I recently underwent a routine medical examination as required by my work. The technician who did the initial tests was a boy about seventeen or eighteen years old. He told me he was studying medicine and doing his “pre-med” at the clinic.
He was a pleasant, intelligent, young man eager to hear about Britain and what had brought me to America so relatively late in life.
Eventually, the subject came around to health care. I asked him his views on the issues presently occupying the media and politicians.
“Oh, I don’t agree with the President,” he responded, quickly, “I think his ideas are too much towards socialism.”
“What’s wrong with socialism?” I asked.
“But, this is a capitalist country,” he responded, somewhat hesitantly, “Here, everyone has the chance to make something of their lives, rather than the government running everything.”
“Not everyone has the opportunity to do well,” I said. “What about the poor people in America who can’t afford private healthcare insurance?”
“But they bring it on themselves,” he replied, “they’d rather sit back and do nothing. It’s their own fault, isn’t it?”
“Capitalism can’t make everyone well off. By it’s nature, it relies on large numbers of consumers to provide an upward flow of money to the relatively few wealthy people at the top. Because money is constantly flowing up the prosperity pyramid, away from those at the bottom, they’re denied the opportunities available to the better off – including the chance to become better off themselves. Doesn’t that make it society’s fault, rather than their own?”
The young man pondered my argument. “I’m not sure. You’ve seen a lot more of life than I. I’m still very young.”
“At least,” I said, “should those in need not have the right to basic medical care when they require it?”
“Well, I’m a Christian, so I suppose I should care about everyone……”
Hmmm…” I said, “I’m not. But since coming to America I’ve been puzzled as to why I do care about everyone, but this nation – that calls itself so Christian – doesn’t.”
At that moment, the doctor appeared who was to continue the examination. I left the young man to his pondering.
Indoctrination is a powerful tool. When utilized on a national scale its effects are impressive, not only on the ill-educated and unintelligent, but across the whole spectrum of population. This boy was well-educated and highly intelligent, but my few simple statements left him perplexed, battling the thought processes injected into his brain from the time he began kindergarten.
When I was his age, I was living in a country still reeling from the effects of Hitler’s military might. The inner cities had been blown apart and no-one was left in any doubt who was to blame for the poverty and degradation that resulted from it.
The government of the day had no option but to invest in vast programs of social and economic rebuilding. Out of it all arose the British National Health Service.
In 1946, no-one could accuse the poverty-stricken and downtrodden British of “sitting back and doing nothing”, “bringing it on themselves”, or, of it being “their fault”. One only had to look around at the devastation, the bomb-sites, the derelict buildings, to realize the fault lay squarely on Mister Hitler’s shoulders.
Is that what it will take to convince Americans that their less well-off neighbors are not necessarily ‘bumming’ off the state; that the million or so who die from lack of healthcare every year do not make that choice of their own free will?
America has never endured a modern war on its soil. Let’s hope it never will. Does human life always have to become intolerable on a vast scale before any good arises from that suffering? It would seem so, for only suffering on such a scale will force us to truly think.
Nursery, grade, high school, university – all supposed seats of American learning, yet in today’s modern society they’re utilized primarily for little more than the political indoctrination of the next generation.
Until we radically alter our education system so it helps our children to think for themselves, instead of systematically ejaculating preconceived ideals into their innocent, virginal, minds we will neither improve the society we live in, nor secure a stable and peaceful future for our species.
Filed under: Brainwashing the kids
