I finished Our Malady and I’m ready with a Twitter Book report.
Our Malady book opens with @timothydSnyder in a hospital after a series of medical mistakes almost killed him.
1/ Flannery O’Connor, in Mystery and Manners, says that facing death is the “most significant position life offers . . .”
While facing death—and feeling rage and trying to regain full consciousness—Snyder begins writing this book.
2/ He talks about three maladies, and how they are connected:
🔹His own malady
🔹The malady in our healthcare system
🔹The political malady that made commercialized medicine possible.
He ties this all back to individual freedom, and concludes⤵️ (screenshots #1 and #2):
3/ Snyder compares Vienna's high quality of healthcare (and childcare) to ours.
In the US, the privileged get better healthcare, which makes them feel good because it’s better than those lower on the hierarchy.
But what ordinary workers in Vienna get is still better.
4/ When medicine is commercialized, as it is in the US, profits matter, not health, so health suffers.
When healthcare is only available to the wealthy or those who work, we are all living in a kind of gulag:
5/ Commercialized healthcare often reduces medicine to a choice: pain v. pills.
Pain v. Pills created the opioid crisis (the pills let us deny our pain) and made us less free. (#1)
Someone profits from the pills. Other options may be better, but they are less profitable. (#2)
6/ Snyder notes that in 2016, Trump won the places with the most opioid addiction.
The pills masked the pain and thus created rage. (#1)
This explains why authoritarians have no incentive to halt a pandemic: They can harness and manipulate fear (#2)
7/ Snyder talks about why Trump didn’t want to test for the virus.
Elsewhere, when asked why Trump let the virus rage when it was hitting blue states, Snyder said: "A virus is a lazy man's ethnic cleaning."
8/ He gives an example of how profit-driven hospitals kills people (Screenshot #1)
He argues for putting doctors back in charge. Now doctors are captive to profit-creating algorithms, which puts them in a subordinate position. (#2)
9/ Snyder makes a (good) Constitutional argument for health care as a protected right. You can’t have life or liberty or “pursue” anything if you’re sick.
How many people are stuck in a job they don’t like and can’t seek other opportunities because they need health insurance?
10/ The book succeeds as a
🔹memoir
🔹scathing critique of our healthcare system
🔹manifesto for becoming free
The premise is this: When a government tries to create fairness instead of maintaining a hierarchy, we are all healthier and happier.
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For years I was perplexed by what I was seeing on left-leaning Twitter, political blogs, and partisan reporting.
I had the feeling that, in its way, what I was seeing was comparable to Fox: Lots of bad information and even unhinged conspiracy theories.
2terikanefield.com/invented-narra…
Of course, if I suggested that, I was blasted for "both-sidesing."
Then I discovered an area of scholarship: Communications and the overlap between communications and political science.
Another contradiction: when people demanded indictments RIGHT NOW (in 2021 and early 2022) the reason was, "Everyone knows he's guilty! Look at all the evidence!"
We saw the J6 committee findings.
Trump isn't saying "I didn't do it." He's saying, "I had the right to do it."
2
We all know what he did. The question is, "Do people want a president who acts like Trump?"
A lot of people do.
People show me polls that a guilty finding would change minds.
I say rubbish. Use common sense. He lost in 2020 and he lost the popular vote in 2016. . .
3/
. . . because it is designed to keep people hooked. People need to stay glued to the screen for hour after hour.
But to hook people, you need to scare them. The Facebook whistleblower testified that content that produces strong emotions like anger gets more engagement.
2/
Fox does the same thing. There is a few minutes of news, but the facts get lost as commentators and TV personalities speculate and scare their audiences.
Before you yell at me for comparing MSNBC to FOX, read all of this:
If I write another blog post addressing the outrage cycle here on Twitter and in the MSNBC ecosystem, it will be to explore why so many people who believe they are liberal or progressive actually want a police state.
1/
Today alone, a handful of people who consider themselves liberal or progressive told me that the "traitors need to be arrested and prosecuted."
In 2019, back when I wore myself out tamping down misinformation, I explained the legal meaning of treason.
2/
Back then, I now realize, people asked politely: "Can Trump be prosecuted for treason (over the Russia election stuff).
I explained that wouldn't happen.
Now it's different. It's more like fascist chants.
3/