America and the Ophan Crushing Machine

Let me introduce you to a fantastic and powerful short hand way to evaluate the heartwarming good news presented to us in the media as Americans. The Orphan crushing machine! Nearly every heartwarming positive piece of news in this country ignores the terrible circumstances that created the need for the heartwarming story. 

1 in 3 Go fund me accounts is for someones medical expenses. That is an orphan crushing machine. Every day people have raised over 650 Million dollars on Go fund me alone for peoples medical payments. The orphan is the people being saved by the goodness of strangers. While ignoring the problem created by the greed of the richest people in history manipulating healthcare until healthcare itself has become the machine that crushes orphans. 

Chapters

• 0:20 Welcome Back After Travels
• 3:56 Introducing the Orphan Crushing Machine
• 5:47 Medical Debt and GoFundMe Reality
• 9:12 Who Makes the Rules
• 14:13 Finding the Crushing Machine
• 16:46 Upcoming Events and Announcements
• 18:30 The Provocative Victim Preview

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:20

Thank you, hey everybody, and welcome back to another episode of the Speak Plainly podcast, where we speak plainly about things that matter. I am your host, owl Medicine, and I know I've been gone for a long time. I needed to get out of the long, dark, wet up here in Washington and I spent a month driving south, made it all the way to San Diego, visited some friends all along the way. It was marvelous. I stopped in Seattle to see some friends, in Tacoma to see some friends, and then in Eugene and then the Bay and then LA and then San Diego and then all the way back. I had some adventures with my van breaking down and some fun stuff to happen, but that's the way it goes. It was an adventure. That was the point of it.

Speaker 1: 1:26

During the adventure, I had planned on doing some podcasts, but I had actually spent most of my mornings where I wasn't waking up and immediately going to coffee with a friend that I haven't seen in a long time. I would typically just go straight to the coffee shop and edit the audiobook for Rethinking. Broken I am. Now I finished chapter 11. I am on chapter 12 out of 24. So I'm officially halfway. I apologize that I haven't put out any podcasts in like the last six weeks or two months or something. Almost. It's been kind of crazy, but that's why it's because I've been doing the audiobook as well as doing my traveling and trying to do all of the other things that I do. So now we're getting back on track, now we're getting caught back up and, even though I've been gone for a while, I really want to cover something that actually isn't going to take long to cover. It's just a, it's a way to think about news that is presented to you.

Speaker 1: 2:36

So when I started this podcast, I really wanted to present these concepts and ideas to people that they maybe didn't actually have any exposure to. So I wanted to expose them to bits of information that I think were interesting enough and impactful enough that when you learn just this one little data point, that it can kind of fundamentally change how you think from that moment on, like those big aha moments, those aha moments but of kind of data points. So that's what I spent the first two years of this podcast doing was going through and trying to get all of those things that I'd spent a long time thinking about and researching and whatnot out there. And then I ran out. So I started doing more interviews and doing research into things that I'm trying to find stuff that was worth doing a podcast on, because I don't want to just add more junk into the internet world. But since I specifically got messages from people asking me when my next podcast was out, I was like, oh my goodness, I have to jump on this right now, even though what I'm going to talk about is very brief. It's just a way to think about the news that is presented to you.

Speaker 1: 4:00

So today's episode is all about the Orphan Crushing Machine. Yes, you heard me right the Orphan Crushing Machine. Now, what in the world is an Orphan Crushing Machine and why do we want to even know that it exists? Well, that's the kind of fun part is, the Orph machine is actually just a notionary concept, as in like, it's a thought experiment. You could say like in science and physics, especially Einstein was really famous for all of his different thought experiments. Schrodinger's cat was a thought experiment. Well, in the same way, the Orphan Crushing Machine is a thought experiment. But where the term Orphan Crushing Machine comes from is pretty cool. The very first time anybody ever mentioned the Orphan Crushing Machine, it was actually a Twitter post and now there is a subreddit called the Orphan Crushing Machine or just Orphan Crushing Machine, and the original post was goes like this here's the quote.

Speaker 1: 5:11

Every heartwarming human Internet story in America is like quote he raised twenty thousand dollars to keep 200 orphans from being crushed in the orphan crushing machine and then never asks why an orphan crushing machine exists or why you would need to pay to prevent it from being used. What exactly do we mean by this? What I mean by this is like, if you Google orphan crushing machine right now, exactly what they said oh, this kid raised $20,000 to keep 200 orphans from being crushed by the orphan crushing machine. What examples do we have of that in the news we have? Oh, look, this child raised all of this money to feed these homeless people. Okay, why is the child raising money to feed the homeless people when we are the richest nation in the world and we could just feed the homeless people? Or how about this one? Try this one on for size. Here's my favorite little orphan crushing machine.

