You're Right, We Should All Be Better Than This
I need to drop this somewhere, just to get it out.
I understand that some folks would really love it if we could all live up to the highest ethical and moral standards in all things. I honestly feel the same way. I do believe we'd all do a lot better if we did. I would care to have a word with those who feel there is some lapse in ethics or morals in the humor going around about the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.It is because of my belief that we should all try to live up to a high moral and ethical standard that I find a combination of schadenfreude and justice in a health insurance CEO being illegally and permanently decommissioned on a sidewalk. So many of us have paid for this bit of joy, myself included, in things that can't be bought, without ever having consented to the transaction in the first place.
It's cost me a lot to be as imperfect as I am, and certainly, the Brian Thompson's of the world are not worth the cost of me being any better. I've spent no small portion of my life attempting to navigate health care, for a condition that has burned my life to the ground, repeatedly. Even in those rare times when I had health insurance as an adult, it's a labyrinthian mess. Figuring out what treatment is the best course of action is hard enough. It's only compounded then by the question of whether insurance will cover it. The way health insurance shapes our health care system as a whole is in direct conflict with effective treatment, for a lot of us. If that's not you, I'm genuinely glad it's not you, because it's hell and you don't deserve it. The thing is, neither do we. Nobody does, and yet, we are subjected to it, and those of us who have conditions that are recurring or chronic, we are subjected to it with both more regularity and more savagery. The best health insurance customer is the one who pays their premiums, and then never makes a claim, and the worst health insurance customer is the one who needs consistent care.
My feelings aren't just about me, either. There are lots of folks like me who aren't here to experience a little dopamine hit from a headline and share a chuckle with our compatriots. Health insurance companies, their labyrinths of bullshit, their irrational refusals of claims, the whole thing... it's a major contributor to the fact that they many of them aren't here, as inconvenient as this is to the sense of objective morality, so many seem to believe we should aspire to. I'm not speaking hypothetically either. They're dead, either rotting or ashes, unpleasant as it is to point that out in polite company. They're not here to speak up now, and I think those of us who are owe it to them. We also owe it to ourselves. Those losses can be irrevocably painful. There are voids in our lives that didn't have to be there, in the shape of a person we cared about.
Maybe, before you start to scold someone for a joke or having a laugh, understand that for millions of people, it's a recognition of what cost we've already paid for the lack of decency and humanity that's "just the way things are." The fact is no human being has the amount of energy necessary to be proportionally outraged, perturbed or offended by it, because of how endemic it is. It will kill you if you do not shut it out, do not defend yourself from it's constant and consistent re-realization. We all have to live behind a veil of denial, to some degree. We're expected to measure our progress in generations, after many of us don't get to live the fullness of life you so graciously expect us to be civil in our experience of being denied.
Understand there was only one person for whom there was premeditation in this, but we face something more insidious and depraved. We face anywhere from hundreds to thousands of people working daily to continue and support these conditions, based on premeditation, for profit. I'd go research and cite the amount of money spent by the health insurance industry in the most recent election, but the truth is, it wouldn't be an accurate number, because we've created an entire scheme through which they can legally hide that information. We can't even have any real idea what they pay, the investment they make, to make sure this doesn't change. They invest sums of money which many of us couldn't accumulate in the total of our lives, so they can make money by making our lives less livable, and often, by killing us.
Ours is fleeting, immaterial, amusement as a recognition of self respect, taken by opportunity. There's is a premeditated indecency, predicated on what certainly seems to be a bottomless void of need for self aggrandizement and all that thing we've elevated from sin to All American unimpeachable virtue. Pure, naked, greed. We steal this little amusement, by opportunity, because it is a recognition of our humanity, as a defense of how much our dehumanizations profit a few and perturb even fewer. It is the simultaneous recognition that we are indeed human, and so are the people profiting from out pain and our death. They are not gods, despite the social, economic and legal norms which try so valiantly to establish them as such.
