"I don't care if you die."

-This was said to an anti-capitalist protester by a wealthy resident of Nantucket Island

This is a dreadful time for people right now.  Unfortunately, most of the troubles are not new. They have just gotten much worse. Too many people continuously blame people in need for having the need, which most of the people doing the blaming are responsible for creating. On the other end of the spectrum there are the have-nots who are angry for being have-nots and being aggressive about it to any random person that they may encounter, just because. Having worked in the American legal system in years past and in the social services system I can tell you that most of the people who came and went through the places that I worked were nearly all guilty as hell of being aggressive, hateful, smug, snotty, impatient, threatening, and condescending. Numerous times I and my co-workers and supervisors had our lives threatened for just being there and trying to help and do our jobs. I’ve had people tell me that they knew where I lived and if I didn’t give them what they wanted they would show up at my house. When I worked in the Circuit Clerk’s office, we used to get letters from incarcerated people saying that when they got out of prison, they were going to kill us, the prosecutor, and the judge who sentenced them. I saw a great deal of hostility from attorneys who just felt like being jackasses on any given day if it took longer than they wanted to bother with to process their documents. I left the legal profession after a few years without ever looking back because it was damn tiring to be in the line of fire just about every day by someone who, as they say, had a ”cob crossways." I saw citizens, lawyers, civic leaders, police officers, social elites, doctors, ministers, and children get carted off to jail and I wondered if anyone in the entire town was actually nice or law abiding when it came down to it. An attorney that I worked with and admired very much was arrested and sent to prison for embezzling child support funds. Socially prominent doctors were getting sued for malpractice on a regular basis and to see them in public you would think that they didn’t give one big damn about being accused of causing the death or injury of anyone. Most of them settled out of court with the plaintiffs, and once their cases were settled it wasn’t a shock to find myself filing legal papers against them again after a few months or a year. One of the biggest recipients of malpractice suits against him was also the head of the local Republican Party. A doctor that I had worked with many times was arrested and sent to prison for “loan lapping” along with a prominent local banker. I lived in one corrupt little town, for sure. Wealthy big shots were charged with sexual harassment, indecent exposure, and pedophilia frequently. There was lots of gossip and giggling about them behind their backs but I don’t remember anyone in their social groups reacting like it was a terrible thing and they should be punished. They didn’t care. It didn’t happen to them. Is it any wonder that there is no peace anywhere on the planet now since people have never bothered to address this kind of hell that just keeps getting worse?

I have only had health insurance coverage three times in my life. Each time it was very short lived. I had it twice for a short period of time because it was tied to employment on short lived jobs. When my husband had a heart attack, he was fired from his job for being unable to work. His employer did not give a damn about it at all except he wanted me to return the company vehicle. I had to come home from out of state (where my husband was in the hospital) and get my stepfather to drive the vehicle back for me because I did not know how to drive a standard transmission. There were no condolences sent or a final paycheck given. The only thing that saved me from financial catastrophe and emotional collapse was that we qualified for Medicaid because we had two young children. Because of that, the whole family received coverage. Medicaid was a god send. My husband was in the hospital for four months before he died. He was suffering from heart disease, liver disease, kidney disease and uncontrollable diabetes. After his heart surgery all of his major organs began to fail and I was told that a liver transplant might be his only chance. As it turned out, he didn’t have a chance at all. He was only 38 years old. As devastating as all of this was for me, one thing that helped save my sanity was the fact that Medicaid paid for all of his medical care except $255.00 for blood transfusions that he received. I couldn’t believe it. I nearly fell out of my chair when I saw the bill, and cried uncontrollably. I never expected them to pay the thousands of dollars that we were charged. I am still so grateful to this day that they did. I can tell you for a fact that it wouldn’t happen now. In the state where I live today, they are throwing people off the Medicaid rolls right and left by the hundreds of thousands, eliminating desperately needed care for infants, children, pregnant women, disabled people, and the elderly. They don’t give one damn if these people live or die. In their mind, it serves them right for having the audacity to be sick and poor. It breaks my heart to see this happening knowing that there used to be a semblance of decency in some places. You can thank corporate lobbyists and wealthy elitists like the man in Nantucket for this. They bought government cooperation in their quest to deny people in need in order to stay ungodly wealthy and superior. You can also blame the government for allowing themselves to be bought. Lobbying should be outlawed because too many people are willing to sell their souls for a profit. I have seen this time and time again throughout my life. Once people get a taste of affluence and a welcome into elitist circles, they more often than not feel a new entitlement to never look back upon the time when they may have had an actual heart. They continue to believe that they are still good people, it is just that somehow the people that they rose above are irrelevant now and do not deserve to do as well as they are. I cannot say that the people who have turned the insurance companies into multibillion dollar establishments ever really had a caring and generous heart, but I know that some state and federal entities used to. Now, very few of them do. These people are not really any different from the people in the corrupt little town that I used to live in. Much of the problem is that they have never really been held accountable in their own peer group and since that is the only group that keeps them in wealth and power, no one else matters. It is a narcissist’s game, and it is the only game that they want to play. So, who can stop them from being this way? A person with a gun? No. That just happened and they are appalled that they are being called on to account for their cruelty and selfish behavior. It will take a refusal to let them lobby/buy their way out of this by their peers and our government to stop their behavior. Without the rest of the elitists rediscovering their own humanity and humility and discontinuing to turn a blind eye to these tragedies we will never get beyond the situation that turns the rest of us into desperate and furious people who will at some point start a class war that can only end in the death of this nation. It has already begun. Those who can stop this are not yet willing to. Bottom line, you just have to be human enough to not take the damn money!

