The health care debate rages on. Never have I witnessed such a calculated misrepresentation of reality than I have in the health care legislation “debate”. The shameless lies that have been tossed into the public forum have fueled the hysteria of the mindless morons who are determined to both vote against their own interests and to defend policies which have laid waste to their communities, states, and nation. I completely understand why the health care lobbyists and their property, the U.S. Congress, are in favor of doing nothing. I am still amazed, however, to see “Tea Party” rebels who are either on or about to be on Medicare rail against the evils of socialism. Perhaps the real problem driving the cost of health care ever higher is that the American populace has reached a critical saturation level of high fructose corn syrup. The cob has come home to roost. Carbonated soft drinks, the personal lubricant of our culture, are making people susceptible to not only a plethora of debilitating and expensive diseases, but also to a dangerous erosion of mental faculties. This is doubly serious, considering the dearth of gray matter currently floating about in the American collective mind.

The most often repeated problem according to our representatives, and to a degree their constituents, is that the legislation is too expensive, that it would put our children in debt forever. These are the same people who jumped on the war wagon with reckless abandon to the tune of a three-trillion dollar imperialist gamble, which yet continues to demand more and more cash. Forget about the three trillion, and how much of it goes to overcharges by defense contractors, the cost of mercenaries like Blackwater, no-bid sweetheart contracts with super-patriot outfits like Halliburton, and out and out theft, graft and corruption by the beneficiaries of our “intervention”. Never mind that a lot of the stuff we fund in war just explodes when used. Never mind that citizens of Baghdad still have not seen a day of uninterrupted electricity, that their childrens’ hospitals and schools are either blown up (Shock and Awe, oops, collateral damage), or at least understaffed, overcrowded, and lacking the most basic supplies needed to adequately treat the victims of the battle. Never mind that people in America must choose between money for insurance or money for rent, that even the overpriced plans that many of us have desert us in our hour of need, slipping through loopholes designed to avoid corporate losses. Never mind any of that. Health care is too damned expensive, particularly when we are spending hundreds of billions a year destroying things far away and then rebuilding them in our own image and likeness. Trillions for war, not a cent for Uncle Frank.

This brings me to my real point. This is not about single payer versus public option versus free market. This is not about mandated employer programs. This is not about balancing a budget. This is about an ugly truth that we can ignore if we choose, but cannot deny. We are a culture which worships at our own altar, which feels entitled to an ever-expanding array of creature comforts, and which has been hypnotized into a trance of self-interest and conspicuous consumption. In the meantime, the money-grubbers who are holding the swinging watch are more than ready to provide clever slogans to the empty-headed while they line their own  pockets. I heard Thomas Jefferson rolling over in his grave when his name was invoked by demonstrators who are against basic health care for all but completely supportive of overseas adventurism with an unlimited budget. We quite simply would rather spend trillions to kill people all over the world in the name of national security (it’s the modus operandus of empires throughout history) than treat the infirm here at home.

With this sad truth in mind, I think I know of a way to fund health care. We just need to ban sports. Between professional, amateur, college, and high school sports, there is a tremendous amount of money and energy that we as a nation spend on sports. There are the stadiums which are built and maintained, the equipment, the training, the recruiting, and the cost of putting on the show. There are contracts, salaries, product endorsements and broadcast revenues. Then, the loyal fans bring dollars to the gate, to the refreshment stand, and to the souvenir hawkers. There are jerseys, mugs, hats, giant foam hands, jackets, helmets, ashtrays, aprons and cigarette lighters emblazoned with every single team logo. Add to this the gambling revenue generated weekly, and you undoubtedly have billions a year, if not billions a season. Granted, the gambling revenue is a kind of “underground” economy, but so are the bribes and junkets funded by lobbyists and liberally distributed to our elected ruling class. It doesn’t matter, it’s money, and sooner or later some of it goes for a hamburger and fries. The fact is, the accumulated expenditures by our nation on just one year of sports could likely pay that same year’s national bill for health insurance.

Think of it, with no sports, there would be no injured high school kids, no doddering forty-somethings with plastic knees, wives would have their husbands on Sunday afternoons, and there would be a lot more TV and radio air time for productive programming. College graduates would all actually know something, school would actually be about learning instead of rooting, and young potential athletes who craved aggressive physical activity could enlist in the military and go off and be cannon fodder in the next “police action”, “incursion”, or “war of liberation”. Since we are determined to spend trillions on war and pretend we didn’t when we talk about the evils of funding social programs, we need to find some other source of wasted revenue to take up the slack. I say sports. Kids could still play baseball in the park, they just wouldn’t be dreaming about making it to the major leagues, because the major leagues would be outlawed. Without the NFL, MLB, NBA, PGA, WWF, LPGA, WBA, NCAA, NHL, ESPN, and an entire alphabet’s worth of sporting organizations, there would be more letters around to actually spell something of merit. We might even raise the national IQ a notch or two.

But wait a minute. If we did that, then people might start reading, or worse yet, thinking. Then their natural curiosity would lead them to perhaps question the bullshit with which they have been fertilized. That could be trouble, and we can’t have that. It appears that we’ve learned nothing from Rome except how to build arenas. I’ll tell you what, I’ll meet you in our seats at the fifty-yard line, we can sing the national anthem together while the military color guard clicks their heels, and I’ll even buy you a Coke.