Democracy Now! 2024-12-20 Friday

• Headlines for December 20, 2024
• Amazon Workers Launch Historic Strike to Demand New Contracts & End Unsafe Labor Practices
• UnitedHealth vs. Patients: NYC Man's Battle to Get Lifesaving Drug Highlights Broken Health System
• How to Appeal Insurance Denials, Abolish Medical Debt, and Fight for Medicare for All
• "Do Not Obey in Advance": Timothy Snyder on How Corporate America Is Bending to Trump

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In this Christmas special, Frank Skinner and his guests decipher the good, the bad, and the baffling, as they try to work out a mystery item - based entirely on its online reviews. Which traditional panto features an animatronic dinosaur? What’s the worst present they’ve ever received? And is that one star write-up “bit claggy, made me feel sick” a review of some stuffing or Love Actually? Written by Frank Skinner, Catherine Brinkworth, Sarah Dempster, Jason Hazeley, Rajiv Karia, Karl Minns, Katie Sayer and Peter Tellouche Devised by Jason Hazeley and Simon Evans, with the producer David Tyler A Pozzitive production for BBC Radio 4

This week, hosts Jim DeRogatis and Greg Kot share their highly-anticipated “Best Albums” of 2024. Plus, they’ll also hear selections from production staff.

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Featured Songs:

Redd Kross, "Candy Coloured Catastrophe," Redd Kross, In the Red, 2024

The Beatles, "With A Little Help From My Friends," Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Parlophone, 1967

Beyoncé, "LEVII'S JEANS," Cowboy Carter, Parkwood and Columbia, 2024

Tyler, The Creator, "Take Your Mask Off (feat. Daniel Caesar & Latoiya Williams)," Chromakopia, Columbia, 2024

Chelsea Wolfe, "Tunnel Lights," She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She, Loma Vista, 2024

Shellac, "I Don't Fear Hell," To All Trains, Touch and Go, 2024

Mdou Moctar, "Oh France," Funeral for Justice, Matador, 2024

English Teacher, "The World's Biggest Paving Slab," This Could Be Texas, Universal Island, 2024

Shirlette Ammons, "Short (feat. Mavis Swan Poole)," Spectacles, Puddin Pie, 2024

Pedro the Lion, "Spend Time," Santa Cruz, Polyvinyl and Big Scary Monsters, 2024

Idles, "Roy," TANGK, Partisan, 2024

Finom, "Hungry," Not God, Joyful Noise, 2024

Sabrina Carpenter, "Taste," Short n' Sweet, Island, 2024

Dehd, "Mood Ring," Poetry, Fat Possum, 2024

Amyl and the Sniffers, "Chewing Gum," Cartoon Darkness, B2B, 2024

Elucid, "THE WORLD IS DOG," REVELATOR, Fat Possum, 2024

Hurray For the Riff Raff, "Buffalo," The Past Is Still Alive, Nonesuch, 2024

Redd Kross, "Born Innocent," Redd Kross, In the Red, 2024

Mary Timony, "The Guest," Untame the Tiger, Merge, 2024

SPRINTS, "TICKING," Letter to Self, City Slang, 2024

Unknown, "Santa Clause is Coming to Town," Unknown, Unknown, Unknown

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The “gig economy” has been a disruptive force, undermining the working class’ access to job security, benefits, and fair wages, leaving them vulnerable to exploitation and financial instability. Now Claudia Sheinbaum’s government is stepping in and implementing a historic change to labor laws to grant labor protections and social security to hundreds of thousands of “gig” workers who will now be recognized as employees.  Co-hosts José Luis Granados Ceja and Kurt Hackbarth also look at US Ambassador-designate Ron Johnson’s past as a spook for the CIA and as both “military advisor” in El Salvador during the country’s civil war and, more recently, his cozy relationship with Nayib Bukele. Plus a conversation on efforts to protect Indigenous peoples’ rights and in Losers and Haters, we ask why outlets insist on quoting people like Castañeda and Dresser, who have no credibility.

Indochina rises up, the French Empire ends, the Cold War begins.

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Seismic shifts accross the middle east over the last year, from the genocide in Gaza, to the fall of the Assad regime in Syria to the killing of Hezbollah's Hassan Nasrallah, will reshape the region and force changes in the way resistance operates. 

Rania Khalek was joined by Bashir Saade, an Interdisciplinary Lecturer in Politics and Religion at the University of Stirling and author of the book “Hizbullah and the politics of remembrance.” 