We are coming to the close of this year and I wonder how much money people will be spending on gifts and gadgets for Christmas that people do not need. If the insurance companies would take the money that they have collected and hoarded from all of the people whose only wish was to be well again and put it into a government fund, not the pockets of politicians, to create the single payer healthcare system that we want and desperately need we could immediately do away with a great many of the serious situations that we now find ourselves in.  Medicare for all sounds like the perfect solution for America but I actually believe that Medicaid for all would be the better choice. I have seen firsthand that what it used to be can be like a miracle without monthly premiums, co-payments, and deductibles. The companies would still have homeowner’s and automobile insurance to stay in business. Lower the 10 - 20-million-dollar CEO salaries to a reasonable amount to maintain a comfortable living. No one on the planet needs that much money to live on. Also, return the hospitals and medical practitioners back to nonprofit.

Before it becomes too late to stop a troubled citizen from taking a desperate stand on our immigration crisis there needs to be an emergency solution proffered to rebalance the system. We need to create a coalition of citizens who believe in and support immigration to step in and take responsibility for how badly we have bungled our current policies. These people really need to be willing to sponsor immigrants one person or one family at a time. This can be done legally. Every person that strongly believes in freely allowing immigrants to come to their country needs to also realize that to promote this has to mean that they will take some responsibility for the support of every immigrant; financial responsibility and integration in to communities’ responsibility. Our tax dollars designated to address the situation have been blown to hell by incompetent administrators who use the bulk of the money to pay capitalist entities to do a half-ass job and rake in much of the money for their own pockets. What we have created and allowed to happen with haphazard rules and policies so far is ruining lives and ending lives. Do not designate yourself as a sanctuary city or country without proving that you have a support system in place to manage it. Countries and societies are collapsing under the weight of what we have allowed to happen up to now. Criminal opportunists are taking advantage of the incredible chaos and getting elected to positions that they are not qualified to manage even if they really wanted to. If you support immigration, really support it by sponsoring these people who only want a better home and way of life. Your governments are not capable of solving this problem. They have proven that.

We are going to have a new government administration in January and if the current President and government officials wanted to, they could do much here at the 11th hour to set this country upon a different path. Right now, is truly our only opportunity. After January 20th you can kiss goodbye the possibility of ever righting the wrongs here because there aren’t enough people in America who understand the hell that they asked for on November 5th. Nonviolent people  in prison right now whose only crime was protesting unfair treatment and discrimination should be given clemency. Eliminate all for profit correctional facilities. Hold the money hoarders in this country accountable for their unwillingness to pay taxes, give a living wage and fewer work hours to everyone who works, and give an equivalent of the living wage to those who cannot work for whatever reason. Raise Social Security payments to that level as well. Eliminate student debt and medical debt. If you can imagine these things, you can do them. If you cannot imagine them, then peace will never be imaginable on this planet either.

While it is painfully evident that too many people do not care if you live or die or starve to death or become homeless now, there was a time when it wasn’t so fashionable to be this way. If you were always so uncaring like this it was at least not so supported by most people to brazenly show it. We really must hold each other accountable for the consequences of what we have created. So many horrific crimes against humanity go unpunished because our society doesn’t recognize them as crimes because they are being committed by the wealthy, the powerful, and the elitists. We turn a blind eye and let it continue because holding them accountable requires a different mindset toward their perceived superiority. When a “David” takes a stand to stop a ”Goliath” we need to recognize that it came to this because of our continued inaction to correct inhumanity and fascism. What ever crime you think that “David” has committed to stop these problems is a small price to pay for eliminating a terrible injustice. Put your pitchforks away because the law does recognize “justifiable homicide” when that is the only thing that will stop the mass murder of countless others. Learn to recognize what it takes to right a dreadful wrong. The solution isn’t always pretty and you cannot assume that evil always has an ugly face.  Putting people before profit is the only solution. Only “David” had the courage to stop the giant. We created that giant and looked away when he stepped on and killed thousands. Thank God that somebody felt compelled to step in and try to call a halt to the even bigger crime, but we need so many more of them.

There is no better time to right what is wrong than this moment, while we have Christmas to help us remember that caring and giving is (at least it used to be) a human tradition. Wake up on Christmas morning with a renewed sense of self-worth and esteem by being an integral part of a world that has decided to build up instead of tear down. Realize that peace will be your reward. Hatred and death does not have to be the legacy of this generation. There really can be a Merry Christmas to all and it can last well beyond the holiday season. We only need to make it so.

