I’ve been out of commission for several days because my three-year-old daughter, Miranda, came down with RSV – a respiratory virus that goes around this time of year. Miranda had a horrible hacking cough, a fever that reached 105, and difficulty breathing. We spent the early morning hours on Wednesday in the ER at Cottage Hospital.
Taking your child to the ER is always a wrenching experience. Against the backdrop of lights and equipment and staff running around, the child appears small and vulnerable, at the mercy of people one doesn’t know. As the examination begins and the routine questions are asked, you hope that the staff is well-trained, rested, alert, and in a generous mood; you hope the exam room has been recently cleaned and sterilized, all the equipment calibrated. A lot can go wrong in a hospital.
Fortunately, we’ve never had a bad experience at Cottage Hospital, and our good fortune held this time. The staff was gentle with Miranda, professional from start to finish. While Miranda was under observation, hooked up to a machine that monitored her oxygen level, I thanked my stars for the health insurance card in my wallet, for the fact that my employer pays for those benefits 100%, and for the simple fact of having access to medical care. In America these days one can’t take such things for granted.
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Try as I might, I can’t stop thinking about politics and what I see as the sorry state of my country under the leadership of George W. Bush. I still cannot watch or listen to W make a speech or hold a press conference without becoming incensed. Yes, W won the election, slim though his margin of victory was, and yes, he won despite widespread irregularities at polling places in Ohio. Get over it. Don’t piss and moan about W and his policies, come up with better alternatives that appeal to a majority of voters. Learn to frame the issues!
Graydon Carter, the editor of Vanity Fair, wrote a piece in which he referred to ours as a “post-factual” age. This is an age when a draft-evader can strut around the world stage like a decorated war hero, and a decorated war hero is forced to defend his service record and prove that his war wounds were not self-inflicted; an age when we invade and occupy a country that posed no immediate threat to our security; an age when the Social Security system is said to be in “crisis” when in fact the crisis point is forty years in the future and can be easily averted by relatively minor changes to the tax structure.
Facts don’t matter. Facts are whatever we say they are, whatever suits our purpose of the moment. Facts are merely inconvenient, easily overcome with media spin. Lie loud enough and long enough and the lie becomes the truth.
The contradictions are so numerous that it would all be amusing if it wasn’t so serious.
From the right side of the political spectrum we are advised to save and invest, to work hard and provide for ourselves, a reasonable request except when you realize that the people telling us to save and invest are the same people who export our jobs to India, cut our pensions and health benefits, and do everything in their power to keep our wages stagnant.
Here’s the twisted logic: we’re going to pay you less, transfer more risk to you, and demand that you save more.
Consider that for most of the past quarter century, the wages of average working Americans have fallen, corporate taxation has fallen, while the compensation of top CEO’s has skyrocketed. Consider that the gap between rich and poor in this country is beginning to resemble that of Brazil, Mexico and Russia. Is this right, is this what we want, is this the best way to achieve a decent life for the majority of Americans?
Or is the ideal of a decent life for all dead?
Taking your child to the ER is always a wrenching experience. Against the backdrop of lights and equipment and staff running around, the child appears small and vulnerable, at the mercy of people one doesn’t know. As the examination begins and the routine questions are asked, you hope that the staff is well-trained, rested, alert, and in a generous mood; you hope the exam room has been recently cleaned and sterilized, all the equipment calibrated. A lot can go wrong in a hospital.
Fortunately, we’ve never had a bad experience at Cottage Hospital, and our good fortune held this time. The staff was gentle with Miranda, professional from start to finish. While Miranda was under observation, hooked up to a machine that monitored her oxygen level, I thanked my stars for the health insurance card in my wallet, for the fact that my employer pays for those benefits 100%, and for the simple fact of having access to medical care. In America these days one can’t take such things for granted.
///
Try as I might, I can’t stop thinking about politics and what I see as the sorry state of my country under the leadership of George W. Bush. I still cannot watch or listen to W make a speech or hold a press conference without becoming incensed. Yes, W won the election, slim though his margin of victory was, and yes, he won despite widespread irregularities at polling places in Ohio. Get over it. Don’t piss and moan about W and his policies, come up with better alternatives that appeal to a majority of voters. Learn to frame the issues!
Graydon Carter, the editor of Vanity Fair, wrote a piece in which he referred to ours as a “post-factual” age. This is an age when a draft-evader can strut around the world stage like a decorated war hero, and a decorated war hero is forced to defend his service record and prove that his war wounds were not self-inflicted; an age when we invade and occupy a country that posed no immediate threat to our security; an age when the Social Security system is said to be in “crisis” when in fact the crisis point is forty years in the future and can be easily averted by relatively minor changes to the tax structure.
Facts don’t matter. Facts are whatever we say they are, whatever suits our purpose of the moment. Facts are merely inconvenient, easily overcome with media spin. Lie loud enough and long enough and the lie becomes the truth.
The contradictions are so numerous that it would all be amusing if it wasn’t so serious.
From the right side of the political spectrum we are advised to save and invest, to work hard and provide for ourselves, a reasonable request except when you realize that the people telling us to save and invest are the same people who export our jobs to India, cut our pensions and health benefits, and do everything in their power to keep our wages stagnant.
Here’s the twisted logic: we’re going to pay you less, transfer more risk to you, and demand that you save more.
Consider that for most of the past quarter century, the wages of average working Americans have fallen, corporate taxation has fallen, while the compensation of top CEO’s has skyrocketed. Consider that the gap between rich and poor in this country is beginning to resemble that of Brazil, Mexico and Russia. Is this right, is this what we want, is this the best way to achieve a decent life for the majority of Americans?
Or is the ideal of a decent life for all dead?
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