Health Care On The Brink

A listener asked a blunt question we couldn’t ignore: what happens if Congress lets the enhanced ACA subsidies expire—and how likely is it they’ll do nothing? We walk through what those subsidies actually did for real families, what vanishes when they lapse, and why “gridlock” isn’t a neutral accident but a choice with a body count. Expect straight talk about premium shocks, ballooning deductibles, and the knock-on costs that hit hospitals, states, and anyone one medical bill away from disaster.

From there, we widen the lens. The same political habits that stall basic health protections also shape how we talk about violence. We unpack how “war” becomes respectable killing with a budget, how “terrorism” is reserved for those without a flag, and how “law” can launder cruelty behind official language. When words become costumes for power, the public becomes easier to pacify. So we interrogate the vocabulary: who profits, who pays, and who gets shielded when these terms are deployed. You’ll hear archival insights from Gore Vidal on perpetual war and from Noam Chomsky on how to reduce terror by addressing real grievances instead of feeding the cycle.

This isn’t policy wonkery for its own sake. It’s about the human consequences of delay and the moral clarity to call things by their true names. We make the case for a clean extension of ACA subsidies now, then challenge listeners to keep their loyalties in order—conscience before slogans, people before spectacle. If you found value in this conversation, subscribe, share it with a friend who cares about health justice, and leave a review to help more people find the show.

Chapters

• 0:00 Opening And Listener Question
• 3:41 What Expiring ACA Subsidies Mean
• 8:06 Moral Costs And Political Negligence
• 13:16 Economic Fallout Of Losing Coverage
• 19:08 Accountability And The Choices Before Congress
• 21:36 Shift To War, Terror, And Law
• 27:53 How Language Sanitizes State Violence
• 33:48 Seeing Through The Vocabulary Of Power
• 36:48 Archive Segment: Gore Vidal On Perpetual War
• 45:08 Chomsky On Terror, Causes, And Policy Lessons

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 1:32

Good evening, good people. Welcome to the Darrow McClain Show. Independent media that won't reinforce tribalism. We have one planet, nobody is leaving. So let us reason together. We don't tiptoe around the truth on the show. We talk right into it like a man stepping into coal, ocean, water, bracing, shocking, but cleansing. And so tonight's show opens up with a question that landed in my inbox like a breakthrough a window. A question so real, so grounded in the daily struggle of working people that it deserves to be once again read out loud. Durrell, so many people can't afford health care. If politicians let the affordable care benefits lap, how likely is Congress to let this happen without an extension? Woo! That is not just a question. That's a drumbeat of a country on the edge of a health care cliff. And here's the truth, family. Told plain and told straight, only like I could deliver. Millions of Americans, people working two jobs, people raising grandchildren, people fighting chronic illnesses, people doing everything right could see their health care ripped right out from under them just because Congress can't get its act together. Now, this isn't hypothetical, this isn't academic, this is real-world kitchen table, blood pressure rising reality. If the affordable care subsidies expire, premiums will jump like a startled deer, deductibles will skyrocket, four million people fall out of coverage, and the hospitals brace for another wave of uninsured Americans showing up late, sicker, and desperate. And all of this, all of it is of course preventable. But Congress has turned something simple into some kind of gladiator match. They have actually known the deadline was coming for years. But like kids who wait until the night before the project's to do, they are suddenly on to argue over crayons at poster board. So when someone asks me how likely is Congress to let this happen with an extension, my answer is heartbreaking and it's honest. More likely than it should be. More likely than any moral nation should tolerate. More likely than anyone who cares about the American people should ever allow. Why? Because gridlock is easier than courage, because cruelty is cheaper than compassion. Because some folks in Washington talk about fiscal responsibility while ignoring the human cost, the bodies, the pain, the families left scrambling. So tonight we're gonna peel back this onion all the way back. What is Congress doing? Why are they refusing to do so? What millions of Americans are in danger and why, and what it says about the moral backbone of our political system. Because a country that can funnel wars at the speed of light but can't keep insulin affordable, a country that can bail out banks but not grandmothers, a country that can send tax cuts to billionaires but shrugs of cancer patients, that country needs a mirror and a moment of repentance. So welcome to the Daron McLean Show. Let's get into it.

