Crash (Love, health, politics. And the kids.)

Love may be a many-splendored thing, but today’s world reeks of lead-free symphorophilia.

(Symphorophilia is a sub-species of paraphilia, where protagonists become sexually aroused by staging and participating in car-crashes. First explained by the great and prescient writer J G Ballard, in his novel Crash).

Our Keresian love affair with the automobile is becoming increasingly pervasive; no longer confined to road kill, it has spread out from the tarmac and concrete diffusers that cross-hatch our suburban landscapes and has entered our homes, and from Accident and Emergency departments it has invaded the long-stay wards. It has also entered the heart and the soul of American politics.

When it comes to health care spending, the USA is at the very top of the table. Americans spend almost twice as much on health per capita as Holland and Canada, three times more than New Zealand and Spain, and four to five times more than Italy and Cuba. Yet when it comes to life expectancy, a crude but effective way of measuring the health of a nation, the USA does not do so well.

In 2015 the USA came in 32^nd in the global rankings (1). By 2017 they had fallen to 45^th place (2). They are now below New Zealand and Cuba. They are below Guam, Costa Rica, the Lebanon, Puerto Rico and Taiwan, French Guiana, Mayotte, Reunion, and 35 other nations. And they will continue falling, as their life expectancy continues to decline. I predict that they will drop out of the top 50 nations by 2020.

There is a sickness at the heart of the USA, planted there by the sociopath John D Rockefeller back around 1900. Rocky 1 destroyed public transport and traditional health care systems in the US, forcing people into Fords and pharmaceuticals, and in the process consuming ever more oil. The culture of car, drug and oil-dependency lead, inevitably, to today’s Deep State’s insanely dangerous foreign policies and their incredibly destructive domestic polices; which are deeply inter-twined.

Oh Chevrolet, how do you kill me? Let me count the ways…

In the acute sense, the USA holds the record for Road Traffic Accident (RTA) deaths (3). At 10.6 RTA-associated deaths per 10,000 of population, Americans die 50% more frequently than the 2^nd placed Belgians (at 6.7), 100% more often than the French (5.1) and 200% more than the Limeys (2.9).

The Americans’ high road kill rate is partly due to the fact that they own more cars than anyone else (4). They own 833 passenger cars per 1000 of population, compared to 505 cars per 1,000 in the EU; and because it is almost impossible to walk to the store, church, dog-track or anywhere else for that matter they spend far more time at the wheel, driving about 23,000 passenger/kilometers per year compared to the Europeans who cover around 9000 passenger/kilometers/year (5).

That means, of course, that Americans walk and cycle less than anyone else. In terms of kilometers traveled by foot per person per year, the Dutch (a famous cycling nation) top the bill with 848 kilometers / year. The Danes come second with 600, Swedes, Belgians and Germans score close to 300 and even the sedentary Brits manage 75. Americans languish at the bottom of the table with a mere 40 (6).

Now the trouble doubles.

Slaves to their automobiles, time- and cash- poor Americans not only take the least exercise but also consume the largest amounts of fast and ultra-processed high-calorie foods (and often at the wheel). This is how they became the world’s fattest nation – which feeds back to their road death statistics, because being obese makes it much more likely that you will die if you are in a road traffic accident (7). That’s simple physics. Then, there’s nutrition.

Fast and ultra-processed foods contain an excessive omega 6 / omega 3 fatty acid ratio. The correspondingly high ratio of omega 6 to 3 fatty acids in American brains makes them depressed, anxious and impulsive (8, 9), so they are avid consumers of anti-depressants and anxiolytics. The same high ratio of 6’s to 3’s creates inflammation and pain in joints, muscles and other tissues (10) – so they crave painkillers. A combination of impulsivity and psychotropes also loops back to the road death stats. Texting LSMH to your BGF while amped on oxy at 70 MPH on the I is never a good idea.

You can buy potent painkillers on almost any urban street corner because the cartels that own US politics (including such eminents as the Sackler family) amended the laws, allowing them to sell more and more of their highly addictive neo-opiate drugs to an increasingly addicted nation. And over-doses, suicides, fatty liver disease, diabetes – all the major causes of death – have caused the ongoing fall in life expectancy seen over the last few years.

There is a great deal to love in the USA and it is crucial to distinguish between the evil that lurks in Washington, which is apolitical but finds it useful to wear political colours; and the American people, who are variously victims. They may be minor key victims compared to the major keys (Afghanis, Iraquis, Syrians, Ukrainians, Yemenis – the list is a long one) – but they are victims nevertheless. And the original constitution remains, in my view, one of the greatest political foundations and documents of all time. 

But the MIC Mob own America now, and by waging war against the American people they have created the fattest, most inflamed, sickest and most drug-dependent of nations. They have lead their citizens effortlessly from barbarism to decadence thanks to out-of-control oil, pharma and food industries, most of which are still largely owned by the same small number of families who started this slow-motion car crash back in the late 19^th century.

In a final self-defeating irony, the Mob’s myopic brutalisation of America has started to undermine their very existence. The military are affected by all of the above social and socioeconomic factors, resulting in 2 in 3 service members being overweight or obese (11). This renders them unfit for anything other than droning, one reason why Uncle Sam funds terrorist groups such as ISIS to do his dirty work. Back at the recruiting office 1 in 3 young adults are too fat and unfit even to enlist (11), so that situation is not going to improve any time soon. 

