The Paris Climate Accord and Hope for American Healthcare

One more campaign promise lay shattered at the feet of the Trump faithful. That wall that Mexico was going to pay for? Well, Trump is caught on tape admitting that it was all just smoke and mirrors – a bone tossed to those drug-addled New Hampshirites who were stupid enough to vote for him.

Russia still appears to be pulling the strings and Trump can’t seem to keep his people from making obscene and anatomically impossible suggestions to their enemies -- nor can he seem to staff up White House functions for more than a couple of weeks at a time.

And after six months of this idiocy with one scandal and lie followed by another lie and scandal, a glimmer of hope peaks over the horizon of the misery of the Trump presidency. Obamacare hasn’t yet been repealed or replaced – although it may still be or it may be defunded which will amount to the same thing at the end of the day.

But that’s not the hopeful part of the debacle that defines the Trump presidency. Withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accord made the American people look like troglodytes, but the reaction of several state and city leaders has been heartening.

Faced with the prospect of the U.S. backing out of the Accord, governors from 10 states and mayors from 61 cities have stepped up and announced that despite the wrongheadedness of that move, they will continue to abide by the Accord.

And that got me to thinking – always a dangerous thing – that maybe the common sense solution to our healthcare problem can be solved in a similar fashion. Why the phrase “universal healthcare” is an obscenity never to be uttered in our hallowed congressional halls, I’m not sure, but that is clearly what we need.

In a country as wealthy as ours, and where the chasm between the top 1% and everyone else is as massive as it is, healthcare (and education and housing and food) is a right, not a privilege driven by the number of digits in your bank statement.

A few states, like California, Vermont, New York, Colorado, Massachusetts, Oregon and Nevada have proposed or tried to implement universal healthcare for its citizens, and the momentum is growing.

As it becomes increasingly clear that the federal government is incapable of acting in the best interests of its people, maybe the states and the cities can fill the void. Of course, ironically, the states that will be hardest hit by the murder of Obamacare are the same ones that voted to put the Trump Chump in office.

Maybe if they wake from their dreams of the glory of yesteryear, shake off the pre-programmed divide and conquer routine that’s held sway for far too many years and join those from the cities and the blue states to fight for universal healthcare, it can be the first step in a long journey of healing and reconciliation.