SPEAKER_03: 4:38

The peace that God has given to us is not a fragile truce, where the next time I slip up, he's gonna start rattling the sword at me again. Which means what? That's where my songs come from.

SPEAKER_00: 5:31

You've been listening to Ultimately with RC Sprung. If you enjoyed the show, please subscribe or leave a review in your favorite podcast app. For more information, visit ultimatelypodcast.com.

SPEAKER_01: 5:49

Welcome back to the show where we talk about the things that politicians pretend are complicated, but the American people live every single day. So tonight we're gonna be breaking open a topic that should not even be controversial in a civilized nation. But because uh America is the land of a$14 aspirin, here we are. And the question I keep hearing, the one the listeners sent in and loud and clear is the one sitting like an anvil inside of my conscience, and is this. I'm gonna say it one more time. Darrell, so many people can't afford health care. If politicians let the affordable care benefits lapse, how likely is Congress to let this happen without an extension? So let me approach this um with just as much heart and fire as I can because this topic does really get my goat. It does really grind my gears. So let's get something straight. The Affordable Care Act isn't perfect. We all know that. Premiums are still too high, deductible is still absurd, and insurance companies still very powerful, still very hungry. But the enhanced subsidies, the pandemic era affordability boosts, the tax credits that took premiums from rent level down to manageable. They kept millions of people afloat, not thriving, afloat. And that means I can go to the doctor without having to sell a kidney. Now these subsidies are set to expire at the end of 2025. And they're gonna expire. You heard that right, like the milk on the counter expires. And if Congress doesn't act, we're talking about premiums doubling for millions, deductibles jumping from annoying to catastrophic, and families being forced to choose between rent, food, or staying assured. So roughly, roughly four million people will be losing coverage completely. This is not a drill, this is not partisan theater. This is a looming policy disaster with real-world human consequences. And this is all because of the political dysfunction in Washington. Congress knew, Congress had years, Congress did nothing. These lawmakers are the same ones who get government-funded health insurance with no deductibles, mind you, let this deadline crep up while they were busy performing culture war theater, fundraising, and flying home for recess and pretending that the market would magically sort itself out. Now the cruelty here isn't what Congress is doing, it is what Congress is not doing. This is failure by negligence. And when failure becomes predictable, it is no longer failure, it is a policy design. And there's a moral dimension to this as well. And let me put it to you like this. In the wealthiest nation in the history of the world, the idea that millions of people could lose health care because Congress refuses to act is outrageous, it is immoral, and it is absolutely unacceptable. We spend trillions and trillions of dollars on wars. We spend billions and billions of dollars on subsidies subsidizing corporations that pay their workers starvation wages. We lower and shower tax breaks on the richest one to five percent. But we keep working class single mothers insured. Nope. Oh no, that when it comes to that, suddenly the government is broke. This is the absolute core of the American contradiction. We have money for everything except the things that actually save human lives. We treat healthcare like a luxury product, not a human right in a free society. Now, when these subsidies lapse, when everyday people suddenly get hit with a$700 premium or$8,000 deductibles, politicians will shrug and say something like, Thoughts and prayers. And let me tell you one thing. Thoughts do not reduce premiums, and prayers does not cover your chemotherapy. Hope doesn't refill your insulin vial. Every other developed nation guarantees health care to its