So please... Do stop attempting to beseech us to better than them. Start attempting to beseech them to be as good as we are. We are not killing them by the hundreds or thousands annually, for our own enrichment. We have yet to start killing them even for our own self preservation or revenge. Whatever it is you think you're being, it's not fair, objective, and without bias. You are not holding us to the same ethical and moral standard. You are holding them to a far, far, far lower standard, and I understand this is a difficult thing to face, but if it's your empathy which compels you to proclaim we should be and do better, it's misplaced. Try instead, to consider how much of their comfort and wealth is coming at our expense, of which payment with our lives isn't even enough.
It's cost me a lot to be as imperfect as I am, and certainly, the Brian Thompson's of the world are not worth the cost of me being any better. I've spent no small portion of my life attempting to navigate health care, for a condition that has burned my life to the ground, repeatedly. Even in those rare times when I had health insurance as an adult, it's a labyrinthian mess. Figuring out what treatment is the best course of action is hard enough. It's only compounded then by the question of whether insurance will cover it. The way health insurance shapes our health care system as a whole is in direct conflict with effective treatment, for a lot of us. If that's not you, I'm genuinely glad it's not you, because it's hell and you don't deserve it. The thing is, neither do we. Nobody does, and yet, we are subjected to it, and those of us who have conditions that are recurring or chronic, we are subjected to it with both more regularity and more savagery. The best health insurance customer is the one who pays their premiums, and then never makes a claim, and the worst health insurance customer is the one who needs consistent care.
My feelings aren't just about me, either. There are lots of folks like me who aren't here to experience a little dopamine hit from a headline and share a chuckle with our compatriots. Health insurance companies, their labyrinths of bullshit, their irrational refusals of claims, the whole thing... it's a major contributor to the fact that they many of them aren't here, as inconvenient as this is to the sense of objective morality, so many seem to believe we should aspire to. I'm not speaking hypothetically either. They're dead, either rotting or ashes, unpleasant as it is to point that out in polite company. They're not here to speak up now, and I think those of us who are owe it to them. We also owe it to ourselves. Those losses can be irrevocably painful. There are voids in our lives that didn't have to be there, in the shape of a person we cared about.
Maybe, before you start to scold someone for a joke or having a laugh, understand that for millions of people, it's a recognition of what cost we've already paid for the lack of decency and humanity that's "just the way things are." The fact is no human being has the amount of energy necessary to be proportionally outraged, perturbed or offended by it, because of how endemic it is. It will kill you if you do not shut it out, do not defend yourself from it's constant and consistent re-realization. We all have to live behind a veil of denial, to some degree. We're expected to measure our progress in generations, after many of us don't get to live the fullness of life you so graciously expect us to be civil in our experience of being denied.
Understand there was only one person for whom there was premeditation in this, but we face something more insidious and depraved. We face anywhere from hundreds to thousands of people working daily to continue and support these conditions, based on premeditation, for profit. I'd go research and cite the amount of money spent by the health insurance industry in the most recent election, but the truth is, it wouldn't be an accurate number, because we've created an entire scheme through which they can legally hide that information. We can't even have any real idea what they pay, the investment they make, to make sure this doesn't change. They invest sums of money which many of us couldn't accumulate in the total of our lives, so they can make money by making our lives less livable, and often, by killing us.
Ours is fleeting, immaterial, amusement as a recognition of self respect, taken by opportunity. There's is a premeditated indecency, predicated on what certainly seems to be a bottomless void of need for self aggrandizement and all that thing we've elevated from sin to All American unimpeachable virtue. Pure, naked, greed. We steal this little amusement, by opportunity, because it is a recognition of our humanity, as a defense of how much our dehumanizations profit a few and perturb even fewer. It is the simultaneous recognition that we are indeed human, and so are the people profiting from out pain and our death. They are not gods, despite the social, economic and legal norms which try so valiantly to establish them as such.
So please... Do stop attempting to beseech us to better than them. Start attempting to beseech them to be as good as we are. We are not killing them by the hundreds or thousands annually, for our own enrichment. We have yet to start killing them even for our own self preservation or revenge. Whatever it is you think you're being, it's not fair, objective, and without bias. You are not holding us to the same ethical and moral standard. You are holding them to a far, far, far lower standard, and I understand this is a difficult thing to face, but if it's your empathy which compels you to proclaim we should be and do better, it's misplaced. Try instead, to consider how much of their comfort and wealth is coming at our expense, of which payment with our lives isn't even enough.
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