajami). Cheney, Bush and company had long had Baghdad in their gunsights — 9/11 was merely an opportunity, just as WMD was merely a cover. And as far as a general antipathy towards "the Arabs", I never saw that in the Cheney/Bush policies, and I certainly never saw that in Bush personally — in fact he seemed rather close to the Saudi royals.   
 

No, we went into Iraq to fulfill a longer range strategic vision: Surround Iran. Defend Israel. Secure the oil.

That's what empires do: Surround their enemies. Defend their Holy Land. Secure their vital resources. Hardly surprising that the American Empire would do any different. 

What is surprising is the sheer incompetence with which it was done. But then, that's the hallmark of the Bush years, isn't it? And the hallmark of an empire on it's way to trouble: an utter incompetence based on the inability to read the real situation. Ideology over reality. Utopian fever dreams over cold conservative wakefulness. 

Of course, as a modern PC liberal, I deplore empire. But as a student of biology, I recognize it's universality. So the question, to me, is not whether we will or will not be an empire, but whether we will or will not be a competent one — a competent, progressive, humane, enlightened empire, or an incompetent, regressive, inhumane, unenlightened one. Which immortal rep did Cheney, Bush, Rumsfeld and company earn for themselves — and for us? But then, means really are ends. 

Which is what continues to give me hope as I watch Obama.