people, every single one except the United States of America. Now let me put it to you like the veteran I am and the counselor that I am, then I would say to the friend to the hurting, because policy isn't abstract. Policy has a pulse. I've sat with people, they had to ration their medication. I've watched working men ignore chest pain because they were afraid of a bill. I have had the displeasure of counseling mothers who cried because their children needed specialties that they could not afford. Insurance companies don't see the tears. Congress don't hear the tremble in those voices, but I have and I do, and you do as well. We all do. So when people say, Darrell, what are the odds Congress will let these benefits expire? Here's the heartbreaking truth. The odds are far higher than they should be. Why? Because Congress has mastered the art of doing nothing while pretending they're doing something. They create panels, they create hearings, they issue statements full of passive verbs with absolutely no commitment and no action. And meanwhile, real people die, real people bleed. And a nation that can design drones that can hit a target from 8,000 miles away can't figure out how to keep a diabetic person insured. That makes no damn sense to me. This isn't just a moral crisis, this is an economic earthquake. Because when people lose insurance, hospitals take on more unpaid care. Emergency rooms fill up, states pay more, families go break from productivity fail, life expectancy dips. We treat healthcare like it's optional, but the economy knows it isn't. America is already one medical bill away from a collapse for millions. If these subsidies vanish, we're not talking about inconvenience. We're talking about devastation. And some Republicans oppose the subsidies because they call them too generous. Too generous? A$20,000 deductible is generous. A$1,200 premium is generous. Families choosing between health care and heat is generous. Meanwhile, some Democrats, let's be honest, waited too long. They assumed they get an extension passed. They assumed the votes would materialize. They assume the political winds would shift. The political winds did not shift. Leadership failed on both sides, and they failed everyday American people. Now what should happen? Congress passes a clean extension immediately. No games, no hostage taking, no poison pills. What will probably happen? Last minute negotiations, a partial extension, a watered-down version, or total innocuation until it's completely too late. Because dysfunction is the new normal. Congress actually seems to wait until the House is fully engulfed in flames, then argues about who had the gasoline sitting there, who lit the matches, and who also left the stove on. So let me say this in a voice that I can summon the most fury with. If Congress lets millions of people lose health care, it wasn't an accident, it was a choice. And if it becomes a choice, then it becomes a moral stain. The nation is long overdue for a reckoning with its healthcare system. Not a tinkering, not paperwork, a full reimagining of what it means for a society to care for people who sustain it. And it's not a radical idea to say that people shouldn't die because they're poor. It is not a radical idea to look at the incentives, follow the money to see who benefits from this type of inaction. And if you want to judge the character of a nation, look at who suffers when a budget gets tight. Right now, the suffering is aimed at the working class and at the poor. So let me close with this. We are standing at a moral crossroads. One road says health care is a privilege for the lucky, and the other says health care is a right for the living. One road protects corporations, the other road protects families. One road leads to suffering, the other leads to dignity. Congress gets to choose the road, but we live with the consequences that our Congress has picked. And if they choose the wrong road, if they let these ACA benefits die, then everyday Americans will once again pay the price for political cowardice. And I'm telling you right now, this time, the people won't stay quiet about it.

