I came across a new term the other day: “Disease Mongers.”

I thought at first it was another way of saying hypochondriac, and in a way it is. But instead of someone thinking they have all kinds of health problems (the hypochondriac), the disease monger makes you think that you have all kinds of health problems. I guess you could call a disease monger a “hypochondriacer”.

Who are the disease mongers? Those who stand to benefit from convincing people that they are sick. This can include a lot of groups and individuals, who benefit in different ways. But the clearest way to spot them, as usual, is to follow the money. The biggest group, in terms of sheer size & profits, is the pharmaceutical industry, which seems to come up with more pills for more obscure conditions every year. To do this, of course, they need to work hand-in-glove with the medical industry, research organizations, the Food & Drug Administration, and whoever else has a vested interest in disease mongering.

Obviously, medical research, and advances in medical technology are crucial for the advancement of human civilization and the alleviation of suffering. Yes, and corporate capitalism helps this advancement by centralizing funds into focused research, and this is done by pursuing the overall process of profit-investment-expansion. So one is tempted to say that socially detrimental byproducts of this process are necessary evils. Not just tempted; we are blungeoned with this message by the disease mongers every day. As if it were a cut-and-dry, all-or-nothing proposition. But is it?

These ideas are at the heart of John Le Carre’s “The Constant Gardener,” a well-constructed spy novel that was recently made into a movie. In the novel, it is pretty clear that a huge pharmaceutical company is doing evil things. The company reps and their lobbyists/lackeys/bought politicians use the “necessary evils” argument. The greater good is served even if a few eggs get broken in the making of the health omelette (or some such bland metaphor for killing people). Le Carre paints the situation with a stark brush, but we all know that such evil things are done in the name of progress all the time.

In general I think it is better to avoid good vs. evil, us vs. them frameworks. In other words, it’s better to use a smaller brush to paint the picture, with greater detail and shading. Having said that, I do think there are disease mongers. One could say that it is a general tendency, a phase that our society is going through. But this phase is carried out by individuals, real people who make real choices with real moral ramifications. That’s where the Hall Of Shame comes in. Within the large corporations, the contracted lobbying groups and PR firms, the advertising agencies, the medical organizations, and other businesses that make a profit from the process of disease mongering, within all these faceless bureaucracies are real people who make and implement decisions.

These individuals, when they fight the status quo of profits before people, when they work to alleviate preventable human suffering, deserve our respect and gratitude. But when they just play the game, help the faceless bureaucracies profit from human suffering, when they not only don’t try to change the system but actively profit from its corrupt practices, then they deserve our scorn and anger. It’s important to remember this scorn and anger, for it serves as a collective pressure exerted on these individuals when they are exposed. Exposure is only the first step. High-priced lawyers, dissembling, obfuscation, all that soon follows exposure. The corrupt individuals know how to manipulate the bureaucratic slowness of our judicial system, dragging things out with the hope that the public’s memory and attention span are short. All too often this is true, and the criminal acts of money-grubbing suits get only a slap on the wrist.

But I’m not saying anything you don’t already know. The important thing here is to isolate the disease mongers, to expose immorality of exploiting human suffering for profit, and not to buy into it ourselves. One way to reduce the power of the disease mongers is to be less susceptible to their hypochondria-inducing propaganda.

I remember a slogan that was popular during the Cold War: “Peace Through Strength.” At various times it was the name of an actual right-wing group, an official jingoistic catchphrase of the federal government, the philosophical trope for American foreign policy, and just a good ol’ knee-jerk reaction to anyone who might question the usefulness of war as a means of solving political problems.

Yes, “Peace Through Strength” summed it all up: We live in a Machiavellian world, where the Law of the Jungle is the ultimate reality. We don’t want to start nothin’ but we sure as hell are gonna finish it. Speak softly and carry a big stick. Successful deterrence depends on being able to carry out the threat of force. When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns. Etc.

This logic has always prevailed in our post-colonial militarized geopolitical chess game. We can’t seem to get beyond a phase of human civilization characterized by nations competing with each other for territory, markets and resources. Economic cooperation and interdependence rests in a fragile state atop the global war machine. Everyone knows it is dangerous, wasteful, immoral and just plain idiotic, and yet we can’t seem to evolve past the Law of the Jungle mentality. So, “peace through strength” sums up our collective political philosophy.