As with many other periods, the history of the Roman Empire has often been told from the vantage point of a minoritarian social elite. Sarah Bond, a professor of classics at the University of Iowa, set out in her research to uncover something different: a "history from below" detailing the class struggle in ancient Rome. She joins Long Reads to discuss this project. Sarah's book Strike: Labor, Unions, and Resistance in the Roman Empire will be published in February of next year.

Long Reads is a Jacobin podcast looking in-depth at political topics and thinkers, both contemporary and historical, with the magazine’s longform writers. Hosted by features editor Daniel Finn. Produced by Conor Gillies, music by Knxwledge.

How to Share Your Emacs Configuration Between Different Machines (and Architectures) with Native Compilation

If you use Emacs on multiple machines, especially ones running different architectures or operating systems, sharing your Emacs configuration across those machines can become tricky. Add native compilation (introduced in Emacs 28) to the mix, and you might run into conflicts when Emacs tries to reuse compiled .eln files between machines.

Fortunately, with a bit of smart configuration, you can make Emacs share your configuration while keeping native compilation enabled for each machine. In this post, I'll show you how to set up your Emacs so that native compilation caches (.eln files) are kept separate for each machine. We'll also discuss why this is important and what your directory structure will look like.

Why Is This Important?

Emacs uses native compilation to compile Elisp files into optimized .eln binaries, which are architecture and system-dependent. If you share your Emacs configuration across machines without accounting for this, you may encounter issues:

1. Conflicting .eln files: A .eln file compiled for a Linux machine might not work on a macOS machine.

2. Unnecessary recompilations: Emacs may attempt to recompile packages on each startup, which can slow things down and clutter your eln-cache directory.

By separating the native compilation cache for each machine, you ensure:

• Faster startup times since Emacs doesn't recompile already-compiled code.

• A cleaner and more predictable setup across machines.

The Solution: Machine-Specific eln-cache Directories

To keep .eln files organized and avoid conflicts, you can configure Emacs to use a machine-specific eln-cache directory. Here's the configuration snippet to add into your early-init.el:

;;; Native Compile Settings
;; I use a <emacs-default-dir>/eln-cache-<machine-hostname>/ dir to store
;; my different machines' eln compiled code. This allows the same config
;; to be used on several machines without conflicts.
;; This is added in early-init.el to prevent unwanted recompilations.

(when (featurep 'native-compile)
  ;; Set the right directory to store the native compilation cache
  (let ((path (expand-file-name (concat "eln-cache-" (system-name) "/") user-emacs-directory)))
	(setq-default native-comp-eln-load-path       (list path)
				  native-compile-target-directory path)
	(startup-redirect-eln-cache path))

  (setq-default native-comp-async-report-warnings-errors nil  ;; Silence compiler warnings as they can be disruptive
				native-comp-jit-compilation              t    ;; Enable async native compilation
				package-native-compile                   t))) ;; Compile installed packages

What Does This Code Do?

1. (system-name): Retrieves the hostname of the machine. This is used to create a unique directory for each machine's eln-cache.

2. expand-file-name: Combines the Emacs configuration directory (user-emacs-directory) with the machine-specific eln-cache-<hostname> folder.

3. native-comp-eln-load-path and native-compile-target-directory: Set the paths for Emacs to store and load the compiled .eln files.

4. startup-redirect-eln-cache: Ensures Emacs uses the specified eln-cache directory right from startup.

Optional settings:

• native-comp-async-report-warnings-errors: Silences disruptive compiler warnings.

• native-comp-jit-compilation: Enables Just-In-Time (JIT) native compilation for faster execution.

• package-native-compile: Ensures all installed packages are natively compiled.

By placing this in your early-init.el, you make sure Emacs sets up the eln-cache directory before it starts loading packages or recompiling files.

Folder Structure Example

Let's say you have two machines, with the following hostnames:

• debian: A Linux workstation.

• macbook: A macOS laptop.

With the above configuration, your Emacs directory structure will look like this:

~/.emacs.d/
|-- early-init.el
|-- init.el
|-- eln-cache-debian/          # Cache for 'debian'
|   |-- abcdef01-abcdefgh01.eln
|   |-- xyz12345-xyzabc123.eln
|
|-- eln-cache-macbook/         # Cache for 'macbook'
	|-- abcdef01-abcdefgh01.eln
	|-- pqr67890-pqrxyz678.eln

Setting Up for a New Machine

If you're setting up Emacs on a new machine:

1. Clone or copy your shared Emacs configuration (e.g., from GitHub).

2. Make sure the above snippet is in your early-init.el.

3. Start Emacs. It will automatically create a new eln-cache-<hostname> directory and begin compiling packages natively for the current machine.