SPEAKER_02: 17:41

We don't have to keep living like this.

SPEAKER_01: 17:49

War, terror, the law, and the vocabulary that shapes our violence. War, terror, and the law. The vocabulary that shapes our violence. Hello, family. Let's sit a minute with three ugly, overused, and badly abused words. War, terrorism, and law. And these aren't just vocabulary words. These are spellcasting words when powerful people say them out loud. Money moves, people die, and the news cycle starts singing in harmony. So if we're going to live awake in a world we just hear these words, we have to interrogate them. We just can't hear them. War is when murder puts on a uniform. War is what we call killing when a flag approves it. If I shoot you in the street, that's murder. If I shoot you in a desert wearing a uniform under orders, that's service. Same bullet, same body, different label. War is what nations declare when they want to do openly and proudly what would be illegally or immoral for any individual to do privately. We dress it up defending our interests, projecting stability, maintaining order. Behind the slogans is something simple and ancient. We are willing to kill to keep what we have and to get what we want. War is the moment when the government says we will now suspend the rules we taught to you were sacred at scale. And here's the twist. War always pretends is temporar temporary. Just for now, just this crisis, justice threat. But the mist of war seeps back home. When you normalize overseas, you'll eventually tolerate it in your own streets. Number two, terrorism. Violence without a flag. Now let's talk terrorism. Terrorism is what power calls violence when it doesn't control the person holding the gun or the bomb. If a small group blows up a building, we call it terrorism. If a large well-funded government flattens a city block with a missile, we call it air support. Same fear, same screaming, same bodies buried under rubble. But only one of those is folded by the press conference with a flag at a podium. Terrorism, as defined by the powerful, is not really about. Innocent lives, those are taken in every war. Civilians, they are always the majority of casualties anyway. Terrorism is about who is allowed to use terror and get away with it. If a non state group kills fifty people, they are barbaric monsters who must be haunted to the ends of the earth. If a state kills five hundred by accident, we call it collateral damage and issue a statement. We deeply regret the loss of life and will review our procedures. Terror is not just bombs and bullets. It is also quiet fear of a drone you can't see, of sanctions you can't feel until the medicine disappears, of the occupation that becomes the wallpaper of your life. The difference between war and terrorism is often nothing but a logo, a budget line, and a PR department. three Law The Cost of Violence. Now law, we like to imagine law as neutral, clean, blindfolded with a scale. In reality, law is often the official script that tells us which violence is permitted and which violence is punished and which violence is ignored. Law says this bomb is legal, that homemade one is terrorism. Law says this invasion is authorized. That renaissance of resistance is criminal. Law says this killing is an unfortunate accident. That killing is an act of war. Law is a powerful I know that as someone who was a uniform, enforced rules, and swore oaths. Law can protect the weak. Law can restrain the strong. Law can expose corruption, but law can also launder cruelty. We have had laws that said you can own other human beings. We have had laws that said you can segregate them, you can r redline them, you can deny them education, and you can deny them housing. You can bomb a smaller country, and you can even bomb places in your own country and call it preemptive self defense. If law was always righteous, we wouldn't need prophets. If law was always correct, we wouldn't need We wouldn't need people willing to say, I know it's legal, but that doesn't make it right. Law tells you what is allowed. Conscience tells you what is acceptable before God and history. Confusing those two is how good people help evil systems run on God. Number four, the deadly triangle. Now put the three together and you get the machinery of a modern empire. War gives you the stage. Law gives you the script. Terrorism gives you the villain. Once you've labeled someone a terrorist, whole categories of law and morality go out the window. You can detain them without trial. You can bomb them without a declaration. You can surveil them without a warrant. And you can censor them without shame. Why? Because the magic word has been spoken. Terrorism. Then war becomes permanent. But we stop calling it war. It becomes operations, campaigns, strikes, threats, theater. And law follows along, lifting behind rewriting itself to keep yesterday's illegal act safe from tomorrow's court cases. Number five. So what do we do with that? This is not just theory. This is discipleship of the mind. This is spiritual warfare for the vocabulary. First, refuse lazy language. When you hear war, ask who declared it? On whom? Who profits? Who pays in blood? When you hear terrorism, ask, who's a terror account? Does the word apply to the bob or just a person who dropped it without a uniform? When you hear the word law, ask who wrote said law. Who is shielded by it? Who is crushed under it? Would this law look righteous if you were the one on the other end of it? Second, remember that legality and morality are not twin. Slavery was legal. Segregation was legal. The Holocaust was legal. Many invasions, occupations, and drone strikes were given legal cover. Lawful and jest are not always the same thing. Third, keep your loyalty in order. For me, as a Christian and as a former law enforcement and military guy, the order is clear. God first is shaped by truth in countries and its laws. Anything that reverses that order will ask you one day to call darkness and light and light and darkness. And they will also ask you to salute while doing so. So the bottom line today is war is what we call large-scale killing with a budget. Terrorism is what we call unsanctioned violence that scares us. Law is what the costume we put on power so its violence looks respectable. Your job is to see through the costume. Because at the end of the day, when the cameras are off and the speeches are done, there is still a human body on the ground, a grieving family, and a god who is not impressed by how neat your paperwork looks. Drink your coffee. Wake up your mind. Don't let anybody weaponize your vocabulary. Silence every bar or rewrite every law. But we can refuse to let lies ride on the back of freaking words. That's where the resistance starts. With the courage to call things by their true name. This substack was written by Darrell McLean yesterday. It is called War, Terror, and the Law. The vocabulary that shapes our violence. Let's get to our blast from the intellectual past, and we will see you on the next episode.

