Above: A new health clinic in Puerto Rico, ca. 1940. Photo by the Puerto Rico Reconstruction Administration (PRRA), from the PRRA / WPA book, Puerto Rico: A Guide to the Island of Boriquen.
The New Deal ethos vs. a modern sociopath worldview
Sociopath: "a person with a psychopathic personality whose behavior is antisocial, often criminal, and who lacks a sense of moral responsibility or social conscience" (Dictionary.com).
In modern America, there has been a widespread lack of moral responsibility and social conscience towards Puerto Rico. This lack of concern is seen after every battering the island takes, for example, financial debt, hurricanes, and now coronavirus. The public health system of Puerto Rico has been neglected, and it appears that no crisis is big enough for our neoliberal federal government, and much of the citizenry, to give a damn.
(See, e.g., "Puerto Rico mayors work to fight coronavirus with few tests available," NBC News, April 17, 2020; "A 13-year-old’s death highlights Puerto Rico’s post-Maria health care crisis: Hundreds of doctors have left the island, and hospitals and clinics remain shuttered," Vox, February 27, 2020; "Puerto Rico's Wounded Medicaid Program Faces Even Deeper Cuts," NPR, August 1, 2018; and "Electricity Cut Off For Puerto Rico Hospital That Owed $4M," NBC News, March 11, 2016.)
Of course, this lack of empathy not only applies to Puerto Rico, but to the nation as a whole. It seems we've been trained, very thoroughly, to not care about one another. Perhaps Ayn Rand's numerous books, promoting sociopathy, and the political leaders who took inspiration from her work--for example, Ronald Reagan, Alan Greenspan, Paul Ryan, and Donald Trump--have created a new America: a "To Hell with everyone but me" America.
It doesn't have to be this way of course. For example, during the New Deal, the Puerto Rico Reconstruction Administration (PRRA, created by FDR's Executive Order No. 7057) "established sixty-four rural dispensaries... These dispensaries operated as regional clinics, each unit consisting of three dispensaries staffed by a physician, nurse, social worker and clerk" (PRRA, Rehabilitation in Puerto Rico, 1939).
These type of public health initiatives occurred all across the country during the New Deal. See, for example, my recent blog post: "Rural hospital closings vs. New Deal hospital construction."
Today, sadly, either Americans don't know about this history (and are too lazy to learn about it), or they do know about it, but their sociopath training has led them to think, "No, we absolutely should not do that public health stuff again because... well... I just don't give a crap."
I'm sure it's a combination of both. And Corporate America loves this mixture of ignorance and sociopathy. It allows them to close rural hospitals (to increase profit), price gouge our prescription medicines, and give us health insurance plans that are designed to enrich wealthy shareholders first... and address our health needs second, if at all. And whenever one group of Americans say, "We need to fix these problems," another group of Americans, trained in sociopathy, scream out an angry, hate-filled, "Freedom!!" to squash any reform that will improve the quality of our lives.
Will Americans ever adopt the New Deal ethos again? Or are we just going to muddle along, on sociopathy, decade after decade... as our wages stagnate, our retirement benefits erode, our life expectancy continues to drop, and our happiness goes the way of the Dodo Bird? (See, "What America can learn from the world's happiest countries," The Week, March 21, 2019.)
Above: Young Puerto Ricans in the New Deal's National Youth Administration (NYA) get a health check-up, ca. 1935-1943. Photo courtesy of the National Archives.
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