Category Archives: current events

Quick, Snide Note to My Fellow Americans

Americans are arguably (and we will argue, by God, and the dumber the argument the readier we are to fuck somebody up over it) the world’s most competitive,  unhealthiest, most easily manipulated, most vi0lent, most ill-informed, most opinionated, most likely to kill each other with a gun, most likely to defend the right to kill somebody with a gun, most prone to suicide with a gun, most materialistic, most optimistic, greediest, most distracted and self-involved population, probably of all time.  I’m leaving most fearful off the list, and angriest, because while those might also be true, they’re matters of opinion and hard to verify.  I’m also leaving off most kind-hearted, idealistic and trusting, for the same reason.

Of course, we Americans are free to fight about any one or all of these snidely unflattering characterizations.  We have that freedom here, unlike citizens of a lot of other places.  And God bless these United States.   I defend our right to be all of these things and more.  

Worldwide consumers of fast food and violent American films should not feel smug about America’s faults.   We come by them honestly:  our national religion is the acquisition of wealth and the refinement of the machine that assists in that acquisition.  Wealth, or lack of it, is the measure of everything here– as it is fast becoming everywhere.   America was the land where unlimited wealth was advertised, our streets paved with gold; the chance to have more money than anyone else remains a big part of the American Dream, the global dream.  The right to compete was guaranteed to all Americans, even if it is, arguably, not always enforced fairly.  

This dream was sold to Americans living here and used to lure needed workers here over the years.  It was sold deliberately, skillfully, to excellent advantage, from our earliest days.  America pioneered Public Relations and modern Advertising, the increasingly sophisticated use of the mass media to shape public perceptions, frame debate, package, brand and sell products, instill values and consumer loyalty.  We are the masters of it.  Nobody else, until very recently, was even in second place.  

As adults most of us can sing many catchy ad jingles we remember from childhood.  Few of us can quote a line of Shakespeare or anything from the Bible, but most of us who were around at the time can sing “The One and Only Cereal That Comes In The Shapes of Animals” and know exactly what we’re singing about.

So while it’s true we may be dumber than shit, and arguably in steep decline, as a nation and culture, we’re very, very rich and we can still fuck you up.  Yeah.  And we will too.  What are you gonna do about it?

Heh, I thought so…

Just watched a JFK documentary on PBS

And watched him deliver, in black and white movie footage, these words from Ireland, in the early summer of 1963, the last summer of his life:

George Bernard Shaw, speaking as an Irishman, summed up an approach to life.  “Other people,” he said, “see things and say ‘why?’.   But I dream things that never were, and I say ‘why not?’”    
 
The problems of the world cannot possibly be solved by skeptics or cynics whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities.  We need men who can dream of things that never were, and ask “why not?”
 
Dig it.

Do You Get It?

Talking approvingly about the progress among the compromises made by the Obama administration to pass the puckishly named Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in the context of America 2015: driven by profit, corporations as people with feelings too, money as speech, ad buys win campaigns, politicians vying at the corporate trough, etc. is like talking about the success of advocates against the spread of slavery in 1856.

“Half of the new territories won’t allow slaves as a result of our hard work here today,” the successful advocate would say proudly, “that’s progress.  Not ideal, I know, but given the facts on the ground:  slavery perfectly legal under the Constitution, constitutional amendment impossible in a nation divided 50/50 into partisan camps that hate each other, wouldn’t be surprised if there’s an armed war between these two gun toting factions protecting their interests… we were LUCKY to convince Congress not to allow slavery in half the new territories.  That’s success today, and we should celebrate instead of looking at the damn glass half empty.  Hell, we have enough problems trying to wipe out the buffalo herds so we can destroy the Indian culture on the prairies that we need for Manifest Destiny….”

“Do you fucking have fucking Tourette’s?” she asked me.

“Maybe,” I said, “but doesn’t everybody?”

A Foolish Belief in Democracy?