SPEAKER_04: 28:23

Authored more than 20 novels, five plays. His recent books include Dreaming War, Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace, and Imperial America Reflections on the United States of Amnesia. His latest is a memoir. It's called Point to Point Navigation. Last week at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, I heard Gore Vidal would be there, and afterwards went to his home in Hollywood Hills. We sat down in his living room, and I asked him for his thoughts on this election year and on the last eight years of George W. Bush in the White House.

SPEAKER_05: 28:58

Well, it isn't over yet. You know, he can still blow up the world. There's every indication that he's still thinking about attacking Iran. The generals are now reporting that the Iran are in great danger and their weapons are being used to kill Americans. I think quite rightly the wisdom might think that uh the American people are idiots. They don't get the point to anything. There are two good reasons for this. It's the public educational system for people, kids without money, let's say. To put it tactfully, uh it's one of the worst in the first world. It's just terrible. And they end by knowing no history, certainly no American history. I didn't mean to spend my life writing American history, which should have been taught in the schools. But I saw no alternative but to taking it on myself. I can think of a lot of cheerier things I'd rather be doing than uh analyzing George Washington and Aaron Burr. But it came to pass that that wasn't my job, so I just I did it.

SPEAKER_04: 30:14

You wrote United States of Amnesia. Why?

unknown: 30:19

That's a good title.

SPEAKER_05: 30:24

You must remember this is a people that has no culture.

SPEAKER_04: 30:30

You wrote two books um during the Bush administration. Uh two of the books you've written are Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace and Draightening War. Why these two?

SPEAKER_05: 30:42

Well, perpetual war for perpetual peace. That's my main book during that period. That was the foreign policy of the Bush administration. Perpetual war. This is also Harry Truman's dream. He started the Cold War. If any history had been imparted to our people, they'd know they'd know all this. You think I enjoy being the one to tell them about it? I don't.

SPEAKER_04: 31:07

What about dreaming war? No same thing.

SPEAKER_05: 31:11

They were dreaming war. Well, you can see little Bush all along is just dreaming of war. And uh and Cheney dreaming about oil wells and how you knock knock apart a country like Iraq, and of course, their oil will pay for the damage you do. But that alone, he should have been put in front of a firing squad. Do you believe in the death penalty?

SPEAKER_04: 31:37

No.

SPEAKER_05: 31:38

But in their case, yes.

SPEAKER_04: 31:42

And so here we are moved into the sixth year of the war with Iraq, longer than the U.S. was involved in World War II. Yes.

SPEAKER_05: 31:50

Incredible. That was such a huge operation on two great continents against two modern enemies, and we're fighting little jungle wars for no reason. Because we have a president who knows nothing about anything. He's just blank. But he won't show up. I'm war-time president, I'm a war-time president. And he goes, yep, yep, yep. It's like a crazed terrier. And look where he got us. I didn't realize, I think I've always had a good idea about my native land. I didn't think that institutionally we were so easy to overthrow. Because it was a coup d'etat of 9-11. The whole went crashing. And when we got rid of, when they got rid of Magna Carta, I thought, well, really, this wasn't much of a republic to begin with.

SPEAKER_04: 32:45

What do you mean, Magna Carta?

SPEAKER_05: 32:47

Well, you know what Magna Carta means? Yep. Explain it. Yes. It's the basis of our law. And there comes the whole uh theory, practice, on which our certain judicial system is based to process some law. You cannot deprive somebody of life, liberty, sort of happiness. Because that is uh that is a right, a constitutional right. And uh that is I mean, every proper American that's graved on his psyche. Certainly was on mine. It wasn't a day pass. I was brought up by my grandfather in Washington. Only a day pass that he didn't want to talk about due process.

SPEAKER_04: 33:35

What do you mean, Gorvedal, when you say you think what happened after 9-11 was a couple?