                                                                       🎄🕊️

"ILL" Gotten Gains

The recent killing of Brian Thompson, the CEO of United Healthcare has truly been a shock here in America. At least it has been for the capitalist class who believe themselves to be worthy of worship in the world. The rest of us aren’t too terribly surprised by this event. What is surprising is that it didn’t happen long before now. A young man has been arrested and charged with 2nd degree murder for the killing, but this entire situation could have been avoided if we lived in a society that cared enough about its people to eliminate the mental and financial torture that gets worse by the minute in America because of capitalism. This is one of the few times in my life that I have felt like a terrible something that someone did was not a crime so much as the only result that could follow an ongoing abuse that was put upon the perpetrator and countless others who knew of no other response to their trauma. Three other instances of justifiable crimes were the ordeals of Patty Hearst, Francine Hughes, and an elderly man in California who killed a neighbor for constantly terrorizing and threatening everyone in the neighborhood. I am sure that there are thousands more incidents like these that just didn’t make it to the national news. Their circumstances are different, but fear and abuse were at the core of all of these tragedies. There always comes a point when a human being can no longer manage the torture being forced upon them. When your health and wellbeing and your very life are threatened and controlled by uncaring others, a break will inevitably come.

Filmmaker Michael Moore’s documentary “Sicko” gave us a very hard look at the health insurance industry in America years ago and it was not a pretty sight. It was the first documentary of his in all the films that he has made that quickly brought me to tears. How humans can treat each other with such disregard and a “don’t give a shit” attitude when it comes to some of the most basic of human needs such as health and wellness is inconceivable to me. They absolutely can and do, though, and there is one man out there who said loudly to them “how dare you!” last week.

I was very surprised that it was a McDonald’s employee who called the police on the suspect. There are probably thousands of people in this country who would hide this man in their homes or give him resources to prevent his capture or swear in court that he was with them at the time of the shooting playing video games or watching Netflix. If the shooter goes to trial for this, few people will want to convict him. You can’t blame them. With the exception of Wendell Potter (who blew the whistle on the insurance companies years ago) and Michael Moore, there has really not been anyone here who has bothered to do anything about the “legalized extortion” that has frustrated, traumatized, prolonged illnesses, and been responsible for the deaths of possibly millions of people like the insurance industry has. Our government turns a blind eye to it all and hungrily accepts their payoffs when the insurance moguls say “frog." (for those who may not be familiar with this old saying, it is a reference to calling out people who can be bought, as in, when the people who are offering money to get a pass on their unacceptable behavior call upon you to cover their asses all they have to do is say “frog” and you will say “how high?” meaning you are more than willing to jump as high as they would like you to in order to collect the cash for doing it.) I am sure that most Americans are hoping that this event will shake up the country enough to bring about a total change in the healthcare industry now and create a national single payer system for everyone. I am afraid that I cannot be that optimistic. I would love to be, but I cannot imagine monied people suddenly finding their better angels now and vowing to do right by others just because one millionaire capitalist was killed for his apathy toward the people that he screwed over and caused the death of for his own profit. As it turns out, this man was one of the lower paid millionaires in the industry. His salary was only 10 million per year. Most of the other CEOs in the large insurance companies make more than 20 million per year. They might be afraid of being gunned down by an “at-the-end-of-their-rope” citizen, but they are most likely too arrogant to believe that it could ever happen to them. Pretty sickening to know that, and even more sickening to know that our heartsick illness isn’t covered in any insurance plan. Having arrested someone for the shooting so quickly pretty much means that not enough time will have elapsed for there to be any sort of wakeup call or remorse on the part of the insurance companies toward their guilt at causing an incident like this to have happened.

So, with Christmas being two weeks away is there any hope that the elitists and capitalists in this country will now do an about face like Ebeneezer Scrooge did when he got a look at how uncaring and cruel, he had been to others, and become the kind of people who will make amends for all of their past crimes against humanity? The “miracle of Christmas” that they talk about in literature and film would have to go quite a stretch to bring that about, but I would love to believe in the possibility. We could all ask the Universe to send them three spirits to show them how they have wronged us. We could also send them a link to the song below and pray for a humbling of their hearts. We need to bring about a miracle because talking hasn’t made any difference. The man who was arrested will now suffer the modern-day equivalent of a crucifixion for what has happened. Some people are calling on President Biden to pardon him, but I wouldn’t even bet a nickel on that. Jesus had the remote opportunity to be saved if the citizens had wanted it but they didn’t. They chose to save the career criminal Barabbas instead. So many people have no idea how much unnecessary trouble they continuously cause in the world by not understanding who they are, what they are, and why they are here. There is a connectedness between all of us that mostly goes unspoken and unheard. Suffering is always the outcome of this ignorance. What a shame that it always takes catastrophe and death to knock some sense into us, and even then, it never resonates with everyone.