But does “peace through strength” work? You could argue that in certain circumstances, and for certain types of social groupings, yes it does work. Big dogs don’t have to fight as often as small dogs. Bullies prey on the weak. Aggressors may be crazy but they’re not stupid. That all makes sense. But there is another level of reality which gets ignored by looking at the world only in this way.

We consume, produce and rearrange our planet’s resources. That is what we do. We eat, we shit, we die, and our bodies get recycled into the planet. That is what we are actually doing while we build elaborate visions about the meaning of our lives. Perhaps the best argument against war is our mathematical ability to quantify, to list, all the resources used in war. When the bombs stop falling, the screams fade into silence, what is left is the bill, the list of expenses.

As our modern societies get more technologically efficient, the number crunchers can accurately tabulate all the costs of war, not just the costs of the bombs, bullets and guns, but all the tertiary resources involved, such as food, fuel, training and so on. They can also tabulate all the secondary costs of the destruction wrought by war, not just buildings, bridges and roads blown up, but things like the environmental cleanup costs after an oil refinery is breached, the medical costs of all the refugees, amputees and maimed orphans created by war. The practical, human, unromantic costs of war.

We are now at the point in our human social development that we can accurately predict the cost of most human endeavors. You want to send a guy to the moon? It’s gonna cost X million dollars. You want to build a tunnel connecting England to France, it’s gonna cost Y million Euros (by the way let’s call it the “Chunnel.” Catchy name, huh?). You want to invade Iraq, topple the government and install a new government? Ooh, now that’s gonna cost you.

In fact, mathematical estimates were made for the cost of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and the costs were predicted to be exorbitant. And the Bush administration ignored or denied these estimates. The Bush dream weavers spun a fantasy about the war paying for itself, and it was “bombs away!” And now the waiter comes with the bill: “Did you enjoy your bombs, sir? Very good. We do take mastercard, or you can mortgage your children’s future, if you’d like.”

So “peace through strength” has thrust the U.S. economy into a downward spiral of unimaginable debt, caused massive death, destruction and suffering, and created conditions for civil war in Iraq, not to mention helping to further disenfranchise millions of poor, desperate and angry people, who will serve as a reservoir for terrorists with nothing to lose.

I guess all this is not news to most of us. The question is: Was this the plan all along, or are our world leaders so stupid that they thought things would go differently? Did they make the mistake of believing their own lies? Seriously, I wonder about this.

As Israel carries out its own version of the Bush plan in Lebanon (doing to Lebanon what we did to Afghanistan and Iraq), are the Israeli military leaders thinking that they are really going to eradicate Hezbollah by blowing up Beirut, throwing the Lebanese economy into chaos, and creating hundreds of thousands of refugees? Israel, of course, is one of the most steadfast proponents of “peace through strength.” But do they actually believe their own rhetoric?

Who is in charge of this madness? I think it is the bombmakers, and by this I don’t just mean the highly profitable companies that make the bombs, guns and bullets. I mean all the corporations and individuals who profit from war. They are short-term planners. They blow stuff up and then rebuild it. They make obscene profits from all phases of war, from the planning and staging, to the destruction, to the rebuilding. And in the process of reaping all these short-term profits, they divert humanity from longer term, more productive goals. Definitely Hall of Shame material.

If anyone in Austin is planning to buy a car, I should warn you that I recently bought a car from Southpoint Pontiac and they treated me very badly. I have waited over a month for them to make things right, but they are acting like typical sleazy car salesmen and ignoring me, expecting me to just go away. So I am posting this as a warning to others. The synopsis: they sold me a damaged car without disclosing the damage. When I told them of the damage (mechanical repairs costing $1300), they refused to fix the problem. They made thousands of dollars profit off of me and totally blew me off. The next step is legal action, which when it comes to the world of auto sales, is a long and confusing process. Car dealers have the advantage here, and they expect victimized customers to get worn down by the process and just give up. You would expect national big name dealerships to operate more honestly, with the goal of customer satisfaction, but as far as Southpoint Pontiac is concerned, they treated me no better than any other two-bit used car operation. If anyone out there has similarly been cheated by Southpoint Pontiac, please let me know.
Paul Klemperer