The young Thomas Jefferson, shortly after he married the widow of Bathurst Skelton, three years before becoming the Author of Liberty, increased his wealth threefold.  He became the master of Bathurst’s 135 slaves [1]  (Jefferson had inherited only 50 from his parents) and added 11,000 acres of property formerly held by Bathurst [2] to the 5,000 he had previously inherited.   To say that young Thomas Jefferson was born booted and spurred to ride the backs of his saddled countrymen would not be entirely unfair.  His marriage to the wealthy young widow added luster to both boot and spur.

With all this inherited wealth, and in spite of an eloquently expressed life long hatred of tyranny,  which compelled him to risk being hanged as a revolutionary, and his deep moral opposition to slavery, the Author of Liberty should have had the luxury, more than fifty years later, of freeing his remaining 130 slaves in his will, as the Father of our Country had done.  Sadly, that luxury was denied to him.  John Adams, who comes down to us far less heroically than Washington and Jefferson, and not nearly the moral equal of either (in the simplistic popular imagination), never owned a slave.  But that is another rant for someone else to go on about some other time.

Fictional, aspirational president Josiah Bartlet, of  The West Wing TV series, is fond of learned quotes.   He quoted Jefferson some time toward the end of season six.   “A man’s management of his own purse speaks volumes about character,” he said.   And it struck me anew: motherfucker!  

The reason Jefferson could not free his slaves, as he heartbrokenly regretted he could not do toward the end of his life, is that in spite of his great inherited wealth, his management of his own purse was less than perfect.  His love of luxury far exceeded his  ability to pay for shipments of the most expensive French wine, the finest Italian furnishings, the clothes made for him by the greatest tailors in Europe, the magnificent horses he rode, the no expense spared constant remodeling of his gracious and beautiful home, Monticello.

He had racked up impressive debts over the years of his long, luxurious life as a philosopher king.  If he had freed his slaves, instead of bequeathing them as property to his daughters, he would have left his progeny penniless.  The shame of that outweighed any other qualms he might have had.  Even leaving aside the several slave children he fathered with the illegitimate half-sister of his late wife, his long-time slave mistress Sally, (unacknowledged during his life and indignantly denied on his legacy’s behalf for a century and a half after his death) let us say, in unison: motherfucker.   History is kinder to him, by far, than I am.  No doubt.

My meditation on the man who bravely declared the self-evident truth of human equality leads me to wonder about my ongoing belief in the idealistic democracy he played such a large role in shaping.  I continue to believe in the importance of our public institutions.  Most large steps forward as a People were the product of principled government initiative in response to overwhelming events and popular agitation. Think about the use of the Interstate Commerce Clause and the courage and determination of both activists and jurists in the federal courts to end centuries of racism at law.  (Much work remains to be done there, but that’s not the point.  The laws needed to be changed, the government acted to change and, in some cases, even enforce the laws.  A triumph of democracy.)

The importance of principled government action is confirmed for me over and over as I watch the ongoing failure of profit-driven business, our so-called Free Market, to solve any of the pressing problems of our society.  Exponentially increasing the wealth of a few makes the country’s wealth look good on paper, but human lives, like baseball games, are not played on paper. Wall Street’s health in most cases has little to do with healthy lives on Main Street.  

Without a pragmatic and honest government to unite and inspire us we have no hope of solving the biggest challenges we face as a nation, as a species, as a planet.  I am probably even in the majority in this opinion, of those with the leisure to consider the question seriously, and who do not stand to lose wealth by taking this position.  Not that it makes much difference, if my belief in democracy is a silly as other fond beliefs of childhood.

Leave aside the damning fact that our highest court has decided that, Constitutionally speaking, and as intended by the Framers, money is speech in a land where 97% of all political campaigns are won by the side that spends the most money speaking.  Has there ever been anything like democracy for most of the history of this nation, the world’s first modern experiment in government of the People, by the People and for the People?   At isolated moments, perhaps, the best aspirations and highest motives of our citizens have become enshrined in our laws.  Sometimes these isolated moments are decades or centuries in the making.

