On healthcare.... and how threads become flame wars

it is my observation that when it comes to things like diet, smoking and other issues that will impact a national health care plan, some folks have taken the libertarian view of it is your own damn fault if... insert problem here.

They have also taken the view that if you are interested in the subject, it means you obviously smoke, eat badly, are overweight, what have you. Apparently I hunt baby harp seals in the arctic circle since I am appalled at the practice, but I digress.

In fact, what we see on those threads are true to form people who don't want to look at emerging science, so next time a DU'er tells me that lefties do respect science and righties do not... forgive me for laughing, to the point of sides hurting. The American people are overall uneducated on how science works, and gosh darn it, don't let science interfere with personal belief systems, whether this is evolution or diet or advanced physics. It really does not matter, the attitudes are ingrained and are part of the anti-intellectual bent in the US that is part of the culture.

Therefore I have concluded that either we ignore these folks... yes they will come to those threads like clockwork, or find another venue to have these discussions. After all, how we deal with silly shit like corporations and their role in the food industry, smoking, and other issues of public health matter, especially as we HOPEFULLY move to some form of public health.

Reality is that if you believe corporations have YOUR interest at heart... well if you own stock, absolutely... otherwise, forget it.

Oh and I do intend to continue to discuss the issue, but I intend to studiously avoid the PRC, they are just not worth my time anymore. After all, having a facts discussion with the faith based solution crowd does not work for this, or other health issues.

nadin

PS... I expect the usual crowd, like clockwork, to start the flames... it is like the sun rising in the East. It will just happen... so I beg of you folks, do not take the bait.

and some old white guy who lives in the clouds, as opposed to evolution. It's very hard for them to form any reason. They want everything right away, damnit, and don't want to have to think about it!

Most of the time I just ignore the ignorance, but there's a part of me that wants to teach people who are willing to learn, and if I convince one of them to just think for once, my "mission" is accomplished. Then, maybe, just maybe they will pass on the thought of reason and logic to others.

Yeah, with some it's like beating yourself in the head with a baseball bat, but you have to keep trying. (and they call me a pessimist.)

I am done... truly

And we have the equivalent of the snake handlers on all sides... and that is part of the culture.

If you give up, then they win by default. You have given up the good fight. I know how you feel, I have been there. Perhaps you need a breather, but DO NOT GIVE UP.

You can try to reason, but there are some times that there is nobody to reason with

I like to deal in facts, they deal in faith... two very different world views...

As to wining, actually they win when they manage to get the discussion drowned up, and threads locked.

Tell me, how many years have you been in this battle of Liberal and Conservative ideas?
I have been battling them for 38 years, and I am 54. Granted, I had to take some time to chill here and there, as I burned out from time to time, but I came back, because I will not give up on my beliefs, and the belief that I can educate .0001% of them. It has to start somewhere. If you need a break, I can understand. Take a breather, but don't drop out of the "game." We need all the people we can get.

that goes back 200 years, or so.

Don Quixote, your lance... me, no thanks... I will watch as they make these arguments and ignore what they have to say on this board. I am done.

And if that is letting them win... fine by me. I am done with letting them drown the discussion and divert it from useful goals to whatever their goals are. I have yet to figure those out, and I fear I will never do.

As to the RW... conservative, my friends has precious few of those any longer. Why? I am done with that... there comes a time when you have to chose your fights... and I rather fight to get the legislation passed... not my neighbor who will never, ever see the need for insert social program here.

And weight control isn't just a matter of putting down the doughnuts? And that everyone may not have plenty of time to make their own bread and other time- and space-consuming items from scratch? Well sheesh.

:sarcasm:

Well said

... but I forgot where I was. :hi:

It's tough for them.

:fistbump:

Sometimes it's not a million miles away from 'Let them eat cake' - except that cake isn't a healthy enough food from that point of view!

There, how's that flame for you? ;-)

serious.

:hi:

"Better fat and fit than skinny and unfit". OK, let's break that down into two parts. First what you've said is that its better to be fit than unfit - and its hard to disagree with that and I'm happy to accept that part of the argument. So then the question that is left, is it better to be fat or skinny. I presume by Fat you mean significantly over weight and by skinny you mean significantly underweight - other wise you'd have said its better to be fit and normal than it is to be normal and unfit, which you didn't say. So the question really is one of if its be to be off the scale to one end or the other, and I'd have to say no, it isn't, it is in fact better to be fit and of normal weight for one's stature.

