(TEXAS) – They lined up by the thousands. Some travelled hundreds of miles. Some began their journey before dawn in order to get a spot in line. Some brought their entire families while some came alone. One-by-one the men and women of the 178th medical group saw them all; young and old, sick, crippled or apparently healthy – they filed past the uniformed Americans to see a doctor that, for many, they hadn’t seen in years, if ever.
These people, however, were not denizens of some benighted, war-ravaged backwater in Central Asia. Nor were they citizens of some poor, tropical country devastated by storm or earthquake. No, they were residents of Alabama too poor to afford regular medical or dental care.
Between late April and early May of this year the military rolled out Operation Alabama Black Belt, described by military PR as an opportunity for humanitarian aid and disaster relief training – missions our armed forces, flung far and wide to protect our expanding empire overseas, increasingly find themselves involved in. Only this time the humanitarian aid provided was to our fellow citizens and the disaster relieved was the abject failure of our primary care system and broader economy for most ordinary Americans.
By all accounts, the mission was a tremendous success. According to Alabama’s Republican governor Robert Bentley, a medical doctor and former Air Force officer, using military resources to provide basic health care for poor Alabamans was the right thing to do. During his many visits to the free military clinics he said that “the tremendous services provided during this operation are enormously valuable to these communities and residents. To be able to provide this level of medical care to so many in such a short time speaks volumes about the professionalism and dedication of those who serve in our military.”
The governor’s representatives parroted his support. “It is encouraging to see what can happen when local, state and federal officials work together,” said one. “When you realize that more than 22,000 of our most impoverished residents received urgently needed medical care in just ten days, you can’t help but walk away with admiration and gratitude for the fine men and women who serve this nation. We are extremely proud of this total mission.”
This mission, it would seem, consisted of offering free dental, pharmaceutical, optometry, podiatry and general physician services to the public in four different Alabama locations – including Selma, site of the famed Civil Rights marches, Demopolis, Hayneville and Pickensville. There were no income qualification to receive free medical services and patients were seen on a first-come, first-served, basis. A pharmacy was set up on site and offered basic medicines to the patients. About 285 military personnel were stationed at the four sites and saw hundreds of patients each day. A military spokesman said the training opportunity Operation Alabama Black Belt provided was invaluable. One can only imagine what the patients themselves, some of whom had come from out of state, thought about the value of the care provided.
When we do this overseas, it is called ‘nation building’ or winning hearts and minds. It is a strategy used to win over untrusting natives who often worship a different god, speak a different language or have a different skin color than you or me. The idea is that if we can heal their bodies, care for their children or ease the pains of their elderly, the alien invaders in desert-colored fatigues will somehow appear less threatening and the new order they bring seem more benign. Questioning such armed humanitarianism is akin to treason.
Wanting to do the same at home, however, quickly gets you labeled un-American – unless you can cleverly wrap it in the mantle of the flag as Governor Bentley has done with Operation Alabama Black Belt. If you want the government to provide cheap healthcare to average Americans sans uniform, then you are quite possibly the second coming of Karl Marx. Governor Bentley himself decried “Obamacare” as the worst piece of legislation to ever come out of Congress and that it must be repealed.
Other members of Alabama’s conservative establishment echoed in agreement. Alabama Republican House Speaker Mike Hubbard of Auburn said the ruling was “a victory for government-loving bureaucrats and a loss for taxpayers and small businesses.” Alabama Attorney General, Republican Luther Strange, said he would “continue to stand on the frontlines protecting liberty and pushing back against an ever-encroaching federal government.” Alabama’s two Republican U.S. Senators, of course, remain committed to fighting the menace of socialized medicine despite their promises to do nothing but protect seniors’ sacred right to Medicare.
The incongruence of observing what passes for conservative statesmanship in the American South simultaneously praising government-provided healthcare so long as it is given only to the elderly or delivered in olive drab to citizens of countries we have conquered while condemning any Democrat-led effort that attempts to alleviate suffering of the like encountered by Operation Alabama Black Belt here at home is old news to anyone familiar with Republican politics. It isn’t even galling to see an ostensible Christian like governor Bentley, who got in hot water last year by claiming no non-Christian could be his brother or sister, condemn so vehemently a tactic he himself essentially endorses – using government to provide healthcare to the American people. That, after all, is modern conservative politics in a nutshell. Mendacity and cynicism are both expected and required.
No, what is particularly disturbing is to see lines comprised of thousands upon thousands of desperate Americans crushed by our current system and to be told by our establishment that nothing is essentially wrong. For a region of the country so steeped in Christianity as the Bible-Belt South, it is amazing to listen to the establishment here argue for the inherent ‘goodness’ of our broader economic system. Christ threw moneychangers out of the temple; he didn’t extend them tax credits. He raised Lazarus from the dead, but didn’t ask if Lazarus had a preexisting condition before he did so. Christ decried violence and condemned the foreign military occupation of his native land; he didn’t endorse sending legions out to conquer others. Most of all, Christ condemned the hypocrisy of hiding behind the letter of the law so as to avoid embracing the spirit of it. Governor Bentley might think of Jesus as his brother, but the Christ I read about might think Bentley is more like a certain governor he used to know than any brother of his.
It didn’t used to be this way, and the story of how the American South turned from endorsing economic populism to espousing reactionary conservatism is one of the great stories of 20th-century American politics. It is an ongoing story about the intertwining of race, religion, reconstruction and radicalism too complex to be told here, but what it has created is an insular culture so at odds with the modern world America leads that it has now become not just a divisive force in American politics, but a dangerous force in global affairs. If you want to understand the insanity that brought Americans to Baghdad, getting to know Birmingham, Ala. is thus a good place to start.