Americans Desperate For Change

By James Donahue

The recent story about Terri Carlson, a 45-year-old divorced woman seeking a husband that can provide health insurance is just one more example of how desperate Americans are finding themselves in these strange times.

Carlson, who suffers a genetic immune disorder that will kill her if not constantly treated, lost her health insurance coverage after her husband divorced her. She turned to COBRA health insurance, but that will run out in a year. Health Insurance companies are denying her coverage because of her “pre-existing condition.”

It is no secret that Congressional Republicans, after gaining control of the House in 2010 elections, have been working hard to strip any gains President Barack Obama and the Democrats gained in their watered-down national health bill. As Congress debates over the issue of the growing national deficit and the question of taxing the rich to balance the books, the threat of cuts in Medicare and Social Security also are coming out of Washington.

The irony in all of this is that exciting new genetic research is beginning to open new doors in medicine, offering possible cures for nearly everything that can go wrong in the human body. These cures, however, will be made available someday soon, but only the very wealthy of the world will have the means to pay for them.

If the power brokers get their way, the rich and powerful in society will have access to not only cures for disease, but possibly genetic restructuring of their bodies to make them look and feel younger, and live to very old ages.

The rest of the people of the world, however, will remain slaves and servants to the power brokers. They will be denied good medical care, if they get any at all.

Is this to be our destiny? Will we in America be so foolish as to allow the stripping of the great freedoms we have fought and worked so hard to achieve since the founding of the nation? Must there be yet another bloody revolution brought on by greed and corruption in high places?

Last year software engineer Joseph A. Stack wrote a suicide manifesto against the U. S. government and the Internal Revenue Service, set his house on fire and then flew his single engine aircraft into the IRS offices in Austin, Texas.

In the document left on his Internet website, Stack told of his struggles with the IRS. He wrote: “I am finally ready to stop this insanity. Well, Mr. Big Brother IRS man, take my pound of flesh and sleep well.”

Groups throughout the United States are organizing and petitioning for recall of state governors and various elected officials. The Teaparty Movement was organized because of a growing anger against wasteful spending, lost jobs, foreclosed homes and a growing number of homeless and hungry people. The Teaparty folks, unfortunately, got caught up by the Koch brothers who financed the movement and drafted the group into a branch of the conservative Republicans. They were tricked to become something most members never wanted the movement to be.

The spirit of rebellion is spreading throughout the world even as I write these words. The people are tired, poor and hungry. They see their government leaders living lives of opulence protected by new forms of military power. They are willing to die in a hail of bullets and bombs in the street rather than continue life as they know it.

How can we end this evil cycle once and for all?

July 2011