F**king Mondays: 'Health-Scare' 2024, Apology Tours, And Musk's Orwellian Tweet

“This time it will be really great!”

Welcome to another edition of “F**king Mondays!”. In the round up today:

‘Health-scare 2024’

Despite its popularity and remarkable effectiveness, Donald Trump still wants to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Having failed multiple times to repeal it while in office, Trump believes it is an election winner in 2024 and told his followers on Truth Social that he is “seriously looking at alternatives”.

Trump and his 2016 campaign team never released a health care plan of their own. While in office, Trump again failed to produce a magical plan that was “going to take care of everybody”. Even in 2020 when running for his second term, Trump couldn’t be bothered to come up with an alternative, instead rebranding Obamacare as the “America First Health Plan”. Trump tried to convince the public that a mix of potentially illegal executive orders and minor tweaks to President Obama’s plan constituted a major overhaul of the US health care system and told the press that “we’ve really become the health-care party — the Republican Party.”

The fact that Trump wants to even talk about health care in 2024 is excellent news for President Biden, who is preparing to unveil a real health care plan with legal, costed out improvements to the ACA that could have huge implications for millions of people. Some of the details (via Yahoo News):

Expected to be part of the president’s proposed agenda: expanding the provisions cutting prices for insulin and other drugs, which were enacted for Medicare enrollees last year as part of the Inflation Reduction Act, and further strengthening the Affordable Care Act by making permanent the enhanced federal premium subsidies that have helped about 10 million people afford coverage on the Obamacare exchanges. The beefed-up assistance is set to expire after 2025.

Aides and advocates are also looking at potential workarounds to provide access to Obamacare coverage in the 10 remaining states that have not expanded Medicaid, now that North Carolina made the move early this month. That alone would make roughly 3.5 million more Americans eligible for Medicaid, according to independent estimates, mostly in deep-red states, but with top 2024 presidential battleground states Wisconsin and Georgia on the list too.

Republicans are now busy telling Trump to keep quiet on health care for very obvious reasons. He has no record to speak of, and again, no plan. The only thing Biden and his team must get right is the messaging — something Democrats are notoriously bad at. My own preference would be to present it as “Medicare For All” if Biden wants to revive talk of a public option. The public option was something Biden pledged during his 2020 campaign, but the realities in office meant it soon became politically impossible. A buy-in to a government plan for all Americans could be a distinct possibility if Democrats win the House and Senate next year, and it would provide a vision for the future voters could get behind. Of course it wouldn’t technically be “Medicare For All,” but this is campaign politics where soundbites and memes win the day.

Cultural appropriation anxiety

While mass online “cultural appropriation” shaming appears to have died down in recent times, white liberals are apparently still feeling guilty about…well…everything.

The New York Times ‘Ethicist columnist’ philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah responds to ethical issues sent in by readers each week, ranging from abortion to euthanasia. Last week, a reader wrote in asking whether she should send back West African art work bought by her father in the 70’s and 80’s because she is white. Here’s the question:

I have come into possession of several of these items over the years, and always appreciated them for their artistic qualities. But as my understanding of the horrors of colonialism and the legacy of slavery expands, I question whether it’s ethical for me to display a Baule mask or a Yoruba dance wand — ceremonial items with deep spiritual and cultural significance. Knowing they were not created for a tourist market also leads me to believe that at some point in their history they were probably acquired via an unfair transaction.

What is my responsibility to the descendants of the people who created these objects? Some friends have suggested donation to a local museum that specializes in African art, but this would perpetuate the colonialist attitude that these objects don’t belong where they were created. Is it possible to repatriate them?

Appiah, who is Ghanaian, thankfully assuaged the reader’s feelings of guilt for something she had absolutely nothing to do with. Appiah reminded the reader that all cultures, nations, and empires have a history of colonialism, theft and conquest, including African ones:

Nor, finally, does the fact that you are not of African descent make it wrong for you to have these things, any more than it would be wrong for members of the historically powerful Yoruba to possess a stool from their Nupe neighbors. (Yes, West Africa’s long history, like Europe’s, features plenty of conquest and pillage.) Prizing cultural artifacts from around the globe bespeaks, at its best, a cosmopolitan sensibility — one that’s especially important in a world increasingly narrowed by nativism.

Having lived in Ghana myself for several months, I can say with near certainty that most Ghanaians would find this to be insane. Contrary to western liberal perceptions about Africa, most Africans do not perceive themselves to be victims. In fact, many Ghanaians I spoke to were very open about their own nation’s history of brutal colonialism, conquest, and slavery. A Nigerian-British friend of mine for example, recently discovered that his family’s wealth was derived entirely from the Yoruba slave-trade. The news had understandably forced him to reevaluate a lot of his political beliefs.

I’m all for acknowledging the sins of the past, and even apologizing for them if it helps. Saying sorry can be a powerful gesture that helps heal past wounds (a good example being the unprecedented apology from the Hutu rebels to the Rwandan Tutsis). However, I have a real problem with pretending non-white/western countries don’t have their own bloody histories of colonialism and conquest, or that they shouldn’t apologize to those they have wronged too.

Israel’s spectacular intelligence failure

A stunning report in the Times reveals the Israeli intelligences knew everything about Hamas’s plans on October 7th:

Israeli officials obtained Hamas’s battle plan for the Oct. 7 terrorist attack more than a year before it happened, documents, emails and interviews show. But Israeli military and intelligence officials dismissed the plan as aspirational, considering it too difficult for Hamas to carry out.

The approximately 40-page document, which the Israeli authorities code-named “Jericho Wall,” outlined, point by point, exactly the kind of devastating invasion that led to the deaths of about 1,200 people.

The translated document, which was reviewed by The New York Times, did not set a date for the attack, but described a methodical assault designed to overwhelm the fortifications around the Gaza Strip, take over Israeli cities and storm key military bases, including a division headquarters.

Hamas followed the blueprint with shocking precision.

According to the Times report, the belief that Hamas did not have the capability to pull it off was “so ingrained in the Israeli government, officials said, that they disregarded growing evidence to the contrary.”

Now of course everyone in the region is paying a catastrophic price for this failure.

Chief Twit alert

In other news, Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia:

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See you next week!

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