Speaker 1: 6:13

So everybody knows about the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Make-a-wish is awesome. They provide wishes for children to bring them joy and hope when they have critical illnesses not necessarily terminal, but often terminal critical illnesses. The Make-A-Wish Foundation is a foundation that people can donate to to make a dream come true for a child who is super duper sick and their families families can't afford care. All of that is so sad because we have this really famous foundation, the Make-A-Wish Foundation, who exists just to try to bring hope to people who are being crushed by medical debt, and crushed by medical debt is exactly the primary thing. That, like, really is the perfect example for the orphan crushing machine, because medical fundraising has. This is crazy 650 million dollars is how much money has been raised on gofundme to pay for people's medical costs. Literally, one in three campaigns on GoFundMe are for people's medical costs.

Speaker 1: 7:34

So, like when we see, oh, look, somebody in the town over the guy who runs my favorite coffee shop. He's awesome, the coffee is fantastic. He got a rare bone cancer and the community raised like tens of thousands of dollars to help pay for his like Airbnb and stuff in Seattle so he can go get. He can go get treatment and that's all wonderful, but it's a fucking orphan crushing machine. All wonderful, but it's a fucking orphan crushing machine, because why does that man who is a successful business owner and carries insurance and all of this? Why can't he just get proper treatment? So this is the concept I want to bring to you guys. It's super simple. I told you today was going to be really short, and it's going to be, because the Orphan Crushing Machine I want to introduce to all of you now you know the phrase.

Speaker 1: 8:27

The Orphan Crushing Machine is something that you ought to think about anytime you see heartwarming stories, because this is how. This is the easy way for people to begin to think critically about the information that is presented to us, to think critically about the information that is presented to us, because this forces us to think about not just the information that is presented but the context around that information, like the immediate context of okay, here's a good piece of news, a heartwarming story. Why is the story heartwarming? Because someone did something that overcame something difficult story heartwarming because someone did something that overcame something difficult. Okay, why did the difficult thing exist?

Speaker 1: 9:07

Life can be difficult and we have to overcome obstacles and blah, blah, blah, but most of these difficulties that we're overcoming through these heartwarming stories are all difficulties that have been created by the American government and corporations, which I mean that's kind of redundant to say, but it is the truth. We're in a fascist. This is a fascist country. Our country has been run by billionaires for a very long time. It's just become really obvious to the rest of the world and to the moderates who have been in denial. But now, with Doge and Musk and all that crap, it's obvious that rich people rule our world. They create the rules and when you create the rules, you have complete control. So, one of the ways that I can, I want to show you this, because Orphan Crushing Machine is a great way to think about the context of the information that is given to you.

Speaker 1: 10:12

But when you say like and the context is important because you need to understand the things about like the people who make the rules so say that there are 61 seats in a Congress right, and you need a majority vote, that means that you actually need 31 people to side with you. That's the most obvious answer, right? If you need a majority vote and there are 61 seats, the most obvious answer is in order to win, you need 31 votes. But did you know you could actually win with only 20? I think it's like 22. That council, then you can go.

Speaker 1: 11:05

Okay, well, the council is 61 people and we're going to break that up into five individual groups and we know that two of those individuals and we're going to break up like the Electoral College. We're going to break up the votes of those groups to say all right, which of these five? We're breaking up the 61 into five individual groups. Five. We're breaking up the 61 into five individual groups. Now we can ignore two of those groups entirely because we don't have to worry about overtaking them. We just need the majority in these three groups. So if you take that 61 divided by five turns out you only need like 22 people to create a majority in a situation where math should say you actually need 31 to win the majority. Because if you can just not worry about these other two groups, you only need to get the majority of these three over here, and they're just about 10 people. So you just need to worry about getting six in each of those and then you win because you control the rules, you control the bylaws.

Speaker 1: 12:08

So that creates a system that you can manipulate any way that you want, if you have enough time and you just want to sit and write the bylaws, and that's what these people have all of. They have all the money and they have all of the time to sit around and think of ways that they can change and tweak little rules here and there to continue to exploit everyone on the planet. So that was a random little thing. I wanted to make a short on on Facebook and I wanted to have visual assistance things. But I will try to find that video and share that video on my Instagram and on my Facebook page. If you follow me, I'll see medicine on both. It's easy to find me.

Speaker 1: 12:51

But I wanted to present everybody with the Orphan Crushing Machine. It is a shorthand, really fantastic way for everybody to be more cognizant of the context that is being presented to you as oh, look at this heartwarming story. Because these heartwarming stories in America are heartwarming because people have overcome really difficult things. But we don't stop to think that the really difficult thing is an orphan crushing machine. We have just accepted so long that orphans get crushed that we don't think about the orphan crushing machine. We don't think about why is health care so expensive, that this child is raising tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars, or that GoFundMe is raising all of this money, like one in three. One in three campaigns on GoFundMe are for medical costs, $650 million, when our medical like system is a multi-billion dollar like profit system. We they well, dollar profit system? Well, actually, trillion. If you combine everything it's trillions of dollars. It's mad. So there you have it. This is the shortest episode I think I've ever made, but there you have the orphan crushing machine.

