I find it extremely painful to sit helplessly by when
something about which I care deeply but over which I have not the slightest
control is being decided. Just now, the
Supreme Court is deliberating about two cases -- the fate of the Affordable
Care Act [ACA] and the constitutionality of bans on same-sex marriage -- that
matter a great deal to me. I am not
personally affected by the fate of the
ACA because my health insurance comes through Medicare and a supplementary plan
offered by my UMass pension system, but I would be saddened and outraged if the
five reactionary justices were to gut it.
The same-sex marriage case touches me personally, of course, because of
my son, Tobias. But I am forced to sit
and wait for a decision from a group of people for whom, collectively, I have
no respect whatsoever.
This is the appeal to me of sports. I actually do not care who wins a football
game, basketball game, baseball game, soccer game, or golf match, so I am
emotionally free to root frantically so long as the team I have arbitrarily
chosen to back is winning. As soon as my
team falls behind, I turn off the TV set or surf over to an NCIS rerun -- out
of sight, out of mind. When it comes to
sports, I am completely a fair weather fan.
The emotional drain on me is non-existent.
All of this passed through my mind this morning as I sat in
the Carolina Cafe. After eating my lemon
poppy seed muffin and managing, with tremendous effort, to complete the NY TIMES crossword puzzle [something
that does in fact matter to me a good deal, I must confess], I sat for a bit
reading the rest of the Saturday ARTS section.
The lead story today is a long, detailed account of a fight to the death
between two Madrid museums who are feuding over which of them will get to
exhibit several very famous paintings.
The case seems to hinge on decisions made some four or five hundred
years ago by various Spanish monarchs.
I have never visited Spain, and at eighty-one, I rather
expect I never shall. What is more, the
visual arts are not desperately important to me [whereas music very much is.] So as they say down here in the Southland, I
don't have a dog in this hunt. It was a
relaxed, amusing way to spend several minutes while finishing my coffee. For that time, at least, I could allow myself
to forget all the truly horrible things in this world over which I have no
control.
5 comments:
Hypothetically, if they gut ACA, is there a chance single payer could then be considered a viable option?
In your dreams!!! Go back and take a careful, objective look at the contortions the Obama administration had to go through to cobble together a bare 60 votes in the Senate. Now reflect on the fact that the House is controlled, apparently forever , by Republicans. What alternate universe do you live in?
A hypothetical one.... I didn't intend to suggest single payer was probable....?
It's interesting how different people find different puzzles difficult. You said today's required "tremendous effort" and I thought it was one of the easiest Saturday puzzles in months.
Of course if Rupert Sheldrake's ideas have any merit, then the fact that I did it in the afternoon, and you did it in the morning meant that it really was easier by the time I got to it, due to thousands and thousands of other people already having solved it.
I bow to your superior skill.
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