Having Fun All The Time

I recently discovered that the New Yorker has a bunch of free podcasts that you can download back episodes of in the iTunes store, the most interesting of which is called “The Political Scene”, a monthly conversation about American politics hosted by the magazine’s executive editor, Dorothy Wickendon.

One of the things I have soaked up from the podcasts is that there are a bunch of reasons that the Democrats lost so many seats in Congress in the midterm elections. Everybody seems to think the biggest reason is the persistent shittyness of the economy, combined with a general “lack of trust” in the government (mostly due to the bailout which seemed to favor banks over common people) and a feeling that Congress in general has been ineffective.

One thing that strikes me that could also be a big reason is that one of the biggest pieces of legislation that the Democrats have managed to pass since Obama took office has been health care reform, which has from the start been a great program that seems destined to truly help tens of millions of people and make America a fairer and better place to live, but unfortunately just seems really hard to get excited about. Whenever I think of health care reform I think, yeah, that’s awesome, now we will finally have what Canadians have had for decades, it’s about time…but I also think, damn, now I’m going to have to pay for health care in the future whether I want to or not. I think bills and paperwork and headaches…even though I know this is the right thing, I’m happy this happened, this is definitely what I wanted and this is why I voted for Obama.

This is the opposite of the effect of something like, say, the Iraq War had for the Republican base. Even though it disgusted many of those of us on the left, it definitely got the rocks off of most of the people who went on American-flag shopping sprees after September 11th. It was decidedly polarizing, a rock-star-excitement moment for hawks and a moment of fear and despair for doves.

Healthcare is maybe somewhere near as historic as Bush’s war, but nobody is on their lawn Yosemite Samming over it. There are just some of us quietly thanking Obama, and then a bunch of insurance men in suits running all over the place trying to shut it down.

I guess that doesn’t play so well for Democrats come election day.

There are certain things that, as an American, you take for granted. And I have been realizing lately that when I was still in America there were some things I had never really thought about before — things that I have now, after living in China for 14 months, had more reason to consider.

The first one and one of the most important is that there are things we get as Americans that a lot of other people don’t get automatically; it just comes with the territory of living in an “undeveloped” country.

Like what? What could be so great about life in America that you can’t get someplace else?

Well, at first, nothing. You don’t really notice the stuff until you’ve been outside for a while. Then it all starts to stick out at you.

Take traffic, for example. At first, I just found the traffic here insane and thought no more of it. But now I think a little further, and think that the people here have no other choice. It’s their reality to almost get killed every other day crossing the street.

OK, that one’s easy. How about building codes. Does anybody inspect the buildings here to make sure they’re safe and nothing is going to fall on you and kill you? Apparently not. Exhibit A is the building that fell down in Shanghai last year complete, just fell over in one big piece. Fire escapes are rare and precarious-looking structures are ubiquitous.

This building fell over in one big piece in Shanghai last year

Moving on. The next one is hospitals. One of the few foreigners I know in this town had to get his appendix removed in the local hospital, and somehow during the surgery they didn’t quite put everything back in the right place when they sewed him up. So some of his stomach muscles don’t work anymore.

Peter Hessler, in his book “River Town”, also points out that a few of his acquaintances died in his two years in a Sichuan river city, due mostly to a less safe healthcare system.

The next one is mental health. I was explaining to my Chinese teacher (who is a psychology professor) recently some of the services my sister receives as a disabled person. One of the things I mentioned was that there are social workers who come to hang out with her and take her shopping and stuff like that.

Her response was: We don’t have those kind of people in China.

I also have some personal experience with a kid with a disability who’s family is afraid of telling the public school system about the kid’s disability for fear that teachers will ignore the kid and people will ridicule him, because disabled people have no real enforceable legal rights in the education system here.

Compare that to the system in America where kids may be teased for having disabilities, but where they are also entitled to a whole host of rights and resources and modified forms of education (at least a great deal of the time), which entitlements are enforceable by suing the state.

Then, of course, there’s health care for the old, which I don’t know much about here but seems to be more or less nonexistent. I have had a couple of students whose elders have been dying or have passed away due to cancer of various varieties; the families didn’t have the money to pay for surgery so the old people just died, and this has happened occasionally with young people, too.

It’s hard to explain better than that, and probably none of this sounds particularly new or interesting. But it changes things to live here and know that if I were these people this would be my only reality — the world in which I would have to live and survive forever — and I think if that were the case for me my life would be a whole lot more oriented towards making money and finding security than it is now. Because the people here who manage to become wealthy-ish are able to have many of the securities and comforts that we’re afforded in wealthier western countries.

Many, but of course, not all.

Even more cause for a belated moment of gratitude.