Baby steps are still steps.

And the ACA got us further than most people give it credit for. Private insurance is now obligated to spend 80%-85% of all dollars collected on medical claims; single payer might push that up to 95%, which would be a little better but not too far removed from where we are now.

So as far as I'm concerned, that fight is over. Next step needs to be addressing medical costs directly, which are the reason insurance premiums are so high.

I think a semi-Swiss system was as good as it could get. I was yelled at for supporting the ACA, but who's laughing now?!

The insurance companies? You too, I guess.

You don't have to get insurance at an insurance company.
If you can't afford insurance and you don't live in a shithole state, you get free insurance.

If you're a contractor or free agent that makes lots of money, you're probably hurting a bit more, but poorer folks got a pretty good deal.
When I lost it all I got on Washington's ACA system, and it's been awesome. I actually don't want to leave now that I am back in the black.

"The insurance companies?"

Surprisingly enough, they don't like a system that caps their profits, even if it gives them a stable customer base.

It's like the banks: they'd never been more stable than in the 50 years after FDR, but oh how they chafed under regulation. They started getting their deregulatory wishes under Reagan, which started the era of S&L scandals, and later the Great Recession.

What big business wants isn't always what is good for them.

Haha, jesus christ.

I'm sorry you don't agree with incrementalism. Maybe we can fire up another civil war, just so you feel like you're getting something done?

What will the spoils of war be? The carrion of a decaying empire? I'd rather step out of the way and let nature take its course.

If you mean physically he's one of the grossest "famous" people I can think of.

if i were his face, i would call a fatwa on his hands

that said, i would fucking love to have a drink with him. he's a philosophical heel who loves to party.

I do mean his face. I have no idea what his policies are about because I can't get past his snot-wiping antics.

And if all this nonsense was true then why was OWS clubbed, sprayed, gassed, and imprisoned into oblivion?

Zizek himself, aside from saying a handful of good things, always proves himself to be a voice of abstraction and total cynicism. He talks about radicals being the comfortable voice from the back, but that's all he's ever distinguished himself as.

But he's pretty great at it.

Wouldn't you prefer someone who's actually saying something?

I used to have this Zizek lecture thing on my computer where he concern-trolls the hell out of "multculturalism", which is already problematic when you consider it against some of his other crypto-fascist writing, but there's this part at the end where he's doing a Q&A and this one grad student asks him a hopelessly incoherent question, and instead of seeking clarification (the way honest intellectuals do), he just free associates nonsense right back at him, and they get into an utterly meaningless back and forth. Listening to that for the second or third time, and thinking of all those editorials he's written without any coherent message, just bluffing and free-associating all the way through, I finally realized the only thing this guy is sincere about is cynicism. His mission is to say as much as possible and mean as little of it as he can.

I don't feel any joy in saying this because I gave him the benefit of the doubt for a very long time, long past the point others had already dismissed him, but I'm not too embarrassed. Like I said, he's said good things--his takedown of Zero Dark Thirty was spot on and his book about Lacan is surprisingly accessible--but at the end of the day most of the shit he pontificates on is something he doesn't give two licks about, and unfortunately that includes class struggle.

And I think that's the real reason he likes Obama. He senses a kindred spirit, someone else who knows appearance is reality.

Another thing that left a bad taste in my mouth was the crass way he talked in an interview about taking his son on a trip to Dubai, where he had him meet the Indian wage slaves so he could get a taste of working class struggle, and then immediately took him on a shopping extraveganza. I'm also reminded of the way he hawked Abercrombie & Fitch, who were way ahead of their time seizing on Zizek's trendiness, and then went on to poo-poo the notion that an ostensible leftist philosopher would damage his credibility by lending it to comercialism.

It's that whole meretricious preoccupation with embodying your contradictions that's become to me the mark of a dedicated phony.

He just explained that radical gestures *don't* threaten capitalism, you little retard - they just make radicals feel good about themselves. Can't believe I'm going to bat for Zizek.

Pearls to swine...

Basically, yes. Looks like we all agree.

“I would rather be a swineherd, understood by the swine, than a poet misunderstood by men.”