On Edit: Spelling and grammer correction.

that pesky science,

Most people still go by the actuarial tables designed back in the day. hell, even the armed services does that...

So to be fit and as close to healthy weight, is what you should strive to. Given the research emerging on many issues including obesity, Leptein chain, and other things, such as genetics... it is actually more complex than that.

It is the level of complexity that the PRC recoils at... every time and twice on Sunday.

:hi:

One of the most underdiagnosed illnesses out there due to lack of education and a commonly-accepted test which is inefficient to measure all of thyroid function. If your thyroid is slow due to things such as environmental toxicity or stress, forget about losing weight!

And depression - it disables many people and they are either too tired or don't care about anything, including healthy living and eating habits.

Been there, done that, and tired of trying to convince people that an overweight person is not any less of a human being than a skinny person.

It is stupid that too many subscribe to the calories in -> calories out, you-are-a-lazy-fatass hypothesis.

that cannot see the complexity of things.

Their answer... stop making excuses...

Diabetics also have a hell of a time losing weight until late in the disease due to insulin resistance....

Oh there, I just gave another excuse

:sarcasm:

And I want to forgive them for that, but let me just be mean and say... :mad:

I wish all the people who are so ignorant as to torture overweight people just for fun, laugh at them, tell them to go to Jenny Craig, and make them feel like crap - I wish them all to become really, really, really fat and live in contempt of themselves for years.

It is more acceptable to be a bad human being, a dog torturer, a criminal, it seems, than to be overweight.

shoes for a mile.

I suspect most of the PRC crowd will face any of these ahem social ills, sooner or later.

Whether it is due to thyroid function... the most under diagnosed syndrome in the US (last time I checked, and it might have to do with JP-5 in water tables)... all the way to side effects of a slew of meds. Perhaps even that thing called getting older.

And that day they just might get a clue, though I suspect that instead of that, they will become even louder as to why "insert here" happened to them... and how this is NOT their responsibity.

It is like the smoker that quits cold turkey and breaks all kinds of odds. good for them, but they become the most hard core anti smoking people you will ever meet, at least in my experience.

Perhaps its because I quit due to cost, but I have fortunately not become one of those obnoxious anti-smokers. If I ever do, I hope my still smoking friends slap some sense back into me.

And for those people who love to taunt fat people under the guise of "caring"- You all need to take a long hard look at yourselves. You will forever be nasty, cruel, dishonest, shallow assholes. In my opinion, that is worse then being fat and far less attractive.

Well, my doc wants me to get my BP into the triple digits; maybe this is just the ticket!

:-)

I have studies ready to refute some 'thoughts' that have been made already but ...argh... restraint! restraint!

:-)

it has nothing to do with religion and everything to do with personal liberty and the right to pursue happiness. Government's job is to do what the people cannot and social authoritarians of all stripes loose track of that and spend all their energy trying to have government dictate individual behavior, which individuals do have the ability to control.

Where we fall off the tracks with the big "L" libertarians is we don't fail to remember that governments role is to do what the individual cannot and that we don't see corporations as persons. We can't police the government or these corporations, we can't provide a common defense, we can't construct infrastructure, we can't take care of the sick or the poor. We know the limitations and obstacles that an individual faces in the real world and therefore believe in putting in systems to deal with what one person cannot.

I'm not here to blast the OP but to explain that there are substantive differences in the role and purpose of government, which are at odds with individual freedom and happiness. We'd rather deal with the costs of obesity than tell someone they aren't allowed to eat what they want and believe that if we can get a handle on what corporations and government is doing that is jacked up that the price of individual self determination is quite affordable.

quite another to refuse to aknowledge the role of corporate entities in this crisis, never mind the science is there to at least suggest we cut down on certain adds (food adds) to the most vulnerable of our population.

Go ahead, eat whatever you want, but government has a real role in this crisis... like it did with tobacco and like it did with lead.

And to say that corporations have your interest at heart (unless you own stock, then they do) and that we should trust corporations to do the right thing... (unless again this is to make a profit, the largest the better), it is to be blind to the reality.

The PRC refuses to even aknowledge that there is science, and solid science emerging, as a matter of belief... not unlike the evolution deniers out there. In fact, it is exactly the same pattern.

Now what we will have to decide is the level of invovement of government in regulating corporate entities... and revising the national food plan. That is surely open for discussion. But the PRC does not want to go there, out of fear that they will be told WHAT TO EAT... well, they are, right now, but like the health care debate, it is fine when it is done in corporate boards...

