JonathanTurley December 14 2013
I believe that it is impossible to deal with any problem until one understands the underlying nature of that problem. The analogy of a Physician treating the symptoms of a patient, but ignoring the cause of those symptoms, comes to mind. We have the medicine to deal with the specific manifestation of an illness like a headache and a fever, but in ameliorating the discomfort of the symptoms, we may miss the underlying pathology. This happened to me last March when shortly after being prescribed a change in the anti-rejection medicines that keep me alive after my heart transplant, I began to get so sick that I needed hospitalization in intensive care. I won’t bore you with the grimy details of this sudden downturn in health, but I must note that my most important bodily functions began to shut down. What is curious about this incident is that my wife, who is internet savvy, immediately began to suggest to my Doctors that I was having a bad reaction to the medicinal change. At first they ignored her as they had Department Heads in Cardiology, Immunology, Infectious Diseases, Neurology, Proctology, Urology and even Dermatology come in to examine me and pore over my medical charts. Finally, in response to my wife’s unfailing advocacy, they returned me to my prior anti-rejection medication. To my Physician’s surprise and possible chagrin the symptoms almost immediately began to abate and within in days I was home from the hospital and on the mend.
While the story above may seem to be far afield from my topic today, I use it to illustrate how even the best minds can be distracted from an underlying pathology by the symptoms it presents. The pathology I want to deal with in this piece is that of our America becoming a country increasingly divided between rich and poor. We are a country at war with itself. That war is one defined by social/economic class and by skin color. The manifestations of the “warfare” are to be seen in our political system and the mock battles between “conservatives” and “liberals” for the soul of the nation. Yet the two dominant parties are both financed, thus controlled, by those who are extremely wealthy. Their party differences seem only to be ones of degree. By degree I mean the Republican’s are in favor of an all out war on those of lower economic status, while the Democrat’s seek to ameliorate the effects upon them, but continue the economic dominance of that miniscule percentage of our people. To my mind the problem of economic inequality in our country is merely a symptom of an underlying psychological mindset of those with wealth and thus great power. Those of us who would change the equation between wealth and class find ourselves fighting the “symptoms” of this class warfare, but these “symptoms” confuse our cause. On a macrocosmic scale the “battles” in this “warfare” are “fought” via political ideologies based on theories by “great” economists and social commentators. To my mind these are “mock battles” because they are involved only in symptoms misdiagnosed by “experts”. Permit me to explain.