Slavery and lynching, two practices long protected by American law, the former embedded, obscurely but robustly, in our Constitution, the latter winkingly left up to the states to, er … uh, regulate, are now universally reviled.  Today nobody but the hybrid of a moral cretin and a talking jackass would make an argument in favor of slavery or lynching, though both were the law of the land for generations.  Medicare, once unthinkably controversial, is now something even the Tea Baggers want the government to keep their hands off of.  Social Security too, at one time renounced as part of a Socialist plot, has become something most retired people rely on, at least in part, and value as part of a decent society’s social safety net. Not long ago homosexuals were hunted down and locked up, today they legally marry in many states. Millions are in jail today for preferring marijuana to alcohol as their drug of choice. [OK, I know, an exaggeration, please see note… 3]  Democracy does over time move forward, although more often than not only after excruciatingly long struggles against powerful, organized, determined, well-funded forces. 

In light of all this, can I really be angry at a president who campaigned by appealing to the highest ideals and hopes of many of our citizens and continues to talk the talk, though often obliged to speak less than the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, while ruling in slavish obedience to the corporate bottom line?  Sure I can, but I don’t know how fair it is.  He is not the only “sell-out” to find life much more complicated as the indebted to campaign donors leader of the free world than he may have wished it to be.  Bill Clinton is often considered the greatest Republican president of the last fifty years, though he was relentlessly attacked as a liberal.  Heck of a liberal Bill was, really.

If Jefferson could have freed his slaves, you just know he would have done the right thing, even as the management of his purse showed most of what we need to know about the actual content of his character.

It bears repeating, as was done a few times on The West Wing:  we campaign in poetry but govern in prose.  Call me strict, but I believe  the Author of Liberty should be judged by his own formulation– ditto this well-spoken idealist we have in there now.  

When someone who talks like a psychopath, or a slave holder, acts like one, I know how to react.  I am mobilized, adrenaline flows.  I’m angry, maybe, but not hurt.   I certainly feel no surprise, no betrayal of principle or trust.  When someone talks like a true and compassionate friend, and acts exactly like the guy who talks like a psychopath, and people around me act like he’s still our true friend — it robs me of hope.  It crushes my soul just a little bit more.   Makes me feel something I strongly resist believing:  that my faith in democracy, in the power of the  People to see the truth and walk toward the light, may be entirely foolish.

I don’t believe that, deep down, but, damn, these complicatedly nuanced idealist motherfuckers who eloquently speak our fondest hopes make it hård.

 

 

[1] These 135 slaves were inherited from Martha’s father John Wayles, not Bathurst Skelton, and in 1773.  Among the slaves was Betty Hemings and her last daughter by John Wayles (she had six of his children), the baby Sally.

[2] He inherited the 11,000 acres from Wayles, too.  I just like writing Bathurst Skelton and didn’t have my copy of Fawn M. Brodie’s excellent, groundbreaking 1974 Thomas Jefferson; An Intimate Biography at hand when I wrote the post earlier today.  (see W.W. Norton softcover, pp. 80-87)

[3] Fine, not millions locked up for pot.  But read these shameful statistics.   Could a democracy spend the more than $51,000,000,000 annually that goes to the endless, senseless “War On Drugs” any more wisely?  How about 10% of it to make sure no old Americans are ever forced to be cold, or homeless, or eat cat food?

On Forgiveness and Sincere Apology

 
On Forgiveness and apology, their interaction and the relative power of each, I often think of an experience from decades ago as one of the best illustrations of the amazing healing power of a complete apology. 
 
It began with a comment a friend dashed off back in the age of snail mail, in response to a badly recorded guitar solo on an early Ray Charles tune (that later was retooled with new lyrics and became the gem “Hard Times”) I’d sent him on a cassette.  I’d pointed out the solo and commented that the blues solo in the jazzy setting was something I admired, was trying to learn from, or something to that effect.  My friend wrote, a phrase I remember being greatly stung by, although it has no sting anymore: “no offense, pal, but that solo was so amateurish, I thought it was you.”
 