Conclusion

Sharing Emacs configurations across machines doesn't have to be a hassle, even when using native compilation. By directing Emacs to use machine-specific eln-cache directories, you can:

• Avoid conflicts caused by incompatible .eln files.

• Speed up startup times by preventing unnecessary recompilations.

• Maintain a clean and organized Emacs setup.

I hope with the provided configuration, you can easily manage Emacs on multiple machines—whether you're switching between Linux, macOS, or different hardware architectures.

Happy hacking!

Hesse, Jacques and Max join us for some holiday fun on today’s episode. After some fruitful discussion of Mr. Beast’s plan to rent out the Great Pyramids of Giza, we turn to a perennial favorite: Dear Prudie. What to do when a busty neighbor jogs lustily in front of your children? What if your wife shits too much? Your home invader’s child is now in your pre-school class? Answers to all these questions plus granma’s chicken wings all in today’s show.

Hesse is performing at Singer’s Bar on January 15th!

Jacques & Friends have a show at the Lodge Room in LA on Feb. 12th?

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Destruction of Syria & Cold Peace in Ukraine - John Mearsheimer, Alexander Mercouris & Glenn Diesen

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Journalist and host of "Dispatches" at Breakthrough News Rania Khalek returns to Bad Faith to give a comprehensive rundown of the history that led to the ousting of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, explain how the West is rehabilitating former al-Qaeda member Abu Mohammed al-Jolani as a moderate, & discuss the implications for Israel's expansionist goals in the region. Stay to the end for Rania's assessment of AOC's failure to win a key committee chair, and what that means about the viability of the left's "inside" strategy.

Subscribe to Bad Faith on YouTube for video of this episode. Find Bad Faith on Twitter (@badfaithpod) and Instagram (@badfaithpod).

Produced by Armand Aviram.

Theme by Nick Thorburn (@nickfromislands).

Our last roundup before the holidays, but stay tuned for other fun AP programming! This week: in Palestine-Israel, yet more Gaza ceasefire talks (1:16) and two new reports on Israeli conduct in the Strip (6:37); in Syria, reports of reprisal attacks (12:02), the US fails to broker a Turkey-SDF ceasefire (16:07), and Israel occupies the country's south (20:24); Russia appears to have moved military assets from Ukraine to Libya (23:16); the RSF carries out more attacks in Sudan's Al-Fashir (26:57); South Korea's Yoon is impeached again (28:05); in Russia-Ukraine, a prominent Russian general is assassinated (30:30), Russian forces close in on Pokrovsk (32:31), and Zelenskyy is in Brussels to talk peacekeepers (34:36); and a New Cold War update featuring the US and China extending a research agreement (37:03), a US naval vessel docking in Cambodia (38:10), and the Trump FP team targeting China (40:43).

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Danny speaks with Andrew deWaard, assistant professor of media and popular culture at UC San Diego, about his book Derivative Media: How Wall Street Devours Culture. The two discuss how the falling rate of profit shapes the modern media landscape, the increased drive toward consolidation in entertainment companies, the big movers like private equity firms, hedge funds, asset managers, and venture capitalists, artists' limited ability to defend themselves, the rise of IP, and more.

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Ryan and Emily discuss RFK makes push on Capitol Hill for HHS, Bibi parades in Syria amid Gaza ceasefire talks, NYT hoaxed by fake Hamas docs, poll shows young people approve of CEO assassination, AOC loses key oversight position, Ukraine admits to assassination in Moscow, Justin Trudeau faces calls to resign.

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Just a very quick one today.

I recently needed to find the number of days between two dates. I thought this would be easy in Emacs, and indeed it was, but as with most things in Emacs, you need to know exactly what you’re doing. Here is the method I used:

  M-x =calendar=

  Navigate to the start date

  Set mark

  Navigate to the end date

  M-x =calendar-count-days-region=

  OR

  M-=

Note that the count is inclusive of the mark, the documentation says:

It is bound to M-=.

Count the number of days (inclusive) between point and the mark.

That is all. 🙂

With a narrowly stolen election by George Bush, the religious right finds themselves in a greater position of power and influence than ever, as does an ascendant media empire by the former political operative Roger Ailes. They’d both find out, however, that power doesn’t necessarily mean success.

