Above: A WPA nurse puts fresh bandages on a patient in Michigan, ca. 1935-1943. Photo courtesy of the National Archives.
Above: A WPA nurse in Kentucky draws a blood sample, ca. 1935-1943. Photo courtesy of the National Archives.
Above: WPA chemists analyzing blood samples in New Orleans, ca. 1935-1943. Photo courtesy of the National Archives.
Above: The description for this WPA photograph reads, "Louisiana - Public Health nurse calls at the home of this convalescent woman. Daily care is given to sick adults until they are able to care for themselves." Photo courtesy of the National Archives.
Above: WPA workers in Louisville, Kentucky, preparing mailing kits for syphilis testing, 1938. Photo courtesy of the National Archives.
Above: The description for this 1936 photograph reads, "Longview Hospital for the Insane, Cincinnati, Ohio. A creative art class which endeavors to teach the inmates of this institution coordination between mind and muscles. The majority of these girls were unable to even draw a line when they first entered the class. Except for WPA this sort of work would probably never have been done. Specially trained WPA teachers are assisting in this work." Note that the description contains some terminology that, today, we might consider politically incorrect - "Hospital for the Insane," "inmates." But perhaps the work of the WPA contributed to our current, more enlightened terminology and understanding of what the mentally ill can do when given special education, attention, and therapy. Photo courtesy of the National Archives.
Above: A WPA nurse arrives at a nursery school in Georgia for a routine check-up on the children, 1938. Photo courtesy of the National Archives.
For our health and well-being, a New Deal or sociopathy?
The New Deal was a renaissance in public health. More nurses, more hospitals, more clinics, more check-ups, more immunizations, more health education, and more research. But for decades now, the political right has been working very hard to undo all that. Monsters like Seema Verma, the current head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, are trying to scale back health funding for lower-income Americans in order to ensure tax cuts for the rich.
Verma is promoting, among other things, work requirements for many people on Medicaid, essentially holding back health care for ransom - "You either work, or you don't get your medicine!" (see, e.g., "'Needless and Ideologically-Driven Cruelty': Arkansas to Become First State to Implement Trump's Assault on Medicaid," Common Dreams, March 5, 2018). The problem with this strategy, in addition to its immorality, is that the poor face all sorts of problems when it comes to work or job training - for example, transportation problems in rural areas. Rich sociopaths like Verma, and her boss, Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar, don't understand these types of problems because (a) they've never had to deal with it themselves or (b) it's been so long since they have, that they've forgotten what it's like.
"63% of Americans don't have enough savings to cover a $500 emergency," like a car repair. What does a person do, for example, if they must work or attend job training to receive healthcare and the transmission in their car goes up - typically a $2,000-$3,000 repair? Under the demented philosophy of sociopaths Verma and Azar, as well as most of the political right, that person must not only deal with the stress of an unaffordable car repair, but also the potential loss of his/her healthcare and/or medicine. What kind of a person would put poor people into a situation like that? Answer: A person who views the poor as little more than vermin - to be brought under heel, or eliminated.
We can either have another public health renaissance, like the New Deal, or we can have bloodthirsty sociopaths like Verma and Azar in charge of our health - people who despise the poor, and probably wish most of them would just go away and die and stop interfering with tax cuts for the rich. Unfortunately, America has chosen sociopaths over a New Deal. And that's probably because, as Dr. Sophia McClennen of Penn State University has recently pointed out, we've developed into a nation of ignoramuses (I would modify that with an adjective - "cold-blooded ignoramuses").
Former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich recently lamented the death of the common good and said, "This is not a society. It's not even a civilization, because there's no civility at its core." He's right. We are not a civilization. We are a sociopathy held together by law enforcement and the ever-present threats of incarceration, poverty, ridicule, and homelessness. Through the teachings of Ayn Rand, millions have been brainwashed into thinking that we should despise one another, and that persecution and misery will lift up the poor - or kill them, if need be. Yes, the teachings of Christ, which were so dear to President Franklin Roosevelt, have been flushed down the toilet by the political right - and then gleefully replaced with Rand's malevolence.
FDR, Frances Perkins, Harry Hopkins, and other New Dealers must be rolling in their graves. They set us on the path to right but we chose evil instead. It can be no surprise then, that suicides are rising and our life expectancy is dropping.
Above: In this video clip, former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich explains the political right's devotion to Ayn Rand's sociopathy - and how Rand's sick & demented philosophy has decimated our culture. YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kr41QDei3TI.
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