I called him, mightily peeved, and when I read him the offending line he sounded truly aghast (might have been a good act, but it worked) and it became clear at once that he’d had no intention of saying what he appeared to have said (or at least he skillfully and immediately conveyed that impression).  He told me he understood how terrible the words sounded, that he would have taken it the same way I did.  He agreed the words as written were hurtful, told me he hadn’t intended the offense, said he was sorry.  
 
The relief was instant, and I think the empathy– that he would have felt as I did, that it wasn’t crazy of me to have been a little offended — was a key to that.   I did not have to weigh for a second whether to forgive him or not.  The insult had not been intended, or so I was convinced by his clarification, and the hurt of it disappeared immediately.  As hurt as I’d been by the artlessly phrased line, I was grateful for and instantly relieved by the apology.  I recall the immediate effect of the apology clearly to this day, decades later. 
 
It is a rare experience, the one I’ve just described, not just for me but for anyone.  People rarely apologize for anything in our In-Your-Fucking-Face, Asshole, Culture, the most common facsimile being the annoying “if-pology” (a tip of the chapeau to Harry Shearer, who may have coined the useful term): if you were offended (why not let the passive voice be used for further distance from responsibility?) then I’m sorry.   Sorry if you were pathetic enough to need my stinking apology, in other words.
 
In the case of someone who has done terrible, objectively abusive things — and waits until hours before his death more than 40 years later to utter his first acknowledgment that he probably shouldn’t have acted that way, and apologizes for the first and last time– we’re presented with a different scenario. 
 
For my own mental health I had to figure out a way not to be angry at a father who, in a fundamental way, was close to insane.  My many attempts to have a dialogue with him over the decades were roughly rebuffed.  He was so damaged that he couldn’t help but inflict the damage he did.  He was unlikely to ever acknowledge it, and I’m sure he wouldn’t have been able to on his death bed either, if I’d stood there angry at him as he was dying.
 
Fortunately for both of us, in intensive therapy not many months earlier I’d finally put the connections together to realize that, given the atrocious abuse he’d endured, he was not capable of being a more compassionate person, that his life was a tragedy, and very painful to him and that my only play was letting go of my own anger to the extent that I could.  
 
As I stood there talking to him those last couple of days of his life I was aware only of doing what I could to make his passing as easy as I could help to make it.  I repeated the phrase “if you could have done things differently you would have” every time he raised the whip over himself for what a monster he’d so often been.
 
So I’ve lived those two sides of apology/forgiveness.  A sincere apology definitely helps a person to forgive:  I hurt you, I understand why you were hurt, I didn’t mean it, I was wrong, I’m sorry, I’ll try my best not to do it again.  Please forgive me.  Easiest case.  I try my best to quickly apologize every time I’m aware I did something hurtful to someone I care about.   
 
Forgiving when the person is unrepentant– I think it can only be done when there is a strong psychic reason, like the person is a parent, or sibling, or if not forgiving will drive you mad, something like that.   And in that case one has to go through something like the same process of ‘apology’ on behalf of the other before you can forgive: he underwent traumas that made him a monster, he didn’t intend to become a monster, if he could have not been a monster he would have done it, he tortures himself for his monstrousness, etc.  Only after that series of understandings is reached can one let go of some of the pain by forgiving, it seems to me.  And forgiveness is for ourselves, primarily, if we are carrying anger in our hearts.
 
Jack Kornfield, Zen teacher, tells the one about two former prisoners of war who meet years later.    “Do you often think about our captivity?” asks one. “I think about it every day, and whenever I do I think of going back and slaughtering them all,” says the other.   “Well,” says the first,”then you are still their prisoner.”  
 
Without the acknowledgment of injury, and a sincere attempt to make it right, there is only hurt and anger in the injured party most of the time.  In the case of rough characters who are not my father, I toss them aside if they repeatedly dismiss as neurotic over-sensitivity my hurt reactions to hurtful things they do.  Don’t want to talk about it?  Fine.  Have a nice day.
 