This episode draws from Dan Gilgoff’s The Jesus Machine and Gabriel Sherman’s The Loudest Voice in the Room. For a full list of sources, check our works cited doc here:

www.chapotraphouse.com/seeking

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oh god, too much is happening. France, Syria, Romania and Italians are doing propaganda of the deed again

Ciarán fell for the fake article about Assad starting a podcast. He wants to believe too hard.

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Chapo senior Foreign Policy analyst Derek Davison returns to the show as time continues to progress and events continue to occur. Today we turn to Syria, where the Assad regime suddenly collapsed over the last week. We discuss how Assad finally must go’d, the new groups filling the power vacuum, their relations to various regional and international states, and how Israel is exerting its power amid the chaos. We also discuss last week’s failed mini-coup in South Korea, and what that means for the government there.

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www.foreignexchanges.news

www.americanprestigepod.com

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Sarah Mills' comedy guide to dealing with a fallible and embarrassing body.

Since losing part of her bowel, comedian Sarah Mills has used a stoma bag. She might tell you that having a bag attached to her belly to collect her poo has made her unembarrassable - but the truth is she has always been completely shameless. Now, with the assistance of her outrageously candid celebrity guests, she wants to smash the taboos around bodily malfunctions and help us all banish bodily embarrassment for good.

Recorded in her home town of Stevenage, in this this week’s episode, Leaky, Sarah explores bodily spills with comedian and writer Ola Labib.

Created and written by Sarah Mills Starring Sarah Mills with special guest Ola Labib

Recording Engineer and Editor: Jerry Peal Recording Assistant: Guy Thomas Script Editor: Zoe Tomalin Associate Producer: Antonia Gospel Executive Producer: Alan Nixon Production Manager: Co- Producers: Gordon Kennedy and Sarah Mills

Recording in front of a live audience at Stevenage Lytton Players Theatre

An Absolutely production for BBC Radio 4

Additional information on issues in this episode: https://www.bowelcanceruk.org.uk https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/urinary-incontinence/

Chas Licciardello, Sashi Perera and First Dog on the Moon - aka Andrew Marlton - join David Marr to survey the profound and the ridiculous from the year we've just had.

The gap of time between how long Americans live and how much of that time is spent in good health only grew wider in the last two decades, according to a new study published in JAMA Network Open.

The study, which looked at global health data between 2000 and 2019—prior to the COVID-19 pandemic—found the US stood out for its years of suffering. By 2019, Americans had a gap between their lifespan and their healthspan of 12.4 years, the largest gap of any of the 183 countries included in the study. The second largest gap was Australia's, at 12.1 years, followed by New Zealand at 11.8 years and the UK at 11.3 years.

America also stood out for having the largest burden of noncommunicable diseases in the world, as calculated by the years lived with disease or disability per 100,000 people.

Read full article

Comments

The news roundup is once again delivered to your temporal lobe. This week: 2024 is officially the hottest year on record (0:57), particularly because the Arctic is no longer a carbon sink, but rather a net carbon emitter (2:40); regarding the situation in Syria, an update on the political transition (5:16), renewed fighting between the SDF and Turkish proxies (10:56), and Israel makes a land grab for an extended "buffer zone" (15:01); in Israel-Palestine, Hamas makes a major ceasefire concession (18:22); rebels in Myanmar seize the Bangladesh border (21:29) while other factions call for a ceasefire (22:51); President Yoon of South Korea survives his first impeachment vote and chaos ensues (24:30); Ethiopia and Somalia strike a deal to settle their recent tensions (30:14); in Russia-Ukraine, Trump's demand for a ceasefire panics Zelenskyy (33:22); Romania's constitutional court annuls the first round of its presidential election (37:14); an armed group commits a massacre in Haiti (40:25); and the Biden administration is building migrant detention facilities (42:00).

Subscribe today and check out our in-depth specials on stories from this week:

• South Korea, Martial Law, and President Yoon w/ Eun A Jo
• The Fall of Bashar Al-Assad w/ Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi

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Danny and Derek speak with Jeff Stein, White House economics reporter for The Washington Post, about his series on US sanctions for the Post, "The Money War". They talk about the function of economic sanctions for the US and how that's changed over time, broader cases like Iran to targeted ones like Russian businessman Viktor Vekselberg, how sanctions can "disconnect" war from the public, the humanitarian impact, and more.

