First There Was An Option, Then There Was No Option, Then There Was

Psy-Ops & Agitprop In The HCR Debate

I have asserted frequently enough that the drama in Washington over the 'reform' measures being debated to change the face of Health Insurance is basically a staged show, designed to instruct the populace in the ways of Power. Below, I have sketched of the general outlines of the situation in terms of the application of a strategy of psy-ops in the context of internal agitprop.

It just comes down to numbers; we can all do the math:

When you're one percent of the population and you own or control more wealth than the lowest 95% of folks, it is worth your while to keep that 95% occupied with matters of life and death, so they don't have time or energy to think about the disparity between their wealth and yours. Or to get ideas about how to rectify such obscene imbalances. Or the relatively few, relatively crude means by which they might do so, if they were so inspired.

Far better that the proles should fear, and struggle, for their own survival, that they should fear the loss of their houses, their jobs, their savings, their toys. Depriving them of the assurance of the ability to pay to sustain their health is part of that oppression. This is called "worker discipline" in bland euphemisms of labor relations.

And that's what this whole health insurance reform charade has been about. What it really is is an elaborate, and clever and well thought-out psy-op: Into a population already edgy and afraid of homelessness, foreclosure, unemployment, destitution, desperation and ravaged hopes, you offer a tantalizing 'cookie': the Public Option. This is the plan, along with the veiled promise for relief from a constant, vexing human problem: paying for health care. Reform of the USer health-care system is desperately needed. People loose their whole accumulated wealth ttrying to fight debilitating and mortal diseases. The 'discourse in DC since Pres. Shamwow's election has offered the apparent promise of relief, especially from the grip of predatory insurance companies, the evils of which are a large part of the lore of corpoRat irresponsibility in USer economy.

Only it isn't, and never was and never will be.

Cuz they're playing Skinner tricks, a Pavlovian, 'behaviorist' game: First there is an option, then there in no option, then there is...Over the course of the last 18 months the chimera of real help to the desperate people has been offered, and then withdawn, and offered and, then again withdrawn, over and over; frustratingly, each episode seeming to come closer than the time before to that which everybody wants and needs but which shall, nevertheless, for reasons of commerce, be forever denied them: Universal, single-payer, non-profit, cradle-to-grave health and wellness assurance.

That we are NEVER gonna have. But the "public option" keeps the shade of the idea, its penumbra, in play. And the corpoRat lick-spittles in DC want it in there because it increases the psychic shock of every advance and retreat is magnified by the desirability of that which is offered and then denied.

The genius of the whole operation is that nothing ever actually has to happen to effect these public psychic breaks.? Just a few words in the lap-dog merdia (neologism-alert: Merdia!) suffice to spike or dash the hopes of the hopeful, which at some level is everyone.

The only possible conclusion is that they've played us like the rubes we are, and when they finally decide on the awful, reeking, feculent Senate bill, everybody will be so relieved that, when something becomes law and they hail it as an accomplishment of Rooseveltian scale and scope--the return of the Titanic to NY Harbor would occasion only slightly more wonderment and joy--the rubes will cheer and wave and praise the Owners for their generosity...

And nothing changes...