SPEAKER_05: 33:41

Well, it was. The first move they made at the time when Timothy McVeigh decided to blow up uh the federal building in Oklahoma City. He started to write me letters, and I wrote him back, and he's a very brilliant kid. Very interested in law, would have been made a good constitutional lawyer. And a patriot. He's a professional soldier. But he has to be depicted as a monster because who else would blow up little children? He didn't know he was blowing up any little children. He was acting on a fit of rage at what had happened at Waco. That whole religious community was set fire to by the army. And as a soldier, he thought to himself, you see, the one thing that divides our country from being another military, a militarized republic, it is not only due process of law, but it is also uh the Posse Comitatus Act of 1875, which the Army may not be used in any action against the citizens of the United States. And they just wondered that violently burned down more children and mothers and so on, uh, than ever Mr. McFay did. So at that time, it happened during the um, must I know what's her name, Janet Reno, she was attorney general, it was during Clinton's watch, which was a sloppy one, and they got some panicky legislation because they thought, and with some reason, that uh there was a group of people, many of them ex-soldiers, uh, who were ready to overthrow the government. And they were anti-Semites, they were, I meant anything you can think of, they were that. They were in rebellion against this country. And I wrote about it in warning terms. I went so far as to write Mr. Mueller, who was the new director of the FBI. And I saw he was never gonna follow up. They did all these interviews with various guys living in the woods around Fort Hood. I said they're gonna be trouble one day. And you don't even follow up on them. Yet you go on inventing stuff about McVeigh, which isn't true. They tried to pretend he was a crazy and this and that really. He got the superstar, I think it was. So the coup d'etat comes out of this out of this. They saw their chance. They, Janey, Bush. They wanted a war. They're oil men. They want a war unless they'll get more oil. I mean, they're also extraordinarily stupid. These people don't know anything about anything. But they have this. There's a thick piece of uh sheet of thick series of actions to be taken. Among others, I think one of them was to lock up every person of color in the United States in order to protect us from the enemy within. It was evil stuff. So they latched on to that. I guess Mr. Gonzalez was already in place by then. And that was the coup d'etat. They seized the state. And from that moment on, they were appointing all the judges. They were doing this, they were doing that. They got rid of Magna Carta. I will not explain why that is a second time. And uh they broke the republic.

