What do hegemony, capital and the wage-laborer, & ideology and the state apparatus have to do with single-payer healthcare? Answer: lots. Lots to unpack here.
Hegemony: right-wing wingnuts, talking point mouthpieces, religious institutions, and public schools. FOX News, CNN, NY Times, and The Huffington Post. Press releases, press conferences, sound bytes and photo ops. And so on...
Capital and the wage laborer: the very foundation upon which the US economy functions (disfunctionally). Why is it that as a population we are so very willing to ignore the fact that a capitalist economy is structured upon the necessity for the working class to exist simply in order to create excess value via the exchange--or rather sale---of labor, which value in turn creates excess value in the commodities that are fetishized and purchased as a false representation of the wealth that they create?
Why, rather, do I need to phrase this very fact in such convoluted terms so that the proletarian that probably never will, but should possibly be influenced by this idea if she read this, will NEVER understand and so continue to elide the fact that class dissonance is a necessary condition for capitalism to exist?!?
Ideology and the state apparatus: well, one things bears mentioning. Althusser has a wicked sense of humor. And good thing, because what he has to say is fairly dismal. So, ideology is the substance upon which hegemony perpetuates itself. Invisible, insidious, yes. Odious, impenetrable, perhaps? Perhaps not. Marx alludes to the notion that a radical discourse is possible--presupposing, of course, the existence of a radical class. And it follows, necessarily, that the penetration of hegemonic ideology is possible by virtue of this radical discourse.
But, man, it looks difficult! Ideology is the sum total of the function of naturalization of itself, and perpetuation through the transmission of "obviousnesses" (Althusser 698) or, as the Flobots claim in their song Fight With Tools: "spread like a virus through accepted thoughts and proper manners". Ideology is at it worst the farcical appearance of free choice, even when it perpetuates contradictory claims.
There...I have arrived at the transition to the main point: Single Payer healthcare. Which, it would seem, would be consistent with the ideology inherent in a supposedly "christian" nation. I guess the ideology of christianity is at odds, however, with the ideology of capitalism. And the goals of capital are at odds with the materials conditions of the lives of wage-laborers. And yet, those very same professed christian wage-laborers parrot and promote the agenda of capital, which is completely inconsistent with the spirital agenda promoted by Christ.
hmmm... yes. these thoughts are fragmented and incomplete. but the skeleton is there.
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