Subscribe now at Supporting Cast!

Also check out Jeff's podcast on John Brown, American Carnage.

And be sure to take a look at Jeff's work in "The Money War":

• Part I: How 4 U.S. presidents unleashed economic warfare across the globe
• Part II: Sanctions crushed Syria's elite. So they built a zombie economy fueled by drugs.
• Part III: Trump White House was warned sanctions on Venezuela could fuel migration
• Part IV: Washington targeted 'corrupt' mines. Workers paid the greatest price.
• Part V: A new Washington influence industry is making millions from sanctions
• Part VI: How a Russian oligarch's $90 million megayacht landed in US custody

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Uma and Ciarán talk about Ireland and Germany but mostly about Ursula Von der Leyen for way too long

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To discuss developments in Syria and the region, Rania Khalek is joined by veteran war correspondent and analyst Elijah Magnier for a special live episode of Dispatches.

Zeynep Tufekci (New York Times, 12/6/24) “can’t think of any other incident when a murder in this country has been so openly celebrated.”

The early morning murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was met on social media with a “torrent of hate” for health insurance executives (New York Times, 12/5/24). Memes mocking the insurance companies and their callous disregard for human life abound on various platforms (AFP, 12/6/24).

Internet users are declaring that the man police believe to be the shooter, 26-year-old Luigi Mangione, is certifiably hot (Rolling Stone, 12/9/24; KFOX, 12/10/24). A lookalike contest for the shooter was held in lower Manhattan (New York Times, 12/7/24).

If so many people are unsympathetic at best in response to such a killing, that might be a reason to revisit why health insurance companies are so loathed. The rage “was shocking to many, but it crossed communities all along the political spectrum, and took hold in countless divergent cultural clusters,” the New York Times (12/6/24) noted. Mangione was reportedly found with an anti-insurance manifesto that stated “these parasites had it coming” (Newsweek, 12/9/24), echoing a resentment largely felt by a lot of Americans, and targeted fury at UnitedHealthcare specifically.

UnitedHealthcare has always stood out for exceptionally high rate of claims denial generally in the industry (Boston Globe, 12/5/24; Forbes, 12/5/24). For example, a Senate committee found that “UnitedHealthcare’s prior authorization denial rate for post-acute care jumped from 10.9% in 2020 to 22.7% in 2022” (WNYW, 12/7/24).

The Times (12/5/24) reported that the Senate committee found that “three major companies—UnitedHealthcare, Humana and CVS, which owns Aetna—were intentionally denying claims” related to falls and strokes in order to boost profits. UnitedHealthcare “denied requests for such nursing stays three times more often than it did for other services.”

Increasing dissatisfaction

The perception of the quality of US healthcare has been on the decline since 2012 (Gallup, 12/6/24).

On top of that, Americans generally believe their insurance-centered system is a mess. Gallup (12/6/24) reported that “Americans’ positive rating of the quality of healthcare in the US is now at its lowest point in Gallup’s trend dating back to 2001.”

It continued:

The current 44% of US adults who say the quality of healthcare is excellent (11%) or good (33%) is down by a total of 10 percentage points since 2020 after steadily eroding each year. Between 2001 and 2020, majorities ranging from 52% to 62% rated US healthcare quality positively; now, 54% say it is only fair (38%) or poor (16%).

As has been the case throughout the 24-year trend, Americans rate healthcare coverage in the US even more negatively than they rate quality. Just 28% say coverage is excellent or good, four points lower than the average since 2001 and well below the 41% high point in 2012.

Ipsos (2/27/24) likewise found:

Most Americans are unsatisfied with the healthcare system, say the health insurance system is confusing and opaque, and many have skipped or delayed care because of a bad experience or the lack of timely appointments. A small, but not insignificant number, of Americans believe they have had a negative health outcome as result of their experiences within the healthcare system.

When this inefficient system doesn’t literally kill Americans, it can still kill them financially. “Almost a third of all working adults in the United States are carrying some kind of medical debt—that’s about 15% of all US households,” Marketplace (3/27/24) reported. It added: “This debt is also the leading cause of bankruptcies in the country.”

Many news outlets’ pontificators, however, were incensed that anyone would voice frustration with health insurance when an industry CEO has fallen.

‘Not the time to offer criticism’

After Brian Thompson’s killing, the New York Post (12/5/24) condemned those on social media who “swooned over his killer, speculated on his motives, and wondered if Timothée Chalamet would play him in the movie.”