Now if you think that is freedom... then by all means. We have nothing else to say in this matter to each other.

Oh and as to the statement that most people are social libertarians... I somehow doubt it, by the way... but unless we did a full fledged social study of the US, including the usual polls and social science research I could not prove this to you, or you to me. So insofar as this is concerned, it is a faith statement. I admit it though. And I'd love to see the ACTUAL data,

1) I've always observed the libertarian view, as being less the personal responsibility angle, and more of the social Darwinist-type "well, if circumstances hit, and for whatever reason you can't afford $1500 dollars a month, or find a job that provides you top of the line health-care coverage, you suck and deserve to die anyway" type of thinking.

The value of somebodies life, in their view, is only as much as they happen to contribute to some bizarre anarchic collective they have dreamed up. If you can't keep up, well, tough shit. The jackals and hyenas get to feast on the laggers and weak ones. IMHO, that's the rotten side of the libertarian point of view. Enlightened selfishness, is still selfishness.

2) The reason we tend to flame out here in these types of social issues discussions, is that most Americans have ZERO clue, as to what an actual society really is, because America is a hell of a long way from being a society. We are more of a collection of 300 million selfish, whiny, individuals, than a real society.

What I mean by that, is, in a society, each member has a collective responsibility to the whole. An individual can't abdicate responsibility for another individual just because they don't know them, they don't like them, or they don't happen to think they're economically productive. Even those on DU that happen to call themselves "progressives" have shown that side of themselves on this board again, and again, and again. Hell...just click on any random Mike Vick, or Squeeky Fromm threads that have infested GD in the past few days, if you want to see some good old DU examples of that "fuck 'em, they can go to hell, they are worthless anyway" mentality.

So that's sort of my lame-assed attempt to explain why I think the flames have been in overdrive lately. It's hard to explain it, because it's really not all that simple, but it's a lot simpler than trying to make sense of the bluster, hyperbole and flying spittle that's been directed at each other here for the past few weeks.

I know that there is an ideological sort of a battle going on right now, and the health-care debate is actually the perfect representation of it...the right-wing/GOP/libertarian/freeptards are fighting for a non-society of individualists, and all of their perceived freedoms that are supposed to go with that. Us left-wing/liberal/socialist types are fighting for ...well, fuck, I haven't the first inkling of a real clue know what we are really fighting for, but I am hoping that we are all fighting to make this country more of a society, and less of a loose collective of selfish assholes.

And...If none of this made sense, I apologize. I just had cancer surgery on Friday, and have been so jacked up on painkillers since then, I don't know what the hell I am saying sometimes. ;)

and if somebody else needs a translation, let me know.

And yes, you have some of what is going on down perfectly well.

And the happy juice can be fun at times.... been there, done that...

:hi:

what they have.

though well said.

This is the almost religious belief that all the emerging science we have on obesity, exercise physiology, marketing, psychology and all that jazz are just excuses for the insert social ill here, given by those with the insert medical issue here. It does not matter if this is obesity, alcoholism, or any number of other social problems. If they had a will power and were perfect like... the PRC they'd be able to do the right thing. See they do... why can't you be so perfect.

Never mind that there is a strong component of genetics involved... or a slew of other factors. Those are just excuses, because people should just be able to lift themselves by their bootstraps.

It does not matter how many facts you show to these folks. Their faith based solution is do as I say...

Oh and if you are poor and don't have access to ... insert product here... because it is either out of your reach economically, or the only store does not carry, well tough shit, next case.

Of course that extends to medical tests. I mean if you were perfect like me, you'd be able to get tested for insert here, and get treated. Oh never mind I have insurance and thankfully can afford it... that little factoid never, ever shall cross their lips, or typing fingers. The same goes for food by the way... most of these people have never had to go... hmmm fresh fruit or gas...

though to be fair a lot of the worst posts from this point of view seem to come from a troll, who rises from the dead more often than a phoenix, and has a more bizarre username each time!

and that is the sad part.

:-)

Though the behavior is not unlike that of the evolution does not exist crowd, or the deathers at the health forums.

:hi:

We love you Grovelbot, we all do.

OP?

though, I can't say I have the will to follow your suggestion there is a point where the mind-numbing repetitiveness of my opponent's argument (and the care taken not to address established facts) leads me to give up.

their goal is to get threads locked... not to have a conversation.

So like you I have given up on having any kind of an exchange with them. Not even the time of day. I mean the sun rises in the East I am sure is not factual enough for them either. And as a matter of faith, it rises in the north.

:sarcasm: