alternet--2020-12-01--The perverted dreams of western modernity and capitalism may be exhausting themselves

Do you , inhabitant of the marvelous and menacing late-modern world , detect something missing – some kind of vitality , meaning , connectedness , love , beauty , or wonder ?
If so , you 've likely searched for a story to explain it .
A popular narrative offers that something rather ugly happened on the way to modernity .
As the Middle Ages gave way to the upheavals of the Reformation , the Enlightenment , and rising capitalism , a vanguard of scientists , professors of reason , Protestants , and money men ( for they were almost @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the shackles of the past .
They fashioned bold new ideas and ways of being , but in doing so crimped the human spirit and frayed the ties that bind us to our neighbors , to nature , and to our own hearts .
Even the needful and cherished material objects in our lives — the cooking pot , the plow , the spindle — lost their sacred glow .
It 's a tale of disenchantment : a cultural coming-of-age in which the protagonist wakes up from charmed sleep and , as the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ accepts that it is time to buckle down to business , relying on self-discipline and a strong work ethic to see the way through .
In this story , people take on secular attitudes and values .
They turn from community to competition .
The sin of greed becomes the desirable trait of `` self-interest '' and the habit of devotion gives way to the quest for domination .
Veneration morphs into venality .
We ditch the old totems and taboos and work like crazy , trying our best to be thrifty and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , now our chief focus .
By the time we arrive at the 21st century , the neoliberal regime and its chosen institution , the global corporation , are bringing us dazzling products that promise to meet our wants and needs .
The system may be rapacious and exploitive , true .
We may often feel twinges of unfulfillment and uncertainty , yes .
But that 's the price we pay for the goodies and convenience .
The dispirited must suck it up , for , as Maggie Thatcher famously insisted , there @ @ @ @ @ @ @ really the whole story ?
Did human beings flip a switch and give up the psychic , moral , and spiritual longings that had been with us for millennia ?
Did we no longer need connection to something greater than our own bank accounts ?
Did we lose the feeling for something sacred and enchanted in the universe ?
Possibly not .
Critics of the disenchantment narrative have long noticed that if you look closely at western modernity , this ostensibly secular and rational regime , you find it pretty much teeming with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ promises of grace .
Maybe the human yearning for enchantment never went away ; it just got redirected .
God is there , just pointing down other paths .
As scholars like Max Weber have noted , capitalism is a really a religion , complete with its own rites , deities , and rituals .
Money is the Great Spirit , the latest gadgets are its sacred relics , and economists , business journalists , financiers , technocrats , and managers make up the clergy .
The central doctrine holds that money will @ @ @ @ @ @ @ if we heed the dictates of the market gods .
As the rap artist Run DMC once put it , money becomes salvation : Under Mammon , we shall reach a state of blessedness in which all our desires are realized : a heaven on earth .
We become gods ourselves .
All throughout the modern era , poets , dissenting scholars , writers , political radicals , and a motley assortment of ordinary apostates kept insisting that we are under the deadly spell of a false religion .
Eugene McCarraher 's The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Religion of Modernity is a magisterial account in this vein .
The author sets out to explain how we came to find ourselves devoted to the jealous god Mammon , and how we might get free .
In distinction to some like-minded thinkers , McCarraher holds that capitalism is not a disenchantment , or even a reinchantment , but rather a misenchantment , a `` parody or perversion of our longing for a sacramental way of being in the world . ''
He sees the condition peaking at beginning of the 21st century @ @ @ @ @ @ @ crises , political and social unrest , and now , as Ruskin scholar Jeffrey Spear and I have described , a pandemic in which the neoliberal priests demand human sacrifice to the cult of Mammon .
Here we are , many of us alienated , anxious , sick , bored , and slogging through with a suspicion that the dream of an iPhone in every pocket leaves much to be desired , and haunted by a feeling that capitalism did n't make us gods , but turned us into monsters who treat each @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to a garden of economic delights , our religion has befouled our home on Earth .
If the spell is beginning to wear thin , McCarraher thinks we should be thankful and prepare to repent and renew ourselves .
But first , we need to `` tell a different story about our country and its unexceptional sins . ''
His prophetically fired , thousand-page volume is that alternative story — not only a detailed history of the movement from an enchanted to a misenchanted world , but a condemnation of false prophets and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ different way of existing .
This is big , heady stuff .
And heartening stuff for the weary .
McCarraher begins with the advent of capitalism in the 17th century , tracing the progress of a set of ideas and values through the smoke of England 's factories and the new creed 's migration to America , where it is duly anointed by Puritans , evangelicals , and Mormons , whose founder Joseph Smith issues economic oracles .
We travel on to America 's launch as a nation , when the founders dedicate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ brotherhood and profit-seeking , a contradictory project embodied in Thomas Jefferson , who promotes a republic of frugal , virtuous yeoman while blowing — McCarraher does n't mention this point — ridiculous sums pimping out his mansion .
The tale continues through the Gilded Age , when the corporation acquires a soul in the form of `` personhood '' and capitalists seek to fashion a `` heavenly city of business '' through mechanized production .
Here we find spirit and capital co-mingled , as titans of business like Cornelius Vanderbilt attend séances where @ @ @ @ @ @ @ D. Rockefeller , Sr. , the son of a traveling snake oil salesman known as `` Devil Bill , '' insists that `` God gave me my money . ''
We come along to the think tanks and college seminars of the mid-20th century , where a rising order of magician-priests , the University of Chicago-trained economists and wonks , seek to remake everything , including the state , in the image of the market .
They use their best sleight-of-hand to protect Mammon from any interference from democracy while making it all @ @ @ @ @ @ @ American Century morphs into the `` neoliberal Market Everlasting , '' and Adam Smith 's Invisible Hand becomes the Not-So-Invisible Fist , described by Thomas Friedman , an exceptionally loyal neoliberal clergyman , in a 1999 New York Times magazine piece quoted by McCarraher : The rest is more and more of us getting clobbered by that almighty fist .
McCarraher 's tale brings plenty of fascinating twists and turns .
America produces potent witnesses against Mammon — often met with stark brutality — among Black Americans , whose initial position in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ into the god 's lies and ruses .
There are also the failed romances of communal societies where people try but ca n't ultimately escape the burden of misenchantment .
And we find prescient writers , like Henry David Thoreau and Herman Melville , who see the market clearly as a god of servitude .
But the Word that wins the day is that of Ralph Waldo Emerson , America 's cardboard answer to Nietzsche , who , in the guise of a `` romanticism of the future , '' preaches `` the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the cut-throat ways of capitalism as the undisputed way of the world , a view captured in a chilling line from `` The Young American '' : `` If one of the flock wound himself , or so much as limp , the rest eat him up incontinently . ''
This gobble-gobble gospel is enthusiastically embraced by business writers , managers and libertarians like Ayn Rand , a priestess of Mammon bent on `` bringing to a graceless apogee the American divinization of power that began with Emerson . ''
McCarraher offers an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ partly arises as a religious enterprise , with magazine publisher Freeman Hunt plugging a gospel of entrepreneurial divinity and the worship of technology , herding the flock towards a particular strain of misenchantment later called the `` technological sublime . ''
The promoters of scientific management , for their part , offer a beatific vision for control freaks — a devotion to timekeeping and standardized behavior that may have partly originated in medieval monasteries .
McCarraher illustrates how we start to break down on the road to `` progress . ''
We become @ @ @ @ @ @ @ control in the external world , but inside indulge in hedonistic daydreams first stoked by sentimental religion and popular novels , and later , by consumer culture and the self-help industry .
We 're all wrapped up in our fantasies as Mammon 's economist-priests order the faithful to suffer any conflict or scarcity for the promise of material happiness that awaits .
He points out that it was Adam Smith himself , in the Theory of Moral Sentiments , who revealed the Great Lie fed to the congregation in a description of a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the rich and famous , becomes `` enchanted '' and vows to work tirelessly to fulfill his desire for luxuries – only to find out in the end that it has all been a trivial pursuit .
Pitiful , but how else do you keep him in line ?
The misenchantment McCarraher describes is so pervasive that it even infects dissenters , like unions that downsize their ambition from power to just a little redistribution ; beatniks and hippies whose bohemian visions are swallowed up into consumer culture and corporate consciousness ; @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The Occupy Movement provides powerful anticapitalist testimony , but it looks like a lot of the `` 99 percent '' want to `` take back '' the American Dream , not awaken from it .
With the exception of the rising number of socialists ( many of them young people ) , a huge chunk of the population buys into the concept of progress based on unlimited economic growth and technological development , all of it driven by expanding material wants and expectations for godlike control of life .
We are left with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the stewards of humanity , like Jeff Bezos , who would like very much to rocket us all off to a technoparadise in space , where we can live happily ever after in temperature-regulated oscillating tubes .
McCarraher asks , is progress really progress if it looks like that ?
But wait , you say .
Does n't western modernity deliver some good things ?
We have a safety net in our old age .
We have certain protections from exploitation a medieval peasant could n't expect .
In most place other than @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to universal health care .
Yes , we do , acknowledges McCarraher .
But these benefits have been brought to us by people who fought against the misenchantment , like unions , welfare states , and radical movements .
Fair enough .
But what is the alternative ?
McCarraher does n't offer an easy way out , warning that our depleted imaginations prevent us from seeing much of anything but a life of indentured servitude to capital .
Do we turn to poetry ?
The ecstasy of the body ?
Radical politics ?
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Voluntary poverty ?
Artisanal anarchism ?
Do we commune with nature ?
Well , maybe as long as there 's a spark of what McCarraher calls `` sacramental vision , '' perhaps it really does n't matter .
In order to be alert and resist Mammon 's spell , we basically need something that posits the life of the spirit against the death culture of the market .
As writer and monk Thomas Merton put it , we also need to know that the score , to grok the fact that the claims @ @ @ @ @ @ @ need to commit ourselves to living by new values infused with affection , reverence , and spiritual adventure .
McCarraher finds the most invigorating opposition to capitalist misenchantment in the Romantic tradition .
He draws sustenance from the writing of 19th century critic John Ruskin , who pronounced economics a pseudoscience and declaimed against the `` Goddess of Getting on , '' urging people to give up the urge to dominate and control .
Though some Romantics were undoubtedly reactionary , as the author concedes , their focus on morality , the dignity @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for meaningful purpose is traceable in the work of dissenters ranging from Leo Tolstoy to Marx and Engels to Martin Luther King , Jr..
It shows up in the Anglo-Catholic sacramentalism of Vida Dutton Scudder , the gift-economy writing of Mary Austin , and the Personalist opposition of Dorothy Day , who rooted her challenge to industrial capitalism in Christian humanism .
It appears , too , in Lewis Mumford 's opposition to death culture and the authoritarian trends in technology , and in New Left writers like Norman O .
Brown , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ possibilities of the world .
In all of these can be detected Ruskin 's dictum that `` there is no wealth but life . ''
McCarraher finds the visions of Romanticism to more resilient and humane than those of Marxism , and more nuanced and accurate in their assessment of human nature .
He believes they provide a `` language for the human magnificence we witness in the wake of devastation … a language that expresses our longings both for a sense of the world 's magnitude and for fleshly access to transcendence @ @ @ @ @ @ @ best hope for an imaginative and political antithesis to capitalist enchantment resides in the lineage of Romantic , sacramental radicalism . ''
It 's pretty clear that his is not a secular romanticism .
The author is inspired by the poetry Gerard Manley Hopkins , the calls to fellowship of Pope Francis , and Christians who have preserved the reverence for the natural word , the ideal of communion , and an understanding of exploitation as an offense against human divinity .
He is partial to the idea is that we do n't @ @ @ @ @ @ @ already live in one — a world stamped by the grandeur of God and , as Hopkins put it , the `` dearest freshness deep down things . ''
Recognition of this wondrous vitality around us can help us to live a more fearless , vibrant life , confident of our real worth apart from the calculus of capitalism and reassured by the bounty and goodness of the world .
Well…certainly it is inspiring when Pope Francis calls the earth a shared inheritance to be enjoyed by all .
But frankly , this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in his version of God 's universe , women still rank as inferior beings , unfit to control their own bodies or speak directly to the Creator .
The problem is that when people get to talking about nature as bearing the watermark of its creator , that being inevitably turns out to be male , and we find ourselves ensorcelled by a misenchantment as deadly as Mammon 's creed , the cult of patriarchy , which gets noticeably little attention in McCarraher 's thousand-page book .
In fact , the two misenchantments @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 's co-option of sacredness , for example , tends to cast women as the ever-generous and bountiful handmaidens of Mammon .
Pope Francis may chastise us that our call to `` universal communion '' is corrupted by a lack of trust in God , but if you are female , you could perhaps be forgiven for not trusting God .
Theology has degraded women more than any other influence , and to this day , the world 's religions still conform to economist Heidi Hartmann 's definition of patriarchy as `` relations between @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and which , though hierarchical , establish or create interdependence and solidarity among men that enable them to dominate women . ''
The ideal of brotherhood often pretends to universalism , but in practice draws from the narrow experiences of powerful men .
Too often , it 's just an ideal of bros .
There 's also the issue that reading messages of love and abundance in nature assumes a benevolent , anthropomorphic Creator .
But it 's hard to square that with Stephen Jay Gould 's observation that there are many @ @ @ @ @ @ @ our human moral sensibilities , such as the ichneumon fly , which lays eggs on the host 's body and paralyzes it so it ca n't move as it 's slowly eaten alive .
You just ca n't get all Gerard-Manley-Hopkins on the ichneumon fly , I 'm sorry to say .
It is for this reason that feminist ecologists like Valerie Plumwood have cautioned us to see ourselves as part of nature but also to be respectful about nature 's otherness , and to avoid reading our own moral lessons from it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has looked to nature for moral inspiration and drawn terrible lessons , such as the lesser status of anyone who is not a straight white male .
Finally , there are dangerous strains of sacramental enchantment , as the global rise of Pentecostalism and strains of the far right illustrate .
Not every Romantic visionary is amenable to the idea of the sort of commonwealth McCarraher would like to see .
The author is clear that he does n't want a return to pre-modern technology or social relations , and undoubtedly he wants @ @ @ @ @ @ @ unfortunately , God is still hopelessly behind the times .
Could n't we just ditch the word altogether ?
Still , with all that said , McCarraher 's book is a highly rewarding and powerful expression of the longing for a more hospitable way of living and a potent call to orient ourselves towards our capacities as caring , creative , and convivial beings , rather than the nasty horde of hustlers Mammon insists that we are .
As Americans move toward a new administration looking to be fully aligned with the misenchantments @ @ @ @ @ @ @ list of Silicon Valley tycoons set to help steer his ship of state – McCarraher 's book is a welcome wake-up call and a reminder that while we did n't compose the narrative we live inside , we do have choices about the ending .
So thank you , Professor McCarraher , for helping us to think outside the temple .

Do you, inhabitant of the marvelous and menacing late-modern world, detect something missing – some kind of vitality, meaning, connectedness, love, beauty, or wonder? If so, you've likely searched for a story to explain it.
A popular narrative offers that something rather ugly happened on the way to modernity. As the Middle Ages gave way to the upheavals of the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and rising capitalism, a vanguard of scientists, professors of reason, Protestants, and money men (for they were almost always men), sought to break the shackles of the past. They fashioned bold new ideas and ways of being, but in doing so crimped the human spirit and frayed the ties that bind us to our neighbors, to nature, and to our own hearts. Even the needful and cherished material objects in our lives — the cooking pot, the plow, the spindle — lost their sacred glow.
It's a tale of disenchantment: a cultural coming-of-age in which the protagonist wakes up from charmed sleep and, as the harsh light strikes newly awakened senses, accepts that it is time to buckle down to business, relying on self-discipline and a strong work ethic to see the way through.
In this story, people take on secular attitudes and values. They turn from community to competition. The sin of greed becomes the desirable trait of "self-interest" and the habit of devotion gives way to the quest for domination. Veneration morphs into venality. We ditch the old totems and taboos and work like crazy, trying our best to be thrifty and restrained so that we can accumulate wealth, now our chief focus. By the time we arrive at the 21st century, the neoliberal regime and its chosen institution, the global corporation, are bringing us dazzling products that promise to meet our wants and needs. The system may be rapacious and exploitive, true. We may often feel twinges of unfulfillment and uncertainty, yes. But that's the price we pay for the goodies and convenience. The dispirited must suck it up, for, as Maggie Thatcher famously insisted, there is no alternative.
But is disenchantment really the whole story? Did human beings flip a switch and give up the psychic, moral, and spiritual longings that had been with us for millennia? Did we no longer need connection to something greater than our own bank accounts? Did we lose the feeling for something sacred and enchanted in the universe?
Possibly not. Critics of the disenchantment narrative have long noticed that if you look closely at western modernity, this ostensibly secular and rational regime, you find it pretty much teeming with magical thinking, supernatural forces, and promises of grace. Maybe the human yearning for enchantment never went away; it just got redirected. God is there, just pointing down other paths. As scholars like Max Weber have noted, capitalism is a really a religion, complete with its own rites, deities, and rituals. Money is the Great Spirit, the latest gadgets are its sacred relics, and economists, business journalists, financiers, technocrats, and managers make up the clergy. The central doctrine holds that money will flow to perform miracles in our lives if we heed the dictates of the market gods.
As the rap artist Run DMC once put it, money becomes salvation:
"Money is the key to end all your woes
Your ups and your downs, your highs and your lows
Won't you tell me last time that love bought you clothes?
It's like that, and that's the way it is"
Under Mammon, we shall reach a state of blessedness in which all our desires are realized: a heaven on earth. We become gods ourselves.
All throughout the modern era, poets, dissenting scholars, writers, political radicals, and a motley assortment of ordinary apostates kept insisting that we are under the deadly spell of a false religion. Eugene McCarraher's The Enchantments of Mammon: Capitalism as the Religion of Modernity is a magisterial account in this vein. The author sets out to explain how we came to find ourselves devoted to the jealous god Mammon, and how we might get free.
In distinction to some like-minded thinkers, McCarraher holds that capitalism is not a disenchantment, or even a reinchantment, but rather a misenchantment, a "parody or perversion of our longing for a sacramental way of being in the world." He sees the condition peaking at beginning of the 21st century, followed by calamitous years of economic crises, political and social unrest, and now, as Ruskin scholar Jeffrey Spear and I have described, a pandemic in which the neoliberal priests demand human sacrifice to the cult of Mammon.
Here we are, many of us alienated, anxious, sick, bored, and slogging through with a suspicion that the dream of an iPhone in every pocket leaves much to be desired, and haunted by a feeling that capitalism didn't make us gods, but turned us into monsters who treat each other horribly. Rather than bringing us to a garden of economic delights, our religion has befouled our home on Earth.
If the spell is beginning to wear thin, McCarraher thinks we should be thankful and prepare to repent and renew ourselves. But first, we need to "tell a different story about our country and its unexceptional sins." His prophetically fired, thousand-page volume is that alternative story — not only a detailed history of the movement from an enchanted to a misenchanted world, but a condemnation of false prophets and an imaginative conjuring of possibilities for a different way of existing. This is big, heady stuff. And heartening stuff for the weary.
One Nation, Under Mammon
McCarraher begins with the advent of capitalism in the 17th century, tracing the progress of a set of ideas and values through the smoke of England's factories and the new creed's migration to America, where it is duly anointed by Puritans, evangelicals, and Mormons, whose founder Joseph Smith issues economic oracles. We travel on to America's launch as a nation, when the founders dedicate the new country to the ideals of brotherhood and profit-seeking, a contradictory project embodied in Thomas Jefferson, who promotes a republic of frugal, virtuous yeoman while blowing — McCarraher doesn't mention this point — ridiculous sums pimping out his mansion.
The tale continues through the Gilded Age, when the corporation acquires a soul in the form of "personhood" and capitalists seek to fashion a "heavenly city of business" through mechanized production. Here we find spirit and capital co-mingled, as titans of business like Cornelius Vanderbilt attend séances where the dead provide stock tips and John D. Rockefeller, Sr., the son of a traveling snake oil salesman known as "Devil Bill," insists that "God gave me my money."
Hallelujah!
We come along to the think tanks and college seminars of the mid-20th century, where a rising order of magician-priests, the University of Chicago-trained economists and wonks, seek to remake everything, including the state, in the image of the market. They use their best sleight-of-hand to protect Mammon from any interference from democracy while making it all look quite spontaneous. Thus, the American Century morphs into the "neoliberal Market Everlasting," and Adam Smith's Invisible Hand becomes the Not-So-Invisible Fist, described by Thomas Friedman, an exceptionally loyal neoliberal clergyman, in a 1999 New York Times magazine piece quoted by McCarraher:
For globalization to work, America can't be afraid to act like the almighty superpower that it is. The hidden hand of the market will not work without a hidden fist. McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell-Douglas, the designer of the F-15, and the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's technology is called the United States, Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps…
The rest is more and more of us getting clobbered by that almighty fist.
McCarraher's tale brings plenty of fascinating twists and turns. America produces potent witnesses against Mammon — often met with stark brutality — among Black Americans, whose initial position in the atrocious slave economy gives them profound insight into the god's lies and ruses. There are also the failed romances of communal societies where people try but can't ultimately escape the burden of misenchantment. And we find prescient writers, like Henry David Thoreau and Herman Melville, who see the market clearly as a god of servitude. But the Word that wins the day is that of Ralph Waldo Emerson, America's cardboard answer to Nietzsche, who, in the guise of a "romanticism of the future," preaches "the enchanting mendacity of power" and pronounces the cut-throat ways of capitalism as the undisputed way of the world, a view captured in a chilling line from "The Young American": "If one of the flock wound himself, or so much as limp, the rest eat him up incontinently."
This gobble-gobble gospel is enthusiastically embraced by business writers, managers and libertarians like Ayn Rand, a priestess of Mammon bent on "bringing to a graceless apogee the American divinization of power that began with Emerson." McCarraher offers an intriguing look at how American business journalism partly arises as a religious enterprise, with magazine publisher Freeman Hunt plugging a gospel of entrepreneurial divinity and the worship of technology, herding the flock towards a particular strain of misenchantment later called the "technological sublime." The promoters of scientific management, for their part, offer a beatific vision for control freaks — a devotion to timekeeping and standardized behavior that may have partly originated in medieval monasteries.
McCarraher illustrates how we start to break down on the road to "progress." We become split creatures who submit to calculation and control in the external world, but inside indulge in hedonistic daydreams first stoked by sentimental religion and popular novels, and later, by consumer culture and the self-help industry. We're all wrapped up in our fantasies as Mammon's economist-priests order the faithful to suffer any conflict or scarcity for the promise of material happiness that awaits. He points out that it was Adam Smith himself, in the Theory of Moral Sentiments, who revealed the Great Lie fed to the congregation in a description of a poor boy who, glimpsing the lifestyles of the rich and famous, becomes "enchanted" and vows to work tirelessly to fulfill his desire for luxuries – only to find out in the end that it has all been a trivial pursuit. Pitiful, but how else do you keep him in line?
The misenchantment McCarraher describes is so pervasive that it even infects dissenters, like unions that downsize their ambition from power to just a little redistribution; beatniks and hippies whose bohemian visions are swallowed up into consumer culture and corporate consciousness; or environmentalists who accommodate capitalist expansion. The Occupy Movement provides powerful anticapitalist testimony, but it looks like a lot of the "99 percent" want to "take back" the American Dream, not awaken from it. With the exception of the rising number of socialists (many of them young people), a huge chunk of the population buys into the concept of progress based on unlimited economic growth and technological development, all of it driven by expanding material wants and expectations for godlike control of life.
We are left with domineering captains of industry who pose as the stewards of humanity, like Jeff Bezos, who would like very much to rocket us all off to a technoparadise in space, where we can live happily ever after in temperature-regulated oscillating tubes.
McCarraher asks, is progress really progress if it looks like that?
But wait, you say. Doesn't western modernity deliver some good things? We have a safety net in our old age. We have certain protections from exploitation a medieval peasant couldn't expect. In most place other than the United States, we have access to universal health care. Yes, we do, acknowledges McCarraher. But these benefits have been brought to us by people who fought against the misenchantment, like unions, welfare states, and radical movements.
Fair enough. But what is the alternative?
The Visionary Commonwealth
McCarraher doesn't offer an easy way out, warning that our depleted imaginations prevent us from seeing much of anything but a life of indentured servitude to capital.
Do we turn to poetry? The ecstasy of the body? Radical politics? Revolution? Spirituality? Zen sutras? Voluntary poverty? Artisanal anarchism? Do we commune with nature?
Well, maybe as long as there's a spark of what McCarraher calls "sacramental vision," perhaps it really doesn't matter. In order to be alert and resist Mammon's spell, we basically need something that posits the life of the spirit against the death culture of the market. As writer and monk Thomas Merton put it, we also need to know that the score, to grok the fact that the claims of the world are fraudulent. We need to commit ourselves to living by new values infused with affection, reverence, and spiritual adventure.
McCarraher finds the most invigorating opposition to capitalist misenchantment in the Romantic tradition. He draws sustenance from the writing of 19th century critic John Ruskin, who pronounced economics a pseudoscience and declaimed against the "Goddess of Getting on," urging people to give up the urge to dominate and control. Though some Romantics were undoubtedly reactionary, as the author concedes, their focus on morality, the dignity of human beings, and the search for meaningful purpose is traceable in the work of dissenters ranging from Leo Tolstoy to Marx and Engels to Martin Luther King, Jr.. It shows up in the Anglo-Catholic sacramentalism of Vida Dutton Scudder, the gift-economy writing of Mary Austin, and the Personalist opposition of Dorothy Day, who rooted her challenge to industrial capitalism in Christian humanism. It appears, too, in Lewis Mumford's opposition to death culture and the authoritarian trends in technology, and in New Left writers like Norman O. Brown, who focused on the sensuous textures and possibilities of the world. In all of these can be detected Ruskin's dictum that "there is no wealth but life."
McCarraher finds the visions of Romanticism to more resilient and humane than those of Marxism, and more nuanced and accurate in their assessment of human nature. He believes they provide a "language for the human magnificence we witness in the wake of devastation … a language that expresses our longings both for a sense of the world's magnitude and for fleshly access to transcendence." He contends that "our best hope for an imaginative and political antithesis to capitalist enchantment resides in the lineage of Romantic, sacramental radicalism."
It's pretty clear that his is not a secular romanticism. The author is inspired by the poetry Gerard Manley Hopkins, the calls to fellowship of Pope Francis, and Christians who have preserved the reverence for the natural word, the ideal of communion, and an understanding of exploitation as an offense against human divinity. He is partial to the idea is that we don't need to go seeking paradise; we already live in one — a world stamped by the grandeur of God and, as Hopkins put it, the "dearest freshness deep down things." Recognition of this wondrous vitality around us can help us to live a more fearless, vibrant life, confident of our real worth apart from the calculus of capitalism and reassured by the bounty and goodness of the world.
Well…certainly it is inspiring when Pope Francis calls the earth a shared inheritance to be enjoyed by all. But frankly, this makes it all the more galling that in his version of God's universe, women still rank as inferior beings, unfit to control their own bodies or speak directly to the Creator. The problem is that when people get to talking about nature as bearing the watermark of its creator, that being inevitably turns out to be male, and we find ourselves ensorcelled by a misenchantment as deadly as Mammon's creed, the cult of patriarchy, which gets noticeably little attention in McCarraher's thousand-page book. In fact, the two misenchantments have traditionally reinforced each other: capitalism's co-option of sacredness, for example, tends to cast women as the ever-generous and bountiful handmaidens of Mammon.
Pope Francis may chastise us that our call to "universal communion" is corrupted by a lack of trust in God, but if you are female, you could perhaps be forgiven for not trusting God. Theology has degraded women more than any other influence, and to this day, the world's religions still conform to economist Heidi Hartmann's definition of patriarchy as "relations between men, which have a material base, and which, though hierarchical, establish or create interdependence and solidarity among men that enable them to dominate women."
The ideal of brotherhood often pretends to universalism, but in practice draws from the narrow experiences of powerful men. Too often, it's just an ideal of bros.
There's also the issue that reading messages of love and abundance in nature assumes a benevolent, anthropomorphic Creator. But it's hard to square that with Stephen Jay Gould's observation that there are many things on Earth that are shocking to our human moral sensibilities, such as the ichneumon fly, which lays eggs on the host's body and paralyzes it so it can't move as it's slowly eaten alive. You just can't get all Gerard-Manley-Hopkins on the ichneumon fly, I'm sorry to say. It is for this reason that feminist ecologists like Valerie Plumwood have cautioned us to see ourselves as part of nature but also to be respectful about nature's otherness, and to avoid reading our own moral lessons from it. After all, many a theologian has looked to nature for moral inspiration and drawn terrible lessons, such as the lesser status of anyone who is not a straight white male.
Finally, there are dangerous strains of sacramental enchantment, as the global rise of Pentecostalism and strains of the far right illustrate. Not every Romantic visionary is amenable to the idea of the sort of commonwealth McCarraher would like to see. The author is clear that he doesn't want a return to pre-modern technology or social relations, and undoubtedly he wants an evolved approach to God. But unfortunately, God is still hopelessly behind the times. Couldn't we just ditch the word altogether?
Still, with all that said, McCarraher's book is a highly rewarding and powerful expression of the longing for a more hospitable way of living and a potent call to orient ourselves towards our capacities as caring, creative, and convivial beings, rather than the nasty horde of hustlers Mammon insists that we are.
As Americans move toward a new administration looking to be fully aligned with the misenchantments of money and technology – witness the list of Silicon Valley tycoons set to help steer his ship of state – McCarraher's book is a welcome wake-up call and a reminder that while we didn't compose the narrative we live inside, we do have choices about the ending.
So thank you, Professor McCarraher, for helping us to think outside the temple.


alternet--2020-12-01--It's time for Biden to take on the Pentagon bloat

Now that Joe Biden is slated to take office as the 46th president of the United States , advice on how he should address a wide range of daunting problems is flooding in .
Nowhere is there more at stake than when it comes to how he handles this country 's highly militarized foreign policy in general and Pentagon spending in particular .
Defense spending increased sharply in the Trump years and is now substantially higher than it was during the Korean or Vietnam War eras or during the massive military buildup President Ronald Reagan oversaw in the 1980s .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the nation 's discretionary budget , which just happens to also pay for a wide array of urgently needed priorities ranging from housing , job training , and alternative energy programs to public health and infrastructure building .
At a time when pandemics , high unemployment , racial inequality , and climate change pose the greatest threats to our safety and security , this allocation of resources should be considered unsustainable .
Unfortunately , the Pentagon and the arms industry have yet to get that memo .
Defense company executives recently assured @ @ @ @ @ @ @ `` unconcerned '' about or consider unlikely the possibility that a Biden administration would significantly reduce Pentagon spending .
It 's easy enough to understand their confidence .
Many of the officials rumored to soon be appointed to lead the Pentagon , including a number of former Obama administration figures , have spent the past few years working , either directly or indirectly , for defense contractors .
Not surprisingly , then , their policy prescriptions emphasize some of the most expensive and risky military technologies imaginable like hypersonic weaponry .
The expected @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , has already insisted that Washington needs to make `` big bets '' on unmanned systems and artificial intelligence .
Of course , she wo n't be the one who will pay the price if they fail -- or even if they succeed and take money that might have been used for crucial domestic purposes like health care in a pandemic moment .
Still , contrary to the wishes and hopes of the military-industrial complex and figures like Flournoy , there is a growing congressional interest in trying to bring runaway Pentagon spending @ @ @ @ @ @ @ instance , Representative Mark Pocan ( D-WI ) , Representative Barbara Lee ( D-CA ) , and Senator Bernie Sanders ( I-VT ) pushed parallel measures in the House and Senate to cut Pentagon spending by 10 % , a savings of more than $ 70 billion that could have been put to good use elsewhere , including aid to increasingly desperate low-income communities .
Although their initiatives lost , the very fact that they were proposed may be a turning point in a Congress that , for years , has signed off @ @ @ @ @ @ @ without resistance of any sort .
Think of those votes on Pentagon budget reductions as just the beginning of a long-term effort to tame that out-of-control institution .
Representatives Pocan and Lee , for instance , created a defense-savings caucus in the House focused on going after misguided Department of Defense spending .
During campaign 2020 , both Joe Biden and the Democratic platform emphasized that this country and the world can indeed be made safer while spending less on the Pentagon .
Clearly , the fairy-tale explanation that more spending equals better @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it happen soon ?
Who knows ?
At least it 's time for the rest of us to begin thinking about how much less should be spent on the Department of Defense and how to ensure that taxpayer dollars are spent more wisely .
In reality , it 's not that complicated .
Pentagon spending could easily be reduced substantially even as the world was made a safer place .
For that to happen , however , its budget would have to begin to deal with the actual challenges this country faces rather @ @ @ @ @ @ @ squandered on outmoded military priorities and artificially inflated threats supposedly posed by our biggest adversaries .
One blueprint for doing just that has been put together by the Center for International Policy 's Sustainable Defense Task Force , a group of former White House , Pentagon , and congressional budget officials , retired military officers , and think-tank experts from across the political spectrum .
They have crafted a plan to save $ 1.25 trillion from proposed Pentagon spending over the next decade .
As that task force notes , for durable reductions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this country 's leadership would have to take a more realistic view of the military challenges posed by both China and Russia .
In recent years , the regime in Beijing has indeed been increasing its military spending , but when it comes to an armed presence in the Pacific region and the ability to make war there , the United States remains staggeringly stronger .
As a start , it has an arsenal of nuclear weapons five to six times as large as China 's ( though , of course , using @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
And while Beijing 's influence is primarily focused on its own region , the U.S. military has a historically unprecedented global reach , deploying nearly 200,000 troops overseas garrisoned on at least 800 military bases scattered across continents , and maintaining 11 aircraft carrier task forces to patrol the global seas .
In reality , the sort of `` arms race '' with China now being considered will be costly and unnecessary , while only increasing the risk of war between those two nuclear-armed powers , an outcome to be avoided at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ challenge to this country is n't military at all , but political and economic in nature .
Its leadership has focused on increasing that country 's power and influence through investment programs like its ever more global Belt and Road infrastructure initiative .
Despite many problems , such efforts are clearly giving Beijing the sort of growing global clout , especially in the America First era of Donald Trump , that a hopeless attempt to match U.S. military power never could .
Add to this one other factor : if there 's to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from ravaging the planet , curbing the growing impact of climate change , or reviving a global economy that 's distinctly in the dumps , increased cooperation and transparency between the two greatest powers on the planet , not confrontation , will be a necessity .
As for Russia , a relatively shaky petro-state , its primary tools of influence in recent years have been propaganda , cyber-threats , and `` hybrid warfare '' on its peripheries ( as in its use of local allies to destabilize Ukraine ) .
Despite its still @ @ @ @ @ @ @ represent a traditional military challenge to the United States and so should n't be used to justify another pointless Pentagon spending boost .
To the extent that there is a military challenge from Russia , it can be more than adequately addressed by various European nations with the United States in a limited , supporting role .
After all , European members of NATO cumulatively spend more than three times what Russia does on their militaries and far outpace it economically .
Keep in mind that this just is n't the Cold War @ @ @ @ @ @ @ reality , Russia 's economy is now smaller than Italy 's and Moscow is in no position to engage in an arms race even with the nations of Western Europe , no less Washington .
Despite its disastrous forever wars in distant lands , if the institution still often referred to as the `` Department of Defense '' were to refocus on actual national defense rather than global military domination , it could , as a start , instantly forgo a number of ill-conceived and staggeringly expensive new weapons systems .
Those would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the country 's already vast nuclear arsenal by buying a new generation of nuclear-armed bombers , missiles , and submarines at a cost of up to $ 2 trillion to the fantasy of building up from current levels to a 500-ship Navy .
High on any list of programs to be instantly eliminated would be a proposed new Intercontinental Ballistic Missile ( ICBM ) .
As former Secretary of Defense William Perry has pointed out , ICBMs are among `` the most dangerous weapons in the world '' for a simple reason : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of minutes to decide whether to launch such missiles upon being warned of another power using similar weaponry to attack the U.S .
Since , in the past , such warnings have proven anything but accurate , new weaponry of this sort will only increase the chances of an accidental nuclear war being started .
The Pentagon has , however , already given the giant arms maker Northrop Grumman a sole-source contract and $ 13.3 billion to develop just such a new weapon , a down payment on a program that could ultimately @ @ @ @ @ @ @ operate .
Funds like those could go far to meet other genuinely pressing national needs .
As for the nuclear arsenal 's upgrade as a whole , the organization Global Zero has outlined an alternative nuclear posture that would halt the Pentagon 's costly nuclear `` modernization '' plan , eliminate ICBMs altogether , and reduce the numbers of nuclear-armed bombers and submarines .
The idea would be to switch the U.S. to a `` deterrence only '' strategy and dump the elaborate and dangerous nuclear warfighting scenarios the Pentagon now swears by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ course , be the global elimination of such weaponry , as called for in the U.N. Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons , which is slated to enter into force early next year .
Then there 's that dream ( or nightmare ) of a future Navy to deal with .
Building up to a fleet of 500 ships is not just unaffordable , but a sign of the degree to which the Pentagon has an urge to run stark raving mad with taxpayer dollars .
Even a previous plan to build @ @ @ @ @ @ @ left the Navy 50 ships short , $ 11 billion over budget , and years behind schedule .
Rather than seeking to preserve the capability to have warships virtually everywhere on Earth all the time , the Navy set up to surge into areas of tension could be roughly half the size of the 500-ship one and still be powerful beyond words .
More savings could easily be found by ending the procurement of unworkable weapons systems like Lockheed Martin 's disastrous F-35 jet fighter .
Already the most expensive weapons program ever @ @ @ @ @ @ @ $ 1.7 trillion over its lifetime ) , the Project On Government Oversight has determined that the F-35 may never truly be ready for combat .
Upgraded versions of current jet fighters integrated into a smaller Air Force would save tens of billions of dollars and be more effective .
President Trump 's cherished Space Force is a bad idea that predated his presidency but received a major boost during his tenure .
A new military bureaucracy geared up primarily to spend more money , it could cost tens of billions in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ risk of an arms race in space .
You could add to the above billions in savings from cutting waste and bureaucracy at the Department of Defense .
To cite just two obvious examples , the Pentagon routinely overpays for spare parts and sustains a work force of more than 600,000 private contractors , many of whose jobs are either redundant or could be done more cheaply by government employees .
Symbolic of the broken nature of the procurement process , the Air Force seriously contemplated paying $ 10,000 for a toilet seat @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for a spare part that it stood to make a 4,451 % profit on it .
Fixing the Pentagon 's procurement system and rolling back spending on private contractors could save hundreds of billions of dollars over the next decade .
And do n't forget the savings that could be had from reforming how the Pentagon does business , including , for example , retaining intellectual property rights to weapon systems researched and developed with taxpayer dollars .
As a Marine Corps captain wrote in the New York Times last year , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to repair '' its own equipment .
Acquisition laws written in the interests of defense contractors need to be revised so that the Department of Defense can negotiate fair and reasonable prices and auditors need to be empowered to root out waste , fraud , and abuse .
And , of course , in an institution that has never even successfully audited itself , who knows what other savings might be conceivable were you to be able to get inside it and take a serious look at its finances -- and financial shenanigans @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be persuaded to take a deeper look at the Pentagon 's spending priorities , it would still face immediate and stiff political obstacles .
The jobs generated by the Pentagon 's $ 700 billion-plus budget ( and the political funding of congressional representatives by defense companies ) have created a broad constituency in Congress poised to block any effort to close unnecessary military bases or defund major weapons programs .
To policymakers in Washington , it seems to matter not at all that virtually any other form of spending would create more jobs @ @ @ @ @ @ @ New infrastructure spending or a green-new-deal-style emphasis on creating a renewable energy economy would be guaranteed to generate at least one-and-a-half times as many jobs per dollar spent , while new expenditures on education would create twice as many .
Another impediment to change is the two-way revolving door between the Pentagon and the arms industry .
Senior government officials go to work for weapons makers , using their contacts with former colleagues to curry favor for their corporate employers .
Meanwhile , arms-industry executives head for the Pentagon and other military-related government @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their former ( and possibly future ) employers .
Despite criticisms from both President Trump and his son , Donald , Jr. about the damaging influence of that very revolving door , expect former Trump administration officials to set up shop as lobbyists , join the boards of directors of major defense contractors , and otherwise ally themselves with arms makers like Raytheon Technologies , Lockheed Martin , Boeing , and General Dynamics .
No one should be surprised either by early indications that figures with defense-industry ties will fill key policy positions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , a former deputy secretary of defense and already an unofficial spokesman for the incoming administration , still sits on the board of Raytheon .
Michèle Flournoy , the most likely candidate for secretary of defense , and Anthony Blinken , whom Biden will nominate to be secretary of state , both work for a private consulting firm with undisclosed defense-industry clients .
While this practice may not be as prevalent as under Trump -- three of his secretaries of defense served as board members , executives , or lobbyists for General Dynamics @ @ @ @ @ @ @ -- the role of former industry advocates and employees in the Biden administration is nonetheless guaranteed to cause conflicts of interest .
`` Independent '' experts at influential inside-the-Beltway think tanks are already receiving millions of dollars from arms manufacturers and the Pentagon in an ongoing effort to shape any debates about future spending .
Meanwhile , individuals with close ties to that industry populate government panels like the congressionally mandated National Defense Strategy Commission , which advocated in 2018 for a whopping 3 % -5 % annual increase in Pentagon spending .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ state of national defense were true , a case would have been made for firing all the top civilian and military officials in the building , not for increased spending .
The best hope for reducing Pentagon spending is the collision between that department 's never-ending , ever-rising desires and the overriding economic and political realities of this difficult moment .
It 's simply not possible to fund pandemic prevention , as well as any kind of economic revival that would begin to address longstanding inequalities , no less a much-needed green revolution @ @ @ @ @ @ @ near-record levels .
Something will have to give and it should n't be the civilian communities and businesses that have been most negatively impacted by the coronavirus .
As for politics , it 's important to remember that this year 's presidential election was decided primarily by voter concerns about Covid-19 and the economy , not by voters crying out for a continuation of America 's endless wars or demanding yet more money for the Pentagon .
The political clout of the military-industrial complex may diminish as Americans move forward , however chaotically @ @ @ @ @ @ @ different challenges to public health and safety .
The arms makers and their allies in Congress and the executive branch wo n't give up without a fight when it comes to the pandemic of Pentagon spending .
You can count on that .
A crucial question of this moment is : Will fear , exaggerated threats , and pork-barrel politics be enough to keep the Pentagon and its contractors fat and happy , even as the urgent priorities of so many of the rest of us are starved of much-needed funding ?
William @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is the director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy and the author of Prophets of War : Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex .
Mandy Smithberger , a TomDispatch regular , is the director of the Center for Defense Information at the Project On Government Oversight ( POGO ) .
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook .
Check out the newest Dispatch Books , John Feffer 's new dystopian novel ( the second in the Splinterlands series ) Frostlands , Beverly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Story , and Tom Engelhardt 's A Nation Unmade by War , as well as Alfred McCoy 's In the Shadows of the American Century : The Rise and Decline of U.S .
Global Power and John Dower 's The Violent American Century : War and Terror Since World War II .

Now that Joe Biden is slated to take office as the 46th president of the United States, advice on how he should address a wide range of daunting problems is flooding in. Nowhere is there more at stake than when it comes to how he handles this country's highly militarized foreign policy in general and Pentagon spending in particular.
Defense spending increased sharply in the Trump years and is now substantially higher than it was during the Korean or Vietnam War eras or during the massive military buildup President Ronald Reagan oversaw in the 1980s. Today, it consumes well over half of the nation's discretionary budget, which just happens to also pay for a wide array of urgently needed priorities ranging from housing, job training, and alternative energy programs to public health and infrastructure building. At a time when pandemics, high unemployment, racial inequality, and climate change pose the greatest threats to our safety and security, this allocation of resources should be considered unsustainable. Unfortunately, the Pentagon and the arms industry have yet to get that memo. Defense company executives recently assured a Washington Post reporter that they are "unconcerned" about or consider unlikely the possibility that a Biden administration would significantly reduce Pentagon spending.
It's easy enough to understand their confidence. Many of the officials rumored to soon be appointed to lead the Pentagon, including a number of former Obama administration figures, have spent the past few years working, either directly or indirectly, for defense contractors. Not surprisingly, then, their policy prescriptions emphasize some of the most expensive and risky military technologies imaginable like hypersonic weaponry. The expected next secretary of defense, Michèle Flournoy, has already insisted that Washington needs to make "big bets" on unmanned systems and artificial intelligence. Of course, she won't be the one who will pay the price if they fail -- or even if they succeed and take money that might have been used for crucial domestic purposes like health care in a pandemic moment.
Still, contrary to the wishes and hopes of the military-industrial complex and figures like Flournoy, there is a growing congressional interest in trying to bring runaway Pentagon spending under control. This July, for instance, Representative Mark Pocan (D-WI), Representative Barbara Lee (D-CA), and Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) pushed parallel measures in the House and Senate to cut Pentagon spending by 10%, a savings of more than $70 billion that could have been put to good use elsewhere, including aid to increasingly desperate low-income communities. Although their initiatives lost, the very fact that they were proposed may be a turning point in a Congress that, for years, has signed off on whatever the Pentagon asked for, without resistance of any sort.
Think of those votes on Pentagon budget reductions as just the beginning of a long-term effort to tame that out-of-control institution. Representatives Pocan and Lee, for instance, created a defense-savings caucus in the House focused on going after misguided Department of Defense spending. During campaign 2020, both Joe Biden and the Democratic platform emphasized that this country and the world can indeed be made safer while spending less on the Pentagon.
Clearly, the fairy-tale explanation that more spending equals better security needs to be ditched. Will it happen soon? Who knows? At least it's time for the rest of us to begin thinking about how much less should be spent on the Department of Defense and how to ensure that taxpayer dollars are spent more wisely.
A Pentagon Spending Agenda for the Biden Administration
In reality, it's not that complicated. Pentagon spending could easily be reduced substantially even as the world was made a safer place. For that to happen, however, its budget would have to begin to deal with the actual challenges this country faces rather than letting billions of dollars more be squandered on outmoded military priorities and artificially inflated threats supposedly posed by our biggest adversaries.
One blueprint for doing just that has been put together by the Center for International Policy's Sustainable Defense Task Force, a group of former White House, Pentagon, and congressional budget officials, retired military officers, and think-tank experts from across the political spectrum. They have crafted a plan to save $1.25 trillion from proposed Pentagon spending over the next decade.
As that task force notes, for durable reductions in such spending to become feasible, this country's leadership would have to take a more realistic view of the military challenges posed by both China and Russia.
In recent years, the regime in Beijing has indeed been increasing its military spending, but when it comes to an armed presence in the Pacific region and the ability to make war there, the United States remains staggeringly stronger. As a start, it has an arsenal of nuclear weapons five to six times as large as China's (though, of course, using it would mean a planetary Armageddon). And while Beijing's influence is primarily focused on its own region, the U.S. military has a historically unprecedented global reach, deploying nearly 200,000 troops overseas garrisoned on at least 800 military bases scattered across continents, and maintaining 11 aircraft carrier task forces to patrol the global seas. In reality, the sort of "arms race" with China now being considered will be costly and unnecessary, while only increasing the risk of war between those two nuclear-armed powers, an outcome to be avoided at all costs.
China's real twenty-first-century challenge to this country isn't military at all, but political and economic in nature. Its leadership has focused on increasing that country's power and influence through investment programs like its ever more global Belt and Road infrastructure initiative. Despite many problems, such efforts are clearly giving Beijing the sort of growing global clout, especially in the America First era of Donald Trump, that a hopeless attempt to match U.S. military power never could. Add to this one other factor: if there's to be any hope of preventing future pandemics from ravaging the planet, curbing the growing impact of climate change, or reviving a global economy that's distinctly in the dumps, increased cooperation and transparency between the two greatest powers on the planet, not confrontation, will be a necessity.
As for Russia, a relatively shaky petro-state, its primary tools of influence in recent years have been propaganda, cyber-threats, and "hybrid warfare" on its peripheries (as in its use of local allies to destabilize Ukraine). Despite its still vast nuclear arsenal, Russia does not represent a traditional military challenge to the United States and so shouldn't be used to justify another pointless Pentagon spending boost. To the extent that there is a military challenge from Russia, it can be more than adequately addressed by various European nations with the United States in a limited, supporting role. After all, European members of NATO cumulatively spend more than three times what Russia does on their militaries and far outpace it economically. Keep in mind that this just isn't the Cold War era of the previous century. In reality, Russia's economy is now smaller than Italy's and Moscow is in no position to engage in an arms race even with the nations of Western Europe, no less Washington.
Despite its disastrous forever wars in distant lands, if the institution still often referred to as the "Department of Defense" were to refocus on actual national defense rather than global military domination, it could, as a start, instantly forgo a number of ill-conceived and staggeringly expensive new weapons systems. Those would range from plans to "modernize" the country's already vast nuclear arsenal by buying a new generation of nuclear-armed bombers, missiles, and submarines at a cost of up to $2 trillion to the fantasy of building up from current levels to a 500-ship Navy.
High on any list of programs to be instantly eliminated would be a proposed new Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM). As former Secretary of Defense William Perry has pointed out, ICBMs are among "the most dangerous weapons in the world" for a simple reason: a president would have only a matter of minutes to decide whether to launch such missiles upon being warned of another power using similar weaponry to attack the U.S. Since, in the past, such warnings have proven anything but accurate, new weaponry of this sort will only increase the chances of an accidental nuclear war being started. The Pentagon has, however, already given the giant arms maker Northrop Grumman a sole-source contract and $13.3 billion to develop just such a new weapon, a down payment on a program that could ultimately cost $264 billion to build and operate. Funds like those could go far to meet other genuinely pressing national needs.
As for the nuclear arsenal's upgrade as a whole, the organization Global Zero has outlined an alternative nuclear posture that would halt the Pentagon's costly nuclear "modernization" plan, eliminate ICBMs altogether, and reduce the numbers of nuclear-armed bombers and submarines. The idea would be to switch the U.S. to a "deterrence only" strategy and dump the elaborate and dangerous nuclear warfighting scenarios the Pentagon now swears by. The ultimate goal would, of course, be the global elimination of such weaponry, as called for in the U.N. Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which is slated to enter into force early next year.
Then there's that dream (or nightmare) of a future Navy to deal with. Building up to a fleet of 500 ships is not just unaffordable, but a sign of the degree to which the Pentagon has an urge to run stark raving mad with taxpayer dollars. Even a previous plan to build 330 ships was so mismanaged that it left the Navy 50 ships short, $11 billion over budget, and years behind schedule. Rather than seeking to preserve the capability to have warships virtually everywhere on Earth all the time, the Navy set up to surge into areas of tension could be roughly half the size of the 500-ship one and still be powerful beyond words.
More savings could easily be found by ending the procurement of unworkable weapons systems like Lockheed Martin's disastrous F-35 jet fighter. Already the most expensive weapons program ever undertaken (at a cumulative cost of $1.7 trillion over its lifetime), the Project On Government Oversight has determined that the F-35 may never truly be ready for combat. Upgraded versions of current jet fighters integrated into a smaller Air Force would save tens of billions of dollars and be more effective.
President Trump's cherished Space Force is a bad idea that predated his presidency but received a major boost during his tenure. A new military bureaucracy geared up primarily to spend more money, it could cost tens of billions in the years to come while only increasing the risk of an arms race in space.
You could add to the above billions in savings from cutting waste and bureaucracy at the Department of Defense. To cite just two obvious examples, the Pentagon routinely overpays for spare parts and sustains a work force of more than 600,000 private contractors, many of whose jobs are either redundant or could be done more cheaply by government employees. Symbolic of the broken nature of the procurement process, the Air Force seriously contemplated paying $10,000 for a toilet seat cover and one contractor charged so much for a spare part that it stood to make a 4,451% profit on it. Fixing the Pentagon's procurement system and rolling back spending on private contractors could save hundreds of billions of dollars over the next decade.
And don't forget the savings that could be had from reforming how the Pentagon does business, including, for example, retaining intellectual property rights to weapon systems researched and developed with taxpayer dollars. As a Marine Corps captain wrote in the New York Times last year, the military too often lacks the "right to repair" its own equipment. Acquisition laws written in the interests of defense contractors need to be revised so that the Department of Defense can negotiate fair and reasonable prices and auditors need to be empowered to root out waste, fraud, and abuse.
And, of course, in an institution that has never even successfully audited itself, who knows what other savings might be conceivable were you to be able to get inside it and take a serious look at its finances -- and financial shenanigans?
Obstacles to Change
Even if the Biden administration could be persuaded to take a deeper look at the Pentagon's spending priorities, it would still face immediate and stiff political obstacles. The jobs generated by the Pentagon's $700 billion-plus budget (and the political funding of congressional representatives by defense companies) have created a broad constituency in Congress poised to block any effort to close unnecessary military bases or defund major weapons programs. To policymakers in Washington, it seems to matter not at all that virtually any other form of spending would create more jobs than throwing money at the Pentagon. New infrastructure spending or a green-new-deal-style emphasis on creating a renewable energy economy would be guaranteed to generate at least one-and-a-half times as many jobs per dollar spent, while new expenditures on education would create twice as many.
Another impediment to change is the two-way revolving door between the Pentagon and the arms industry. Senior government officials go to work for weapons makers, using their contacts with former colleagues to curry favor for their corporate employers. Meanwhile, arms-industry executives head for the Pentagon and other military-related government posts where they make policies that favor their former (and possibly future) employers. Despite criticisms from both President Trump and his son, Donald, Jr. about the damaging influence of that very revolving door, expect former Trump administration officials to set up shop as lobbyists, join the boards of directors of major defense contractors, and otherwise ally themselves with arms makers like Raytheon Technologies, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and General Dynamics.
No one should be surprised either by early indications that figures with defense-industry ties will fill key policy positions in the Biden administration. Robert Work, a former deputy secretary of defense and already an unofficial spokesman for the incoming administration, still sits on the board of Raytheon. Michèle Flournoy, the most likely candidate for secretary of defense, and Anthony Blinken, whom Biden will nominate to be secretary of state, both work for a private consulting firm with undisclosed defense-industry clients. While this practice may not be as prevalent as under Trump -- three of his secretaries of defense served as board members, executives, or lobbyists for General Dynamics, Boeing, and Raytheon, respectively -- the role of former industry advocates and employees in the Biden administration is nonetheless guaranteed to cause conflicts of interest.
"Independent" experts at influential inside-the-Beltway think tanks are already receiving millions of dollars from arms manufacturers and the Pentagon in an ongoing effort to shape any debates about future spending. Meanwhile, individuals with close ties to that industry populate government panels like the congressionally mandated National Defense Strategy Commission, which advocated in 2018 for a whopping 3%-5% annual increase in Pentagon spending. If their analyses of the supposedly abysmal state of national defense were true, a case would have been made for firing all the top civilian and military officials in the building, not for increased spending.
Possibilities for Change
The best hope for reducing Pentagon spending is the collision between that department's never-ending, ever-rising desires and the overriding economic and political realities of this difficult moment. It's simply not possible to fund pandemic prevention, as well as any kind of economic revival that would begin to address longstanding inequalities, no less a much-needed green revolution, while keeping the Pentagon budget at near-record levels. Something will have to give and it shouldn't be the civilian communities and businesses that have been most negatively impacted by the coronavirus.
As for politics, it's important to remember that this year's presidential election was decided primarily by voter concerns about Covid-19 and the economy, not by voters crying out for a continuation of America's endless wars or demanding yet more money for the Pentagon. The political clout of the military-industrial complex may diminish as Americans move forward, however chaotically, into a new era with radically different challenges to public health and safety.
The arms makers and their allies in Congress and the executive branch won't give up without a fight when it comes to the pandemic of Pentagon spending. You can count on that. A crucial question of this moment is: Will fear, exaggerated threats, and pork-barrel politics be enough to keep the Pentagon and its contractors fat and happy, even as the urgent priorities of so many of the rest of us are starved of much-needed funding?
William D. Hartung, a TomDispatch regular, is the director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy and the author of Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex.
Mandy Smithberger, a TomDispatch regular, is the director of the Center for Defense Information at the Project On Government Oversight (POGO).
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Books, John Feffer's new dystopian novel (the second in the Splinterlands series) Frostlands, Beverly Gologorsky's novel Every Body Has a Story, and Tom Engelhardt's A Nation Unmade by War, as well as Alfred McCoy's In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power and John Dower's The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II.
Copyright 2020 William D. Hartung and Mandy Smithberger


alternet--2020-11-30--The DOJ just released Michael Flynn's official pardon — revealing just how corrupt it was

President Donald Trump 's pardon of his former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn , released on Monday evening by the Justice Department , revealed just how sweeping — and fundamentally corrupt — the act of clemency was .
It did n't simply cover the charge of lying to the FBI about his interactions with the Russian ambassador during the 2016 transition , which Flynn had pleaded guilty to before trying to withdraw his plea .
Instead , it offered a pardon This would appear to include the crimes Flynn admitted to but was n't formally charged with , including acting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ serving on the 2016 Trump campaign .