Responding to the memes and the jokes, many of which were more about the unjust health insurance system than support for vigilante murder, the New York Post editorial board (12/5/24) asked:

Do the jokes point to a society that has become so desensitized by the coarseness of online discussion, so disassociated from kindness, that a baying mob cheers a man’s murder and cries out for more?

And upon Mangione’s arrest, the Post (12/9/24) complained that on social media, “tasteless trolls showered praise on the Ivy League grad.” The Post (12/11/24) also fretted about fake “Wanted” posters for insurance company executives that the paper considered a “a fear-mongering social media stunt to incite hysteria,” adding that the “murder has also spawned a stream of merchandise sympathetic towards the 26-year-old being sold by online retailers, forcing Amazon to pull them from its website.”

Fox News (12/6/24) quoted one of its own contributors, Joe Concha, saying, “I think this encapsulates the far left’s worldview: If you run a company that isn’t to their liking, you deserve to die.” The network (12/7/24) praised Democratic Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania for “tearing into” a New York article (12/7/24) that the outlet characterized as saying “resentment over denied insurance claims made…Thompson’s murder inevitable.”

The dismay was felt in other corners of right-wing media. At the Free Press (12/5/24), the brainchild of anti-woke crusader Bari Weiss, Kat Rosenfield wrote:

The people celebrating Brian Thompson’s murder by turning him into an avatar for everything wrong with the American healthcare system remind me of nothing so much as Hollywood screenwriters, cunningly manipulating an audience into cheering on unforgivable acts of fictional violence.

The National Review (12/4/24) huffed:

This is not the time to offer your criticisms of the health-insurance industry. And there is never a time to believe that corporate executives are, by their very nature, evil people who deserve to be killed. Yet that is what you’ll see if you go on social media right now and look at comments on news stories about this assassination.

Yet all of these outlets at the same time have run support for Daniel Penny, the man recently acquitted for killing a Black homeless man on the New York City subway (National Review, 6/17/23; Free Press, 10/20/24; New York Post, 12/4/24; Fox News, 12/6/24). These outlets likewise expressed support for Kyle Rittenhouse after he gunned down Black Lives Matter protesters (National Review, 11/19/21; Free Press, 11/17/21; New York Post, 11/19/21; Fox News cited by Media Matters, 11/11/21), and for George Zimmerman when he shot Trayvon Martin (National Review, 6/22/20; New York Post, 7/15/13; Fox News, 7/18/12). In other words, it’s fine to defend vigilantes when they kill unarmed Black people or anti-racist activists, but when a CEO’s life is taken, we must solemnly stay silent on the reasons why such a person might be targeted or why bystanders might not be crying.

Piers Morgan (New York Post, 12/10/24) made this clear when he said “I cheered when I heard” Penny’s acquittal, and felt “shocked and saddened when I saw the footage” of the Thompson shooting. “Those two reactions would surely be the correct and appropriate ones for anyone with an ounce of fairness and humanity in their heart,” he said—because Thompson was “a non-violent, non-threatening, non-criminal man in the street,” whereas Penny’s victim was “a dangerous, mentally ill, homeless man.”

Blame it on Medicare

The Wall Street Journal (12/6/24) made the absurd claim that a medical system based on private insurance is better than any other kind of healthcare system.

It was the Wall Street Journal, the more erudite of Murdoch’s media properties, that really addressed the question of why people might hate health insurance companies. The anger was misdirected, the editorial board (12/6/24) said. Rather, we should look to federally funded healthcare if we want to get mad: “Medicare and Medicaid, two government programs, cover about 36% of Americans,” the paper observed; because they “pay doctors and hospitals below the cost of providing care…many providers won’t see Medicaid patients, resulting in delayed care.”

It’s an odd argument, given that people who receive Medicaid report being happier with their health insurance than people who get it through their employers or pay for it themselves—and people with Medicare are the happiest of all (KFF, 6/15/23). If the federal programs are underpaying healthcare providers, the obvious solution would be to increase funding for them—an initiative the Journal would be unlikely to support.

The board (Journal, 10/10/24) later dismissed critiques of the health insurance industry and passed off Mangione as a “disturbed individual” radicalized by the Internet and said it is “a dreadful sign of the times that Mr. Mangione is being celebrated.” 