I can really relate to the anger of people living in a fifth or tenth generation of inherited poverty that goes back to slavery and the 40 acres and a mule they were promised but never got.   This immensely wealthy nation has never really given any sort of meaningful apology to its former slaves for the obscenely profitable monstrosity of the “Peculiar Institution”.  The shameful subject is most often daintily dismissed as unfortunate ancient history, though in my lifetime lynching was still a matter of “states’ rights”.  Those who call for reparations for centuries of slave labor are thought of by most whites as grand-standing polemicists, even though economists have calculated the almost incalculable wealth created here by slave labor, on behalf of the genteel “Planters”, some of our wealthiest and most powerful families.
 
“You … er, uh, n-words, are so fucking over-sensitive, we built housing projects for you, we give you money for nothing, let you get into college with lower SAT scores, still give affirmative action to a few of you, we even conduct investigations when a police department shows a pattern of racist harassment, brutality and murder against you — what the devil more do you want from us?”  only goes so far.  And how far it goes is nowhere.
 
Sorry.

Integrity 3- imaginary dialogue

“Do you realize how it will look if I have an executive from the second largest health insurance giant in the country write the new health care law?”  

“It’s not as if the chairman of the committee who is tasked with crafting the law has clean hands either. Max Baucus took almost $5,000,000 in campaign money from that industry in the last five years, Mr. President.   He’s a Democrat, that’s bona fide enough for your average supporter.  He’s one of the good guys in this partisan knife fight, as far as they know.”  

“But a staffer who was an executive at Wellpoint until a couple of weeks ago?” asks the president, “how will having her as the primary author of the law, the architect of Obamacare, look to my supporters?”  

“Believe me, you’ll be as safe as an octopus in a cloud of ink on a dark night, sir,” says one of the president’s closest advisers.  “Only a few Americans will ever even hear the name Elizabeth Fowler and, of that few, even less will care.”

“But the bill before me is plainly a gift to the insurance and pharmaceutical industries.  We get a  concession on ‘pre-existing condition’ because we’re delivering potentially 40,000,000 new customers to them, mandating the purchase of insurance while agreeing to very gently regulate how much they can gouge patients.  Increasing deductibles to almost $2,000 out of pocket for people 150% above the poverty line.  Pay an insurance premium every month to a private company and then reach into your pocket to pay the first $2,000 of your medical bills before insurance kicks in?  Is this the Hope and Change I campaigned on?”

“Whatever law you pass will be put up for repeal dozens of times, they’ll drag it through every court in the country, shut down the government over it.  The opposition, you may have noticed, is truly rabid.  You can pass Romneycare, or Nixon’s plan.. well, no, not Nixon’s plan, you’d look like a Socialist… but you can pass the Republicans’ own plan, Mr. President, and they’d come after you with torches and pitchforks.  Your supporters will realize you were in no position not to compromise.”  

“Even though we have the Senate and the House, I have to take the only plan that truly makes sense, a buy-in to Medicare, off the table right at the start, ensure that insurance company and pharmaceutical industry profits will be as robust as before, in fact, make purchase of private health care mandatory, in legislation that still leaves millions of Americans uninsured?  Is that what you’re telling me, Phyllis?”  

“Yes, sir,” she says.  

“I realize I’m arguing with myself.  I’m a charismatic campaigner, I’m accomplished, my ideals are beyond question.  I was voted into office on a wave of hope.  Is this really the best I can do as president of a country longing for real change, desperate for hope they can believe in?”  

“At least you weren’t a governor, sir, when you were running.  You were spared going back to your home state to execute a brain damaged murderer on the eve of the primary.”  

“I suppose I’ll have to make do with that,” the president says, closing the folder on his desk.  “What’s next?”

Integrity 2– imaginary discussion

“I ran against the anti-democratic secrecy of Cheney and Addington.  I promised, many times as a candidate, to run the most transparent administration in history.  I promised I’d protect whistle blowers.  The Bush administration classified literally everything, used sovereign immunity, state secrets, national security rationales, intimidation, the pressure of jailing, lawsuits and everything else, to keep crucial information from the People, from the electorate.  Cheney had a safe in his office big enough to hold half a dozen detainees, for Christ’s sake.”

