July 4, 2021 – Sharing The Truth In Red, White, and Blue.

Posted on | July 4, 2021 | 3 Comments

Mike Magee

Four years ago, on July 4th, as we came to grip with Trumpism, I wrote a piece titled “A Nation At Risk This 4th of July.”

At the time, I noted the fact that the US was the only developed nation in the world that spent more on Health Care than all other Social Services combined according to a 2015 Commonwealth Fund study. This regressive achievement remains true today, reinforced by pandemic induced revelations of lack of capacity to plan and execute for national health emergencies.

Besides reflecting our distorted financial and ethical priorities, and the natural end point of a profit-driven free enterprise health care system, Covid graphically continues to expose our nation’s vulnerability, as most Republican led states intentionally politicize preventive strategies and vaccinations.

Our inability to come to grips with a 1947 decision to throw our weight behind private profiteering health insurance has crowded out all other US priorities and threatens our economy. A simple shift to consolidate back room insurance functions (not the management or delivery of care) could trim 15% off the US health care bill immediately. But more than this, it would allow us to develop for the first time an integrated plan to assure a more healthy America.

Under such a plan, medical schools could integrate social mission into health professional education as Fitzhugh Mullan had suggested before his untimely death. Also in the positive column, regressive policies such as those proposed by Trump EPA chief Scott Pruit, now recognized in the new Biden era as economically dangerous and ethically disastrous, could be integrated into health planning.

As we wait for the US populace to catch up with this new administration (in much the same way as 1970 America’s Nixon supporters took 19 months to finally come to grips with the fact that their President was both corrupt and unwell), we all need to continue to expose the truth in words and graphics. As we do this, we need to shore up the weaknesses in our governance, revealed so obviously on January 6th, and in the halls of Republican state legislatures to this day.

Paul Voosen, Earth and Planetary Science journalist for Science magazine in the June 30, 2017 issue of Science depicted the loss in state and county GDP as a result of the predicted impact of global warming. Four years later, regressive policies meant to undermine the sacred right to vote in our democracy in these very same states, led by Trump’s most loyal supporters, punctuates that this July 4th much remains to be done to fulfill America’s promise.

As Frank Rich predicted four years ago in a New York magazine cover story, “How A Presidency Ends”, Trump is ultimately arriving at the same end point as Richard Nixon. Rich perhaps foresaw the January 6th Insurrection when he prophesized Trump’s demise, writing “Between now and then, there will be lulls in the downward trajectory, …and many shocks and surprises.” 

We have a new President, and challenges from health care, to the environment, to tumbling infrastructure and more. But none of these amount to more than the many obstacles Americans have overcome in our 245 years as a nation.

We shall survive, and may even thrive as equitable, fair, joyful and wise. But only if patriotic Americans continue to doggedly and respectfully pursue, display and share the truth in red, white and blue.

Happy July 4th!

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