A POLITICIAN TO KEEP ME SAFE
I want a politician who will keep me safe:
– You are 35,079 times more likely to die from heart disease than from a terrorist attack
I want my politicians to invest my tax dollars into publicly funded medical research on how to reduce heart disease and other common health problems. The funds for this can be taken from the rogue US military and Dept. of Homeland “Security.” I want my politicians to keep me safe.
– You are 33,842 times more likely to die from cancer than from a terrorist attack
“The United States health care system is the most expensive in the world, but this report and prior editions consistently show the U.S. underperforms relative to other countries on most dimensions of performance. Among the 11 nations studied in this report—Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States—the U.S. ranks last” “The most notable way the U.S. differs from other industrialized countries is the absence of universal health coverage.” – – The Commonwealth Fund
I want my politicians to quit wasting my tax dollars making the CEO’s of private “health” insurance and pharmaceutical companies obscenely rich. I want my politicians to institute a public, single payer national healthcare system like all other industrialized nations. This will make my children much safer and save me a lot of money. I want my politicians to keep me safe.
– You are 4,706 times more likely to die from alcoholism than from a terrorist attack
I want my politicians to quit wasting my tax dollars incarcerating people for having a disease. Research shows treatment for alcohol, drug abuse, and mental health problems is much less expensive and much more effective than supporting the prison industrial complex.
The US now has the highest incarceration per capita rate in the world. At 716 per 100,000 people it is 5 times higher than China, 2.5 times higher than Iran, and 1.2 times higher than North Korea. We spend over $60 billion annually on state and federal prisons. “Our incarceration policy is very costly with relatively few benefits and a lot of deleterious effects on our economy and our families and on the fabric of our communities,” says June Tangney, PhD, a psychology professor at George Mason University who studies offender rehabilitation.
Moving funds from prisons to treatment facilities will save me a lot of money and do much more to reduce dangerous antisocial behavior. I want my politicians to keep me safe.
– You are 1,904 times more likely to be killed in a car accident than from a terrorist attack
The crumbling roads I drive on every day are dangerous and a serious threat to my family. My country’s infrastructure is falling apart and is way behind the rest of the industrialized world. I want my politicians to fix it. The money to pay for this can be taken out of the rogue US military industrial complex and Dept. of Homeland “Security.” I want my politicians to keep me safe.
– You are 8 times more likely to be killed by a police officer than by a terrorist
I want my police officers given the great respect they deserve for doing a difficult and at times dangerous job. I want them to be part of my community. I want them to be a welcome and protective neighbor for my children and me.
But I want my politicians to keep me safe. I want my politicians to adequately fund extensive officer training. I want officers to be highly skilled in diffusing dangerous situations. I want my politicians to pass rules and regulations to insure all police candidates are closely screened to be certain they have the proper temperament for the difficult tasks they will face, to be certain they do not have racist or other sociopathic tendencies.
Above all, I want my politicians to demilitarize my police departments. It is a terrible waste of my tax dollars and history shows that militarized police departments have often been turned against their own citizens by authoritarian governments. I want my politicians to keep me safe.
– You are 6 times more likely to die from hot weather than from a terrorist attack
I want all subsidies to the climate destroying fossil fuel industry ended and those funds redirected to the development of alternative energies. I want old, dangerous pipelines removed and new pipeline construction ended. The expansion of the fossil fuel energy regime is a threat to the future of my children and grandchildren. These fuels must be phased out as quickly as possible. I want my politicians to keep me safe . . . .
It is obvious if our politicians truly wished to keep us safe there would be a massive reallocation of funds to domestic programs that actually would make us more healthy and secure. But without widespread popular protest our politicians will never do this. It doesn’t serve the wealthy donors that control them.
Fear and hatred are powerful tools for manipulation and have been used masterfully by the military industrial complex, the Dept. of Homeland “Security,” and more broadly by the oligarchic, plutocratic power structure, to divide and subjugate the people of America. We have been convinced to trade our privacy, our freedom, our democracy, and the economic future of our children for the false security of ever more invasive authoritarian control at home, and ever more imperialist military adventurism abroad. This represents a far greater danger to U.S. citizens than any terrorist.
The madman Trump is more symptom than cause – the rational outcome of irrational fear. But it doesn’t have to be this way. We can stand back up. We can regain our courage, our dignity, and our humanity. The words of Woodie Guthrie come to mind:
“This land is your land, this land is my land”