Most striking of all , though , is the fact that the pardon covered `` any and all possible offenses within the investigatory authority or jurisdiction of the Special Counsel appointed on May 17 , 2017 . ''
That refers to former Special Counsel Robert Mueller , who was appointed to oversee the Russia investigation after Trump fired then-FBI Director James Comey .
It was Comey 's firing , and his subsequent revelation that Trump has pressured him to drop the investigation into Flynn , that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ appoint Mueller .
The whole point of having a special counsel , particularly in this case , was to protect the investigation from the real or perceived influence of the president , whose interests were directly impacted by the probe .
In a system of government like that of the United States , there 's a fundamental problem posed by the fact that the president , as the head of the executive branch , may be unaccountable to the laws the rest of the country must obey .
The special counsel regulations are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ some measure of independence to the investigators .
But the president 's pardon power short-circuits that workaround .
And indeed , it featured heavily in the Mueller report , which detailed a credible case of obstruction of justice against the president based , in part , on his dangling of pardons to key associates of his implicated in the investigation .
When the president uses the pardon power in this way , it undermines the reasons special counsels are called for it all .
It essentially gives the president the ability to put @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
It may , in fact , have prevented the special counsel from uncovering additional crimes that it failed to find sufficient evidence to prove .
Actually issuing a pardon that specifically covers all the conduct covered by the special counsel 's investigation turns the whole concept of accountability for the president into a joke .
This is especially true in this case , because there is no plausible justification for the pardon .
Flynn has retracted his admission of guilt , and he has n't been sentenced for his crimes .
His @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the court proceedings into a ridiculous spectacle .
His cooperation in related federal cases fell through .
And even if one thought the specific charge of lying to investigators was unwarranted or unfair , that 's not a justification for pardoning any other potential crimes that might have fallen into the purview of the special counsel 's investigation .
Parts of that investigation that were spun off from the original case may be ongoing , and they may include serious but still undisclosed wrongdoing on Flynn 's part .
To justify the pardon @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the preposterous conspiracy fictions alleged by Trump and his allies about a `` deep state '' cabal trying to take down the president .
In addition to the special counsel , there are supposed to be two other checks on a president 's power .
The first is Congress , which has the power of oversight and impeachment .
But this mechanism failed when it became clear there was only one Republican vote to remove Trump in the Senate , where a two-thirds vote of the chamber would have been needed .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ did successfully vote Trump out of office on Nov. 3 , perhaps in part because of the corruption he 's displayed in matters such as the special counsel 's investigation .
And yet the precariously designed electoral system permits the president to retain his office for more than two months after being voted out , giving him ample time to issue unjustified pardons to cronies like Flynn that are essentially unreviewable .
That 's a serious flaw for the rule of law in our system , and those who care about good government @ @ @ @ @

President Donald Trump's pardon of his former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, released on Monday evening by the Justice Department, revealed just how sweeping — and fundamentally corrupt — the act of clemency was.
It didn't simply cover the charge of lying to the FBI about his interactions with the Russian ambassador during the 2016 transition, which Flynn had pleaded guilty to before trying to withdraw his plea. Instead, it offered a pardon
for the charge of making false statements to Federal investigators, in violation of Section 1001, Title 18, United States Code, as charged in the Information filed under docket number 1:1 7-CR-00232-EGS in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia; for any and all possible offenses arising from the facts set forth in the Information and Statement of Offense filed under that docket number or that might arise, or be charged, claimed, or asserted, in connection with the proceedings under that docket number; for any and all possible offenses within the investigatory authority or jurisdiction of the Special Counsel appointed on May 17,2017, including the initial Appointment Order No. 3915-2017 and subsequent memoranda regarding the Special Counsel's investigatory authority; and for any and all possible offenses arising out of facts and circumstances known to, identified by, or in any manner related to the investigation of the Special Counsel, including, but not limited to, any grand jury proceedings in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia or the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.
This would appear to include the crimes Flynn admitted to but wasn't formally charged with, including acting as an undisclosed agent of Turkey while serving on the 2016 Trump campaign.
Most striking of all, though, is the fact that the pardon covered "any and all possible offenses within the investigatory authority or jurisdiction of the Special Counsel appointed on May 17, 2017." That refers to former Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who was appointed to oversee the Russia investigation after Trump fired then-FBI Director James Comey. It was Comey's firing, and his subsequent revelation that Trump has pressured him to drop the investigation into Flynn, that spurred then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to appoint Mueller.
The whole point of having a special counsel, particularly in this case, was to protect the investigation from the real or perceived influence of the president, whose interests were directly impacted by the probe. In a system of government like that of the United States, there's a fundamental problem posed by the fact that the president, as the head of the executive branch, may be unaccountable to the laws the rest of the country must obey. The special counsel regulations are meant to circumvent that problem by providing some measure of independence to the investigators.
But the president's pardon power short-circuits that workaround. And indeed, it featured heavily in the Mueller report, which detailed a credible case of obstruction of justice against the president based, in part, on his dangling of pardons to key associates of his implicated in the investigation. When the president uses the pardon power in this way, it undermines the reasons special counsels are called for it all. It essentially gives the president the ability to put himself and his allies above the law. It may, in fact, have prevented the special counsel from uncovering additional crimes that it failed to find sufficient evidence to prove.
Actually issuing a pardon that specifically covers all the conduct covered by the special counsel's investigation turns the whole concept of accountability for the president into a joke.
This is especially true in this case, because there is no plausible justification for the pardon. Flynn has retracted his admission of guilt, and he hasn't been sentenced for his crimes. His lawyer, Sidney Powell, has turned the court proceedings into a ridiculous spectacle. His cooperation in related federal cases fell through. And even if one thought the specific charge of lying to investigators was unwarranted or unfair, that's not a justification for pardoning any other potential crimes that might have fallen into the purview of the special counsel's investigation. Parts of that investigation that were spun off from the original case may be ongoing, and they may include serious but still undisclosed wrongdoing on Flynn's part. To justify the pardon, one has to buy in completely to the preposterous conspiracy fictions alleged by Trump and his allies about a "deep state" cabal trying to take down the president.
In addition to the special counsel, there are supposed to be two other checks on a president's power. The first is Congress, which has the power of oversight and impeachment. But this mechanism failed when it became clear there was only one Republican vote to remove Trump in the Senate, where a two-thirds vote of the chamber would have been needed. The other is the electorate, which did successfully vote Trump out of office on Nov. 3, perhaps in part because of the corruption he's displayed in matters such as the special counsel's investigation. And yet the precariously designed electoral system permits the president to retain his office for more than two months after being voted out, giving him ample time to issue unjustified pardons to cronies like Flynn that are essentially unreviewable. That's a serious flaw for the rule of law in our system, and those who care about good government should demand a solution.


alternet--2020-11-30--'Don't talk to me that way': Trump loses it over a reporter's simple question

President Trump 's efforts to overturn the election results appear to be exhausted as he faced a string of defeats @ @ @ @ @ in Pennsylvania were rejected , both by the state 's Supreme Court and a federal @ @ @ @ @ recount in two liberal Wisconsin counties , ordered by the Trump campaign , cemented Biden @ @ @ @ @ said for the first time he 'll leave office if the Electoral College votes for @ @ @ @ @ Trump refuses to concede the election , which Biden won in both the electoral college @ @ @ @ @ margins .
On Thursday Trump attacked Reuters reporter Jeff Mason for asking when he would @ @ @ @ @ Trump mocked Mason for refusing to take off his mask while asking him a question @ @ @ @ @ Meanwhile Trump has turned on Georgia 's Republican Governor Brian Kemp , as the state @ @ @ @ @ run-offs that will determine control of the U.S. Senate .
Trump said he was `` @ @ @ @ @ Kemp , as he ranted on Fox News about losing the Georgia vote .

President Trump's efforts to overturn the election results appear to be exhausted as he faced a string of defeats over the weekend. Lawsuits in Pennsylvania were rejected, both by the state's Supreme Court and a federal appeals court. And a recount in two liberal Wisconsin counties, ordered by the Trump campaign, cemented Biden's victory there.
Trump said for the first time he'll leave office if the Electoral College votes for Joe Biden, even as Trump refuses to concede the election, which Biden won in both the electoral college and popular votes by wide margins. On Thursday Trump attacked Reuters reporter Jeff Mason for asking when he would concede.
President Donald Trump: "Don't answer, don't talk to me that way. You're just, you're just a lightweight. Don't talk to me that way. Don't talk to — I'm the President of the United States."
In May, Trump mocked Mason for refusing to take off his mask while asking him a question at a press briefing. Meanwhile Trump has turned on Georgia's Republican Governor Brian Kemp, as the state gears up for two Senate run-offs that will determine control of the U.S. Senate. Trump said he was "ashamed" that he endorsed Kemp, as he ranted on Fox News about losing the Georgia vote.


alternet--2020-11-30--How the privatization of medicine in India is accelerating its COVID-19 death toll

Spiraling health care expenses in India have been pushing more than 55 million Indians into a state of abject poverty every year .
COVID-19 has only worsened the trend for even more families—like Aghan Singh 's .
To ensure that his sick mother received the best treatment , Singh , a self-employed motor mechanic in the small town of Bilaspur , in Chhattisgarh , India , decided to take her to a popular private hospital nearby .
She had been running a fever since July 7 and had also developed breathlessness by July 9 .
Singh rushed her to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ emergency department around 8 p.m. , her oxygen levels were dangerously low .
The hospital ordered a battery of tests for COVID-19 and quickly admitted her to an intensive care unit to give her oxygen and medicine .
In the first eight hours of his mother being admitted to the hospital , Singh deposited Rs 34,000 ( $ 455 ) and then paid another Rs 1,96,000 ( $ 2,627 ) over the next four days .
To arrange money for his mother 's treatment , Singh had to sell off two and a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in his native village .
Despite all his efforts , his mother 's condition worsened progressively , and she died on July 16 .
While still grieving the loss of his beloved mother , he was further stressed about how his family would survive the next month with most of his resources having been exhausted during his mother 's treatment .
Also in the state of Chhattisgarh , when 60-year-old Savani Bai from the village of Dhanokhar developed mild symptoms of COVID-19 , she spoke to a doctor on the state helpline and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Since all the government hospital beds were occupied , she had to be admitted to the same private hospital in Bilaspur as Singh 's mother , where she was admitted to a general COVID ward .
During her 10-day hospitalization , she was given acetaminophen and was kept under daily observation to ensure her condition was not worsening .
For this basic treatment , she ended up spending Rs 85,000 ( $ 1,137 ) and had to mortgage her one-acre farm to meet her hospital expenses .
`` I took my mother @ @ @ @ @ @ @ because it is cleaner and they admit patients swiftly throughout the day , '' Singh said .
Due to inadequate funding and monitoring of quality control in public hospitals , a large number of people in India are being forced to go to private hospitals for both outpatient , and to a lesser extent , inpatient care .
It is a cruel joke that such a move to seek treatment in private hospitals by people is seen as a 'choice ' rather than a compulsion .
India , which is the `` second @ @ @ @ @ @ @ '' has been fighting the COVID-19 pandemic with a fragile health system .
The country saw one of the most draconian lockdowns anywhere in March , leading to a sense of panic and causing many private hospitals to simply shut up shop or turn away patients during the lockdown period .
`` I am 59 years old and [ have been taking medication ] for diabetes and hypertension for 10 years now—how could I expose myself to the risk of COVID ?
So I shut my hospital completely when [ Indian Prime Minister @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and reopened [ the hospital ] three months later , '' said Ajay Chandrakar , the doctor who owns the hospital to which Singh took his mother .
As a result , the avenues for seeking health care in India during a pandemic-induced lockdown were limited to the inadequate public systems .
And the private hospitals that left citizens in the lurch went unquestioned and unpunished by India 's national and state governments .
In fact , this was an opportunity for the public systems to recapture their rightful position as the predominant @ @ @ @ @ @ @ But the public systems were unprepared for the task .
There was hardly any increased funding by the center and state governments to build up the capacity of the public health care system in the country to provide treatment and care for the increasing numbers of patients during the pandemic .
Instead , there was `` a worrying disruption in India 's basic health services in March as local administrations focused on containing the spread of COVID-19 , '' reports Mint , using data provided by the National Health Mission .
Dr. Gajanan @ @ @ @ @ @ @ said , `` I am worried that more than 50 percent of my tuberculosis patients did not return for their drug refills in August , and I do n't know if they are still alive or not .
… Immunization rates have also dropped by 50 percent in our health service , '' lamented the doctor .
Private providers are able to make massive profits by charging patients exorbitantly—and national and state governments are n't stopping them .
Xavier Minz , who runs the largest private lab in Bilaspur , said , `` @ @ @ @ @ @ @ good on the losses I suffered when most hospitals were shut [ during the lockdown in March ] .
I got permission to do the COVID Real-Time PCR lab [ test ] and can charge Rs 3,800 ( $ 51 ) against my expenses of Rs 1,100 ( $ 14 ) for a single test . ''
Hospitalization and , in particular , intensive care are where private health systems make their major profits .
These profits translate into patients incurring catastrophic health expenditure .
Private hospitals continue to profiteer during the pandemic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it—by massively inflating bills for daily bed charges and intensive care .
India has been actively promoting privatization in various social services including in health care for the last 30 years .
Private-public partnership ( PPP ) has been one of the most common models for allowing private systems to perform a task previously done by the public systems while having the state pay for such operations .
In India , physicians working with public hospitals are allowed to practice outside their place of employment and treat patients for a fee .
`` @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hospital owned by Dr. Chandrakar , who is the best doctor in my town and [ has worked ] in the dharam hospital [ government hospitals are called dharam , which means righteous or moral ] for the last 25 years . ''
The PPP system makes it tempting for doctors working in public hospitals to compromise their commitment to their primary role of providing care in the public system .
Now in the time of the pandemic , when an acute shortage of doctors and nurses looms large , states still allow @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this chronic problem to become worse .
Back at home after recovering from COVID , Savani Bai cursed herself on her way to work at her farm—which had been mortgaged for her treatment—wondering why she had not demanded that the packed government hospital make space for her too when she required it .
Aghan Singh only blamed it on his karma , while trying to come to terms with his bleak future .

Spiraling health care expenses in India have been pushing more than 55 million Indians into a state of abject poverty every year. COVID-19 has only worsened the trend for even more families—like Aghan Singh's.
To ensure that his sick mother received the best treatment, Singh, a self-employed motor mechanic in the small town of Bilaspur, in Chhattisgarh, India, decided to take her to a popular private hospital nearby. She had been running a fever since July 7 and had also developed breathlessness by July 9. Singh rushed her to the hospital, and when they reached the emergency department around 8 p.m., her oxygen levels were dangerously low. The hospital ordered a battery of tests for COVID-19 and quickly admitted her to an intensive care unit to give her oxygen and medicine. In the first eight hours of his mother being admitted to the hospital, Singh deposited Rs 34,000 ($455) and then paid another Rs 1,96,000 ($2,627) over the next four days. To arrange money for his mother's treatment, Singh had to sell off two and a half acres of land that he owned in his native village. Despite all his efforts, his mother's condition worsened progressively, and she died on July 16. While still grieving the loss of his beloved mother, he was further stressed about how his family would survive the next month with most of his resources having been exhausted during his mother's treatment.
Also in the state of Chhattisgarh, when 60-year-old Savani Bai from the village of Dhanokhar developed mild symptoms of COVID-19, she spoke to a doctor on the state helpline and was advised to go to the hospital. Since all the government hospital beds were occupied, she had to be admitted to the same private hospital in Bilaspur as Singh's mother, where she was admitted to a general COVID ward. During her 10-day hospitalization, she was given acetaminophen and was kept under daily observation to ensure her condition was not worsening. For this basic treatment, she ended up spending Rs 85,000 ($1,137) and had to mortgage her one-acre farm to meet her hospital expenses.
"I took my mother to a private hospital near my home because it is cleaner and they admit patients swiftly throughout the day," Singh said. Due to inadequate funding and monitoring of quality control in public hospitals, a large number of people in India are being forced to go to private hospitals for both outpatient, and to a lesser extent, inpatient care. It is a cruel joke that such a move to seek treatment in private hospitals by people is seen as a 'choice' rather than a compulsion.
India, which is the "second worst-hit country behind the United States," has been fighting the COVID-19 pandemic with a fragile health system. The country saw one of the most draconian lockdowns anywhere in March, leading to a sense of panic and causing many private hospitals to simply shut up shop or turn away patients during the lockdown period. "I am 59 years old and [have been taking medication] for diabetes and hypertension for 10 years now—how could I expose myself to the risk of COVID? So I shut my hospital completely when [Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi] announced the lockdown, and reopened [the hospital] three months later," said Ajay Chandrakar, the doctor who owns the hospital to which Singh took his mother. As a result, the avenues for seeking health care in India during a pandemic-induced lockdown were limited to the inadequate public systems. And the private hospitals that left citizens in the lurch went unquestioned and unpunished by India's national and state governments.
In fact, this was an opportunity for the public systems to recapture their rightful position as the predominant health care providers in the country. But the public systems were unprepared for the task. There was hardly any increased funding by the center and state governments to build up the capacity of the public health care system in the country to provide treatment and care for the increasing numbers of patients during the pandemic. Instead, there was "a worrying disruption in India's basic health services in March as local administrations focused on containing the spread of COVID-19," reports Mint, using data provided by the National Health Mission.
Dr. Gajanan Phutke at the district hospital in Bilaspur said, "I am worried that more than 50 percent of my tuberculosis patients did not return for their drug refills in August, and I don't know if they are still alive or not. … Immunization rates have also dropped by 50 percent in our health service," lamented the doctor.
Private providers are able to make massive profits by charging patients exorbitantly—and national and state governments aren't stopping them. Xavier Minz, who runs the largest private lab in Bilaspur, said, "It is time for me to make good on the losses I suffered when most hospitals were shut [during the lockdown in March]. I got permission to do the COVID Real-Time PCR lab [test] and can charge Rs 3,800 ($51) against my expenses of Rs 1,100 ($14) for a single test."
Hospitalization and, in particular, intensive care are where private health systems make their major profits. These profits translate into patients incurring catastrophic health expenditure. Private hospitals continue to profiteer during the pandemic by the same methods they used before it—by massively inflating bills for daily bed charges and intensive care.
India has been actively promoting privatization in various social services including in health care for the last 30 years. Private-public partnership (PPP) has been one of the most common models for allowing private systems to perform a task previously done by the public systems while having the state pay for such operations. In India, physicians working with public hospitals are allowed to practice outside their place of employment and treat patients for a fee. "I took my mother to a private hospital owned by Dr. Chandrakar, who is the best doctor in my town and [has worked] in the dharam hospital [government hospitals are called dharam, which means righteous or moral] for the last 25 years." The PPP system makes it tempting for doctors working in public hospitals to compromise their commitment to their primary role of providing care in the public system. Now in the time of the pandemic, when an acute shortage of doctors and nurses looms large, states still allow their staff to practice privately, causing this chronic problem to become worse.
Back at home after recovering from COVID, Savani Bai cursed herself on her way to work at her farm—which had been mortgaged for her treatment—wondering why she had not demanded that the packed government hospital make space for her too when she required it. Aghan Singh only blamed it on his karma, while trying to come to terms with his bleak future.