|
get together...
When we arrived, I was feeling slightly tired, a little discombobulated, if you will...
By the end of our luncheon, I was beginning to feel the sickness coming on...
By the time we returned to Cleveland, I was in the throes of a very high temperature and a very bleak outlook for a Merry Christmas...
I've been down this road before, getting very ill...
But this time it all felt a little different...
This time I felt as if I could die, that this infection would be the one to take me and I started to prepare myself, just in case...
It's weird when you think about death, think about oblivion, think about just what is important, what captures your attention...
Like most people I know who operate more in the realm of the mind than in the messy world of emotions, I picked up a book, in this case, the latest Philip Roth book, Exit Ghost...
There was a line about a third of the way in that really caught my eye...
The main character, Zuckerman, is chatting about the 2004 election and he had this to say...
"I've served my tour as exasperated liberal and indignant citizen..."
This simple line coming from the voice of an author whom many considered one of the leading intellectuals of our time hit me hard...
And then it made me smile...
There truly is a season under the son for every purpose...
For the past thirty or so years, even during the brief spurt of social justice and liberalism that the Clinton's at least paid homage too before they acted in their own interests, this country has been doing what ever to could to erase the last of the New Deal and to return us to the days of the not-so-great-society we now live in...
It's not a conspiracy, it's not a pendulum, it's really just the nature of people that they will band together when truly needed but quickly devolve into their own selfish world full of indignation and bravado...
It's not bad nor good, it is amoral as it centers round satisfying truly personal needs...
Today I came home from the hospital after spending almost the whole holiday season in semi-quarantined lock down...
I contemplated, read and watched the events in Pakistan unfold...
I came to the conclusion, with the help of Mr. Roth, that perhaps I have had my run as as "exasperated liberal and indignant citizen..."
It was a good run...
I ran for office, was able to write locally and get my opinion heard, was quoted in newspapers, interviewed on radio and enjoyed very modest success as a political consultant...
I wouldn't trade any of it...
After this latest in what has evolved into a very long personal ordeal, I just can't get all that excited, to put it bluntly, anymore about what flunky of Edwards said about Obama to a stringer from a third rate cable show...
I do know from personal and professional experience that the only way to deliver health care in an efficient and egalitarian way is to eliminate the siphoning of profit from the whole process...
That's it...
That is the only way to eliminate the rationing of health care based on access to wealth...
None of the meaningful plans put forth truly addresses that 1,800 lb gorilla in the waiting room...
So as I prepare to walk off, perhaps a bit melancholy, from this field of Elysian dreams and hopes, I still, for some god-only-knows-reason, have some confidence as yet another election cycle continues onward...
But for me....
This is, after all, no Country for this old man...
It's time for me to reflect, put things in order and get on with my, oh dreadful cultural gods why do you torture me so, "Bucket List..."
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
