I woke up to a Facebook post recounting the exorbitant healthcare bills that some of my Facebook friends have received, scrolled to a story about State Department officials who were banned from speaking about the threat posed by climate change, before then scrolling to a story about how surveillance software is being used to monitor millions of K-12 student's digital lives (including their private phones and computers), and which is being justified (rationalized) by the worry over school shootings.

The solutions to so many of these problems is simple - universal healthcare, eliminating fossil fuels in favor of renewables, and banning firearms - but our political system is so corrupt that what should be obvious isn't. Unfortunately, the obvious answer is an answer that serves the public good rather than private profit, and private profit rules. Consequently, the obvious answer has to be obfuscated, so that the citizenry doesn't unite behind it, and we instead argue amongst ourselves about the various profit-friendly "solutions" that are offered to us.

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