Smooth Sailing For Norway
Someone posted this article link on soc. med the other day:
The article ran on July 10, 2018 in The Week and was written by the online mag’s reporter Ryan Cooper. It was classified as an Opinion piece. Cooper made the argument that scads of people are screaming to high heaven that a lot of the government-rescue policies being touted by leftists, especially Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (who I’m gaga for, BTW — I’ve been waiting with bated breath for years for a Dem pol to shout unashamedly and proudly that she wants things like universal health care and countless other programs dozens of other industrialized nations provide their citizens) will lead to America becoming some kind of horrifying dystopia, something like Cuba, perhaps. Whether or not Cuba is indeed a horrifying dystopia — its citizenry is well-educated and, yes, it boasts of universal health care yet it also cracks down on dissent, restricts movement, and holds a thumb on its news media’s jugular — can be argued from now until the wee hours. But Norway, Cooper avers, is a shiny gem of a society where nobody goes bankrupt because they’ve contracted leukemia.
That may be true.
If it is, I’ll tell you why. Norway is a hugely homogenous society. The country doesn’t much have to deal with issues like racism, the social safety net, and other such interlocking posers. The day someone got the bright idea that Norway ought to provide universal, single-payer health care for its citizenry, of all the arguments against that proposal, the single most powerful was missing. That would be the oft tacit refusal of its majority whites to countenance sharing the wealth with dark-skinned people.
See, there aren’t enough dark-skinned people in Norway to scare the bejesus out of its whites. Africans and Arabs, and any other strains silly enough to have been born with a few extra melanin cells distributed throughout their epidermes (yes, that’s the plural of epidermis; I looked it up!) aren’t present there to rob the majority whites of their birthright privileges. The idea being, Hey, sure, let’s take care of our Norwegian sisteren and brethren; they look just like us!
Here in America, with all our diversity — and, yes, we’re the most diverse nation on the planet — whichever gang happens to have a stranglehold on a numerical plurality (read: whites) will have the ability to deny largesse to those gangs that don’t look like them-slash-scare them.
In other words, it’s easy for Norway to be so open-handed. It’s not for us.
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Lotus Chatter
Did you miss yesterday’s Big Talk? The fairly-new exec. director of the Lotus Education & Arts Foundation, Tamara Loewenthal, joined me in the studio this week. With this year’s Lotus Fest (believe it or not, the 26th such iteration) set to kick off Thursday, September 26th, I thought it’d be the perfect time to find out how the Lotus folks do their thing. Believe me, it ain’t easy, from helping international acts get visas to feeding them while they’re here, Lotus staffers and vols go to heroic lengths to stage our town’s yearly signature event.
Here’s the link to yesterday’s podcast with Tamara.
Loewenthal
Join me next week, Thursday, September 26th, at 5:30pm on WFHB, 91.3 FM for Big Talk with guest Hilary Fleck, collections manager for the Monroe County History Center. Fleck just scored a big grant to do research on and stage an exhibit commemorating the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage in this holy land. Fleck’ll focus on the history of the women’s vote in this here county, which oughtta be a hoot.
Did you know, BTW, that this town’s first woman mayor was Mary Alice Dunlap, who was appointed to the post by the Bloomington city council in May, 1962. The previous mayor, Tom Lemon, had been tabbed by President John F. Kennedy to be postmaster for the Cincinnati area. When a mayor can’t or doesn’t finish out her/his term, the city council gets to pick a successor, meaning whichever party holds sway at that moment claims the seat. The city’s second female mayor, Tomi Allison, similarly gained office through a city council vote in 1983 when Frank McCloskey quit to become US Congressbeing from this district.
Dunlap ran for reelection in 1963 but lost to Republican Jack Hooker. Allison ran for election in 1983, ’87, and ’91 and won all three times.
The Monroe County History Center’s women’s vote exhibit will open some time next year, marking a century since the ratification of the 19th Amendment.
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