“That second Bush Administration dramatically shifted the public’s right to know to a need to know basis.  They shifted the traditional burden on government of showing something needed to be secret to the burden on the public of proving it should not be secret.  Tricky for the public to do that when they don’t even know there is a secret.   Testimony by the President and Vice President at the 9/11 Commission was top secret, no recording, no transcript, no notes.   Commission members sworn to secrecy.  What the hell was up with that?  Scandals and war crimes were reported in government reports, the reports were classified.   The press was used as a megaphone to broadcast government policy.  I vowed that my administration would reverse that anti-democratic crap.   Now you’re telling me we should try this American journalist under the 1917 Espionage Act, like the guy is a spy during wartime for doing research for his story on CIA torture?”

“It would send a strong message, Mr. President.  We are still obliged to work in the shadows, sir.”

A long pause.  “Ah, hell with it.  Tell Holder to use the stinking 1917 act.  We can’t ask for the death penalty under it, can we?”

“No, Mr. President.”

“Wait until my supporters get a whiff of this…”

 “Our country is so divided, and your opposition so virulent and irrational, Mr. President, that your supporters will defend you, no matter how foul the cologne you might be obliged to douse yourself in from time to time.”

“Get out of my sight….”

Integrity — exercise in imagination

“You mean to tell me this American citizen has been locked up, without charges, in solitary confinement, for almost a year over there?” asks the president sharply.

“Yes, sir,” says a high ranking advisor, “at our request, sir.  He’s articulate, and pissed off and self-righteous.  He preaches in perfcct English and in native Arabic.  He has a worldwide following of young jihadi types.  He could be lethal winning hearts and minds for al Que’da.”

“Can’t we charge him with anything?  He’s an American citizen, are we now detaining American citizens without charges, without habeas corpus, without any sort of judicial process? Has the Constitution been suspended for citizens who are too critical of our policies and I’m just the last to find out?”

“We really don’t have grounds to charge him with anything, sir, other than abusing the First Amendment.  We need to hold him, though.  He’s dangerous, charismatic, his internet sermons are inspiring fanatical youth around the world.”

“Can’t we shut down his website?”

“We did.  The sermons circulate on DVD.  It’s best to keep him locked up, sir.”

“Under the secret detention black site policies Dick Cheney and David Addington put into place when this country went to the dark side?”

Sometimes no answer is the best answer, the advisors hold their peace.  

“Charge this guy and have him extradited or tell Yemen to cut him loose,” orders the president, turning to the next name on the list.  

A year or so later, still not charged with any crime, the American cleric was released from prison.  

A couple of years later his name appears on a kill list given to the president.  The president is known for his  eidetic memory.

“Isn’t this the guy who Yemen had in solitary without charges, the American citizen we finally told them to cut loose?”

“Yes, Mr. President.  He’s still giving sermons, and his rhetoric is on fire.  We need to silence him.”

“I ask you again, general, can we charge this motherfucker with a crime before we kill him?  Any crime?  At one time extra-judicial executions were frowned upon.  We Americans always frowned upon them, publicly at least.  Are we now killing even American citizens without feeling the need to even charge them with a crime?   Doesn’t his father have a lawsuit in our courts to keep him off the kill list?”

“The law suit will be moot, sir, if we shoot.”

Moment of decision, where one would like to imagine a man of integrity drawing a principled line he will not cross.  An American citizen cannot be killed without judicial review.   Even if he is charged and tried in absentia, there is some legal process, some requirement to prove guilt of a crime serious enough to punish with execution, before we sentence one of our citizens to death.  It’s just wrong, putting a name on a secret list and designating him for death, especially one of our own citizens and it sets a very dangerous precedent.

“Mr. President, he’s been eluding us for many months, for over a year.  He’s becoming a hero in that wild tribal area in Yemen and a symbol of defiance.  We know where he is tonight, we have a small window to act.  We need to kill him now, sir.”  