SPEAKER_06: 37:58

First of all, when we use the term terror, we have to recognize that, like most terms of political discourse, it has two meanings. There's a literal meaning, and there's the doctrinal meaning. Uh, in the literal meaning, uh, terror is what's described in U.S. code of laws. It's the uh threat or use of violence uh to intimidate uh uh typically against civilians, uh, to intimidate populations for political, ideological, and other ends. Well, nobody can use that definition. If we use that definition, it follows instantly that the United States is a leading terrorist state, that Britain is another leading terrorist state, and so on. So the literal definition, the one that's in the U.S. Code of Laws, is unusable. Uh the then we go to the doctrinal definition, the one that's used in the media and scholarship and so on. Uh that's the same as the official definition, but with a condition qualification. It only applies to what they do to us, not what we do to them. Okay, that's the doctrinal meaning. I'll now use it in the doctrinal sense, though that's totally dishonest, of course. Uh, as to what to do about the threat of terror in the doctrinal sense, meaning the terror by them against us. Uh there are a lot of things to do. Uh one thing is to uh not increase the threat. That's a simple step. Don't act in order to increase the threat. Now the U.S. consistently and Britain act in order to contrive increase the threat of terror. Not because they want terror, but just because it's not high priority. So take the invasion of Iraq. As I mentioned, that was undertaken with the expectation since amply confirmed that it would increase the threat of terror. They expected it, it happened. Well, one of the ways not to increase the threat of terror is not to take steps like that that'll increase it. Uh another, and never just as this had unanimity on this in the uh among specialists and intelligence agencies. Uh second uh step is to try to ask what its reasons are, what are the causes of it? And where the causes are grievances that are legitimate grievances, something should be done about those grievances, quite apart from the threat of terror. It's another way to reduce it. Uh we have uh buttons. Well, there's let me get let me get to Canada. First of all, in the case of Canada, it may turn out that the motivation for the terror was uh Canadian troops in uh Afghanistan. You might look into that. Uh but uh whatever it is, if there are grievances, then something should be done. Beyond that, terror is a police problem. So if you find a terrorist sale, if it's legitimate in Canada, yeah, then you should arrest the perpetrators and they should be uh subjected to trial, just as the leading terrorists should be, like the ones in the White House. Uh but of course we're doing it only keeping to the doctrinal sense, so it's only them against us. But there's more to do. What should the United States do about this? Well, actually, there is advice given, uh recommendations in the 9-11 Commission report. As you recall, there was an official government commission set up over the strong objections of the Bush administration, but they finally had to agree. There was a commission set up that made recommendations on uh how to decrease the threat of terror in the United States. Well, one of them had to do with Canada. Uh they concluded that uh the a major threat of terror in the United States is uh uh the Canadian border. It's a very long border, practically unprotected, very easy to cross. Uh, and they recommended that there be a sharp increase in border patrols on the Canadian border. That's their recommendation. Well, how the Bush administration respond. It responded by reducing the growth of the Border Patrol altogether after 9-11 increase in the Border Patrol reduced, and shifting it from the Canadian border overwhelmingly to the Mexican border. Okay, so I don't remember the numbers, but I think it's about 10 to 1 by now, you know, per mile of uh surveillance of the Mexican border and the Canadian border. Well, that's so they're uh reducing the effort to uh uh defend the United States from the potential threat of terror from Canada, reducing that again, another illustration of the fact that uh protection of the population from terror is just not a high priority. Okay, so for the United States, something else that could be done would be to say follow the recommendations of the 9-11 Commission. And there's a lot more. Uh terror is not coming from nowhere. Uh and what you want to do is I mean, it's easy to stand up on a pedestal and scream Islam of fascism and so on and so forth. Maybe that makes you feel good. Uh but if you want to deal with the threat of terror, you'll ask what its sources are and ask how those sources can be dealt with. I mean, terror the what we call terrorists are see themselves as kind of a vanguard who are trying to organize a constituency to support their long term demands. Now, their long term demands, in the case of, say, al Qaihadi styled terror, are pretty clear, and again, there's pretty near unanimity about this in the you know specialist community. Uh there, as they put it, their goals are to defend Muslim lands from attack. And they list specific grievances. And the grievances are real. They're trying to mobilize a constituency to join them. Well the way to deal there's two ways of dealing with it. One is to ally yourself with Osama bin Laden. That's the way Bush picked. That's why the leading terrorist specialist in the United States like Michael Scheuer described Bush as Osama bin Laden's leading ally. Because what he's done as if is to do exactly what Osama wants to help the vanguard mobilize the constituency in support of the terrorist act. What is recommended across the board is pay some attention to those reasons, which are real. You can read that in the Defense Science Board recommendations in academic scholarship and intelligence reports, pay attention to the grievances. And many of them are real and they should be dealt with quite apart from the threat of terror. That can reduce the threat of terror. And we know that it works. I mean take say Northern Ireland. Okay for a long time the British reaction to terror in Northern Ireland, which was pretty serious, practically blew up the British cabinet, all sorts of things, their reaction was just to increase the violence. Okay, that's the Bush line. You join with the terrorists and you're their ally. It's exactly what the more militant sectors of the IRA wanted. So you get an escalating terror and repression cycle. Finally the British got into their heads that they should pay some attention to the grievances that are the source of it. And in fact they began to do so because the grievances were real. The constituency was being mobilized around real grievances. When they began to do that the threat of terror declined. Belfast is not utopia but it's a very different place when say when my wife and I visited in 1993, which was a pretty scary place. It's not that anymore it's much improved and in fact the threat of IRA terror has now been very much marginalized by doing the sensible thing paying attention to the source out of which it grows