Journal editorial board member Allysia Finley (12/8/24) followed up by placing the blame on the Affordable Care Act (aka “Obamacare”). “Having insurance doesn’t change people’s behavior,” she wrote, but does “cause them to use more care.” The situation, she said, “has gotten worse since Obamacare expanded eligibility” for Medicaid. This portrait of US patients overusing healthcare like sweet-toothed children let loose in a candy store is belied by (among other things) the fact that Americans live 4.7 fewer years than the average of comparable countries (KFF, 1/30/24).

The Journal editorial went on to complain that “some providers prescribe treatments and tests that may be medically unnecessary,” and so “insurers have tried to clamp down on such abuse by requiring prior authorization.” While this “can result in delayed care that is medically necessary…it’s also how insurers control costs.”

In reality, doctors are complaining that insurance bureaucrats are impeding their ability to deliver needed healthcare because of this cost-slashing system (Forbes, 3/13/23). The American Medical Association found “94% of doctors say prior authorization leads to delays in patient care” (Chief Medical Executive, 3/14/23); “one in three doctors (33%) say prior authorization has led to serious adverse events with their patients.”

Journal editorialists appear to believe that doctors are jauntily giving away expensive blood pressure medicine and signing up patients for brain surgery for no particular reason, and the only thing that can stop this carnival of care is some bureaucrat who is trained to say “no.” The reality is that the private insurance system “saves insurance companies money by reflexively denying medical care that has been determined necessary by a physician,” as pediatrician William E. Bennett Jr. (Washington Post, 10/22/19) wrote. This is why people are so unsympathetic to Thompson, who was paid an estimated $10 million annually for imposing medical austerity on patients and providers (PBS, 12/7/24).

Pity the insurance giants

The Washington Post (12/7/24) criticized those who tried to use Thompson’s killing “as an occasion for policy debate about claim denial rates by health insurance companies.” (Note that both the Post and the Wall Street Journal used the same photo of flags at half-mast.)

Right-wing media weren’t the only ones engaging in scolding. At the Jeff Bezos–owned Washington Post, the editorial board (12/7/24) criticized those “who excuse or celebrate the killing,” as well as those “who do not countenance the killing itself” but “have nevertheless tried to treat it as an occasion for policy debate about claim denial rates by health insurance companies, an admittedly legitimate issue.” The Post added that debate was “fine in principle, but we’re skeptical that this particular moment lends itself to nuanced discussion of a complicated, and heavily regulated, industry.”

The editors nevertheless spent a lengthy paragraph explaining to readers that “controlling healthcare costs requires difficult trade-offs,” and that “even the most generous state-run health systems in other countries also have to face” these trade-offs. The editorial attempted to summon sympathy for

insurers, whose profits are capped by federal law, [and] must contend with consumer demand for ready access to high-priced specialists and prescription drugs—and, at the same time, premiums low enough that people can afford coverage.

Note that insurance company profits are “capped” by requiring them to spend at least 80% of premiums on claims, a percentage known as their loss ratio—but those claims can be paid to providers that are owned by the insurers themselves, “a loophole that makes loss ratio requirements meaningless” (Physicians for a National Healthcare Program, 7/16/21). United Healthcare has been particularly aggressive at this, which is part of the reason its “capped” profits soared to $22.4 billion in 2023.

As for the Post’s assertion that insurance providers should keep “premiums low enough that people can afford coverage,” KFF (10/9/24) found that “Family premiums for employer-sponsored health insurance rose 7% this year to reach an average of $25,572 annually, marking the “second year in a row that premiums are up 7%.” The Center for American Progress (11/29/22) found that employer sponsored insurance “premiums have risen above the rate of inflation and have outpaced wage growth” over the course of a decade. “Escalating grocery bills and car prices have cooled, but price relief for Americans does not extend to health care,” USA Today (10/9/24) reported.

The Post added that all this talk about how Americans are being tortured by the insurance system should wait until next year, “when Congress is to consider whether to keep temporary Obamacare enhancements that have boosted enrollment.”

It is easy to see the material interests of the Washington Post‘s owner at work. Jeff Bezos’ Amazon does not run a health insurance company, but it is fully entrenched in the for-profit medical system. It offers a health insurance marketplace through AmazonFlex, acquired the healthcare provider One Medical last year (NPR, 11/12/23; Forbes, 4/5/24), and offers a pharmacy and other health services.

As one of the world’s richest people, Bezos might have another reason to be worried about people cheering on the murder of CEOs: Amazon is often hated for its monopoly-like grip on online retail (FTC, 9/26/23), as well as charges of price-gouging (Seattle Times, 8/14/24) and union-busting (Guardian, 4/3/24).