A long pause.  “Fine,” the signature scrawled left-handed next to the American’s name, marked for death.  “Just don’t come to me in a couple of weeks and tell me you also killed his teenaged son with the dreadlocks, or the kid’s friends listening to hiphop somewhere.”

“Will do, Mr. President, absolutely.  Thank you, sir.”

 

 

Shining the Light of Reason

It turns out there is a good reason I am responsible for a few hundred dollars in connection with a preventative procedure 100% covered by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.  Once it was explained to me, it became perfectly understandable.

The procedure is 100% paid for (with only a token $100 payment required from me), a $4,050 colonoscopy that was paid, on my behalf, at the contracted price of $852.  In consideration of this deep discount, the PPACA also protects the interests of doctors shorted by insurance company payments as well as the insurance companies themselves.

The PPACA requires a pre-colonoscopy office visit, something not previously required.  This visit with the specialist is subject to a $50 copay.   The doctor may charge up to $250, but the patient will only be responsible for the difference between the copay and the contracted price for this required visit, $131.   So the bill for the additional $81 is correct and the full responsibility of the patient.  The $131, which goes toward the $1,750 deductible, reflects another deep discount, almost 50% off the sticker price.

The diagnostic code 2113 was properly entered by the doctor’s office, even though no diagnosis was involved.  It’s called a diagnostic code, sir, and you chose a plan with a deductible, even if it was the only plan offered at your income level.  Pay the bill.

Procedure code 88305, level five, means that the patient, and not the insurance company, is responsible for the other half of the pathology charges related to the colonoscopy.  If the preventive procedure had not discovered any abnormalities requiring a pathologist, the patient’s preventive care would have been completely without additional cost, except for the $131 deductible and the $100 pre-colonoscopy fee.

As my father so often reminded me, I’d complain if I was hanged with a new rope.  The main thing is– what a great step forward Obamacare is for every American patient everywhere and how generous the discounts it affords.   And as President Barack Obama himself would say:  what are you going to do about it anyway, bitch?

Fatigue and the difficulty of recharging the batteries

Long have they urged us, originally in hoary Latin, not to let the bastards grind us down.  The bastards constantly and tirelessly grind.   Grinding us down is their only goal.  They do a hell of a job and it takes a fresh, happy energy not to be ground down sometimes.

Of course, it is supremely fatiguing, this death by a thousand abrasions.  It’s impossible to energetically engage every one of the many outrages that are paraded by us every day.  We have outrage fatigue, in this world where they are hatching one outrage after another, using devilishly sophisticated machines to crank them out faster and faster.  

Some days it is not possible to energetically engage even the smallest of these outrages.   The question I ask myself today, as my wheels spin so far in the sluggish air: how do I recharge my spirits?

I have been musing on the scam that is the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the seeming impossibility of getting out of paying hundreds of dollars I do not owe, in addition to hundreds in monthly premiums I do, feeling myself frozen in place, stymied, angry.  No outlet.  Go fight City Hall, asshole.  Has nobody granted me the serenity to accept the things that get to fuck me with no remedy and know the difference between the things I am right to actively engage?

Global warming, the organized, vociferous denial of fact, a government whose corruption is surpassed only by the insatiable, murderous greed of those who corrupt and control it, poverty, war, lack of civility, humility, gentleness, creativity in our public discourse.  The war of each against all that is thrust upon us every day.   We are living in a mined out coal mine where the air has turned noxious and it doesn’t take a coughing canary to tell us which way the toxic wind is blowing.

How do I recharge my batteries today?  Yesterday I played the guitar for a few hours, an excellent thing to do.  But, while it did me a world of good at the time, did nothing to recharge my batteries.  

Going to work is the most widely practiced universal therapy out there.  That I do not go to work is a big factor, too much time to muse, since I am not hitting snooze, having coffee and dashing off to work.   If everything in one’s day is optional, a kind of haze can set it.   There is a good reason that many people fear leisure, dread retirement, the feeling of being unproductive, useless, if not working in some capacity.   I am on the other end of the scale with that one– if I could play productively every day I’d be a very happy boy.

A very happy old boy.