I spent some time at the local library this weekend getting some work done. I took some time to graze through some periodicals, including the Utne Reader. It’s been several years since I last picked up the Utne in a tiny Michigan town, and that’s a decision I have come to regret. The January/February 2010 issue has some fantastic articles and dispatches.

In particular there’s a quick dispatch from the IEEE Spectrum on the coming streetcar revival. Considering I’ve been planning a move to the stereotypical trolley-land of San Francisco in two years, the timing is interesting, to say the least. Nevermind that the true trolleys are the land of tourists and real transportation is on subways and trolley-busses (far less romantic).

I’m sort of passionate about public transportation. While driving is convenient (and a necessity for my current locale), it stands in stark contrast to my ethics. Cars are perhaps, among other things, a hallmark of American consumption and consumerism. They’re also terribly inefficient in terms of resources, and time & energy waste. And I’m aware that most people who have never lived in a public transport mecca will go on and on and on about how that is false, cars save so much time, blah blah blah.

I hate to break it to you, but no. They don’t. I’ll concede that they do in public transport black holes, but anyone who’s lived in cities where transportation is essential to the entire population will understand my point. When implemented effectively, public transportation is superior and reduces pollution and the need for resources. It’s why I’m such a huge fan of the bicycle.

But back to the trolleys. I find them to be exciting. It could potentially be a way to get an effective public transportation system in place without the crazy high costs associated with them. Smaller metropolises could utilize a streetcar system to great effect. The more people we get on mass transit the better. Driving a car is political, and it’s not politics I endorse.

This is completely awesome. I’m having trouble expressing just how much glee this brings to my life. The Editor’s Note of the issue, I think, states it well:

But the bionics of modern medical engineering has little to do with enabling someone to run 60 miles an hour or use an eye like a zoom lens. It is more about the quiet miracle of holding a fork or seeing the silhouette of a tree. [...] “It made me feel I was just Ray again”

I know what it means to lose part of yourself. Perhaps not in the physical, corporeal sense, but in no way less painful and traumatizing. It’s really difficult to regain that footing, that sense of “this is me.” The fact that these new technologies are giving some of that back to people is simply beautiful.

In some ways it is a touch creepy. Reading about the rewiring of nerve-ends gives my skin the crawlies. I couldn’t read the section on how bionic eyes work. The details are gross, but the big picture is amazing. And I hope that this doesn’t become corrupted in too quick a fashion. I know some of my cyberpunk fanboys are drooling over the idea of that arm with a weapon attached. In the technological dream, such fantasies are cool and fun. I just hope they never enter reality.

Photo courtesy of Mark Thiesson via National Geographic.

Mitchell points out that it’s not really about “red” vs. “blue” America. Instead it is about keeping privilege, power, and wealth with those who already have it and keeping it from those who don’t. You don’t have to be one side or the other to carry favor and advantage.

The debate in Washington this fall ought to have been about why the United States has the worst health-care system in the developed world, why Americans pay twice the Western average to maintain that system, and what fundamental changes are needed to make the system better serve us. But Democrats rendered those questions academic when they decided the first principle of reform would be, as Barack Obama has so often explained, that “nothing in our plan requires you to change what you have.”

This is what I find so frustrating. Our system is fundamentally broken. By refusing to rebuild it from the ground up, it keeps that fundamental sickness in the administration. As someone who has taken a lot of antibiotics knows, you don’t stop taking the pills when you start to feel better. Doing so is dangerous because it can breed resistant strains.

We are at a turning point where we as a nation can take a stand on profit vs. ethics. Unfortunately, it seems we are taking the route of profit, even when we know better. The universal mandate without a public option simply delivers 47 million new customers to a system that doesn’t actually do anything. The health insurance companies don’t actually provide a necessary service. They don’t help sick people. They are bureaucracy for bureaucracy’s sake. One could argue a public option would be more of the same, but at least it wouldn’t be a for-profit bureaucracy.

This is unethical. The health insurance system is unethical because it is privately profitable. When you mix profit with human life the only outcome is violence. We are all victims of that violence, even if we don’t recognize it readily. I, for one, am ready for a less violent system yesterday. Denying sick people the care they need is a violent act. It’s disgusting that our manipulated sympathies with corporate entities has made that immediately unrecognizable.

We need change, and this is one case where we need to change everything. If we let any portion of the old system survive, the inherent violence in it is going to fester and one day we will be back to where we are today. We should be working to end this violence against our citizenry, to end private profit on human life at the expense of the individual. We’ve been hoodwinked into thinking about individual needs as academic questions while corporate needs are economic. This is, on the most basic level, backwards.