Those young folk are also suffering from declining intelligence and an increasing inability to focus (12, 13). A third of all teenagers have not been willing or able to read a book in the last year, in print or Kindle (14). Unfocussed, anxious, depressed, dependent and dangerous (suicide, overdose, liver disease and road traffic accidents are now leading causes of death in young adults), they are easy fodder for political manipulators and highly vulnerable to mob psychology. 

Their vulnerability is exacerbated by the degraded cultural Marxism that informs so many educational establishments. Increasingly, the little darlings are being taught to show jazz hands rather than clap at meetings, because clapping is somehow too threatening. Good teachers (there are a few left) tell me that their young protégées, after a childhood of being told that everyone gets a prize, no longer know how to deal with failure. When faced with reality, they collapse or throw temper tantrums.

On the other hand.

Lotus supplies are running short, and large numbers of American friends are waking up from their CNN and MSNBC-induced stupor. Most of the Americans who have woken are at this time in the libertarian or independent camps, and most of those who could hold their noses long enough to vote, voted for Trump and Kavanaugh. The criminal ‘left’ (Pelosi, Feinstein, Clinton et al) and the idiot ‘left’ (the pussy-hat brigade) tried everything to derail the process but Christine Ford’s CIA connections, the increasingly wild accusations and transparently obvious machinations of the Democrat apparatchiks, failed to gain sufficient traction.

I am thankful they did not. I do not like Kavanaugh, an authoritarian whose track record shows that he favors ever more state control. (I would vote for Moorfield Storey if he was still alive, and if I could vote.)

Under normal circumstances Democrats would have been fine with this, but faced with the loss of their SCOTUS power base they preferred to shout, scream and run fraudulent character assassination schemes. This was a program run by the deeply cynical, and staffed by the deeply irrational.

If the ‘left’ had won with these tactics the entire legal edifice built on the presumption of innocence until proven guilty would have failed, and America would have started a long plunge back into the Dark Ages. Salem on the Potomac would be resurgent, and we would be back in the age of witch trials.

I am no symphorophiliac, but the ongoing car crash of democracy and decency fascinates me. The auto-da-fé is running. The destination is not yet known.

I am, however, a Limey, and therefore I’m ahead of the curve. Britain started to lose its empire at the end of the 19^th century in a remarkably peaceful process that reached its final stages circa 1945. The fall of our empire had its roots in our success; in a classically Hegelian manner, an over-stretched military and over-consumption of the fruits of empire (including sugar and tobacco) eroded our social and physical health to the point of collapse. Is the US following in our footsteps?

Probably. But, America could be great again. It would require changes to public transport and urban design, improving food production, the reallocation of agricultural subsidies, re-building the educational system, investing in infrastructure, an outbreak of honesty among politicians, a restoration of self-belief, a dismantling of media and banking oligopolies, and a few other things. It seems like an impossible mountain to climb; but people can move mountains if and when they finally decide to do so. 

References

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy#List_by_the_World_Health_Organization_(2015)
2. http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/life-expectancy-by-country/
3. http://www.who.int/violence_injury_prevention/road_safety_status/2015/GSRRS2015_data/en/   Table A2.
4. Millard-Ball A, Schipper L. “Are We Reaching Peak Travel? Trends in Passenger Transport in Eight Industrialized Countries.” Transport Reviews. DOI: 10.1080/01441647.2010.518291. More at: https://phys.org/news/2011-01-peak.html#jCp
5. https://www.planetizen.com/node/58169
6. https://mises.org/wire/american-life-expectancy-vs-european-its-not-about-socialized-medicine
7. Rice TM, Zhu M. Driver obesity and the risk of fatal injury during traffic collisions. Emerg Med J. 2014 Jan;31(1):9-12.
8. Thesing CS, Bot M, Milaneschi Y, Giltay EJ, Penninx BWJH. Omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acid levels and dysregulations in biological stress systems. Psychoneuroendocrinology. 2018 Nov;97:206-215. 
9. Polokowski AR, Shakil H, Carmichael CL, Reigada LC. Omega-3 fatty acids and anxiety: A systematic review of the possible mechanisms at play. Nutr Neurosci. 2018 Sep 28:1-11. doi: 10.1080/1028415X.2018.1525092. 
10. Senftleber NK, Nielsen SM, Andersen JR, Bliddal H, Tarp S, Lauritzen L, Furst DE, Suarez-Almazor ME, Lyddiatt A, Christensen R. Marine Oil Supplements for Arthritis Pain: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Randomized Trials. Nutrients. 2017 Jan 6;9(1). pii: E42. 
11. https://www.rand.org/nsrd/projects/hrbs.html
12. Woodley MA, te Nijenhuis J, Murphy R. (2013). Were the Victorians cleverer than us? The decline in general intelligence estimated from a meta-analysis of the slowing of simple reaction time. Intelligence 41, 843–850.
13. Menie MA, Fernandes HB, José Figueredo A, Meisenberg G. By their words ye shall know them: Evidence of genetic selection against general intelligence and concurrent environmental enrichment in vocabulary usage since the mid 19th century. Front Psychol. 2015 Apr 21;6:361. 
14. https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/ppm-ppm0000203.pdf