‘Last or near last’

The failure of the US healthcare system in one chart: life expectancy plotted against healthcare spending.

The Washington Post‘s line about the comparable ills of “generous state-run health systems” echoed a similar argument from the Wall Street Journal‘s editorial, which concluded:

Government healthcare is a recipe for more care delays and denials. Witness the fiasco in the United Kingdom, where the Labour government reports that more than 120,000 people died in 2022 while on the National Health Service’s waitlist for treatment. To adapt a famous Winston Churchill phrase, private insurance is the worst form of healthcare, except for all others.

The statement that the British or European health systems are worse for people than the US private insurer–dominated system is simply false. Just months ago, the Commonwealth Fund (NBC, 9/19/24) found that the United States

ranks as the worst performer among 10 developed nations in critical areas of healthcare, including preventing deaths, access (mainly because of high cost) and guaranteeing quality treatment for everyone.

The US “ranked last or near last in every category except one,” precisely because

the complex labyrinth of hospital bills, insurance disputes and out-of-pocket requirements that patients and doctors are forced to navigate put the US second to last in administrative efficiency.

The Commonwealth Fund (CNN, 1/31/23) also found that

the United States spends more on healthcare than any other high-income country, but still has the lowest life expectancy at birth and the highest rate of people with multiple chronic diseases.

Healthcare providers in Mexico and Costa Rica are huge draws for Americans in need of care who can’t make it through America’s Kafkaesque system (NPR, 3/8/23). Spain and Portugal are attracting American retirees, and good low-cost health care is one incentive (Travel + Leisure, 6/20/24).

Retreat to the castle

Apparently the CEOs that Fox News (11/13/24) is so concerned about don’t qualify as “professional elites.”

While the Washington Post’s position clearly falls in line with its material allegiance to a system where its owner sits at the apex, the positions from Murdoch are more interesting. As the Democratic Party has lost support among the working class (NPR, 11/14/24; USA Today, 11/30/24), Murdoch’s outlets have touted Donald Trump and the Republican Party as alternatives for working-class voters.

Murdoch and other purveyors of Republican propaganda have promoted the idea that Democrats serve only financial elites and Hollywood producers, and that protectionist policies under Trump will help US workers (New York Post, 7/16/24; Fox News, 11/13/24). Republicans were able to woo voters by complaining about the high price of gasoline and groceries under the Biden administration (CNBC, 8/7/24).

Now Murdoch outlets are fully retreating into their elite castle and telling the rabble to stop complaining about the lack of access to healthcare. The Republicans and their news outlets have worked hard to recharacterize themselves as something more populist, but the Thompson killing has brought back the old narrative that they are, proudly, the champions of the 1 Percent.

"The Bad Guys Are Winning," wrote Anne Applebaum for The Atlantic in 2021. "The War on History Is a War on Democracy," warned Timothy Snyder in The New York Times, also in 2021. "The GOP has found a Putin-lite to fawn over. That's bad news for democracy," argued Ruth Ben-Ghiat on MSNBC the following year, 2022.

Within the last 10 years or so, and especially since the 2016 election of Trump, these authors — Anne Applebaum, Timothy Snyder, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, in addition to several others — have become liberal-friendly experts on authoritarianism. On a regular basis, they make appearances on cable news and in the pages of legacy newspapers and magazines–in some cases, as staff members–in order to warn of how individual, one-off "strongmen" like Trump, Putin, Orban, and Xi, made up a vague "authoritarian" axis hellbent on destroying Democracy for its own sake.

But what good does this framing do and who does it absolve? Instead of meaningfully contending with US's sprawling imperial power and internal systems of oppression — namely being the largest carceral state in the world — these MSNBC historians reheat decades-old Axis of Evil or Cold War good vs evil rhetoric, pinning the horrors of centuries of political violence on individual "mad men." Meanwhile, they selectively invoke the "authoritarian" label, fretting about the need to save some abstract notion of democracy from geopolitical Bad Guys while remaining silent as the US funds, arms and backs the most authoritarian process imaginable — the immiseration and destruction of an entire people — specifically in Gaza.

On this episode, we look at the advent and influence of MSNBC-approved historians, dissecting their selective anti-authoritarian posture and discussing how their work does little more than polish their careers and provide cover for US and US-allied militarism.

Our guest is historian and author Greg Grandin.