Speaker 1: 14:16

Think about the information that is presented to you. Next time that you have a heartwarming story, let it warm your heart. I'm not saying be a cold bitch, let it warm your heart, but also think about the context of your. The reason your heart is feeling warm is because of, like the indomitable, like aspects of the human spirit, and we overcome hard things and blah, blah, blah. But where are those hard things coming from? The hard things and blah, blah, blah. But where are those hard things coming from? Are those hard things? Are they actually an inescapable part of life or are they created by a system? Were they created at some point by a system that we can do something about now? So next time you get presented with a heartwarming orphan story, look in the immediate vicinity and see if you can find that crushing machine. All right, that is all for today's episode. I hope that you got something out of the orphan crushing machine.

Speaker 1: 15:15

I am announcing on the podcast right now that if you are a local to the Pacific Northwest, especially to the state of Washington, then I really hope that you will come out to A History of Time Through Music, a Bread and Gravy production on April 25th. You can go to thefieldeventshallorg online and order your tickets. We, my friends Bread and Gravy, steph and Jess, which you've heard Jess come on here a few times and we've talked about depression and connection. We've talked about the economy. Jess has created this beautiful musical that we've strung together a bunch of really neat stuff and we're really proud of it. We've been writing it for months and we've been rehearsing. We've had a rehearsal yesterday. We have another really really long, all all night kind of rehearsal on Sunday.

Speaker 1: 16:09

I really hope that you will come out to it. It's going to be awesome. It's a full on like theatrical production. There's lines and there's like 12 different musicians and there's dancers and we've got the whole band as well as individual songs. I will be performing some original music. There's actually a few pieces of original music from the different artists and musicians who were a part of the production. So if you were out on April 25th. Come out and see us. I would really appreciate that.

Speaker 1: 16:42

The next piece is a little bit of housekeeping. I, like I said, am halfway done almost with the audiobook. The audiobook will be coming out before I leave in May for Greece. I'm joining Acupuncturists Without Borders for a week in Athens to help them and pop in and do some refugee care at Safe Place International, which is a LGBTQ refugee safe house. They have about a half a dozen of them, I believe, in different places around the world. One of the largest is Athens, because Greece is a kind of a bottleneck place for people who are trying to legally immigrate into the EU. So that's where I'll be going in May. I will be releasing the audiobook before then.

Speaker 1: 17:36

Audible on Amazon is very, very picky about like spacing between when you say chapter and when you start the next word and that sort of thing. So who knows if it will actually be available on audible by then? I'm hoping that it will, but it will definitely be available on rethinkingbrokencom so you can go to rethinkingbrokencom and find a copy of the audio book before May 3rd. It is not out yet, but look for that, look for the show. Come out and see us on April 25th. Thank you so much for your patience and for sticking with me and for waiting so patiently for this next podcast.

Speaker 1: 18:27

This next podcast. I've got a few more that I have planned coming up for you, including one that has become quite prevalent recently. I've been having more political conversations on Facebook, which is now over. I will no longer be having those on Facebook because my views are highly nuanced and when you're trying to have those, when you're trying to have conversations on the internet, everything's just in bits and pieces and people distract and pull over here and pull over there and attack you personally and all kinds of fun crap. So one of the people that I have had issues with lately online, who I respect as an individual they did a really good job of showing what is called the provocative victim.

Speaker 1: 19:16

A provocative victim is a person who just stirs shit and then turns around and plays the victim when they get called out. White people are really good at this. White women, especially, are really really good at this. This is actually a white and Native person who is extremely good at this. They tend to say hateful things and rude things and then, when they're called out and say, no, that's not okay, they turn around and play the victim out and say, no, that's not okay. They turn around and play the victim. So I'm going to be doing a deep dive into the psychology of the provocative victim.

Speaker 1: 19:53

Trump is a perfect example of a provocative victim. Musk is a perfect example of a provocative victim. Hell, almost everybody in politics period is an example of a provocative victim. Trump is exquisite. He's really at the top of here. Let me say a bunch of hateful-ass shit and then when I get called on it, I'm going to pretend like I'm the victim. And because they're famous, when these people are famous or well-known, the limelight shined on them at the moment of their retaliation. So they seem right. They're like, oh, oh, the retaliation being the playing the victim. Anyway, that's what's going to be coming up very soon is the provocative victim episode. So if you're interested in that, stick around. I'll see you in a couple of weeks and I promise it will just be no more than two weeks this time. Thank you again for hanging out with me. I hope you enjoyed the episode and remember stay curious and stay uncomfortable. Thank you.