Imaginary Future
Three years ago we needed to clear brush and saplings from behind our house to make room for a new septic system. It’s not an elegant sounding thing, a septic system. But our elegance is greatly reduced without a way to deal with shit. Elegance saved is elegance gained so perhaps a septic system is an elegant thing after all.
The field lines for the system weaved back and forth, trenched through the dirt, until it arrived at the base of a tulip tree. This tree towered over the surrounding earth, demanding its right to exist. Tall, straight, pale trunk, I empathized with it. We kept it. Every day since the brush clearing we had a view of the tulip tree from our kitchen window. Every morning while making coffee it caught a small share of our attention. Every evening while doing dishes, a tiny part of us. We could imagine it years from now. Taller, more branches, more shade, its future stable and expected. It was there long before we’d moved into our home. It would be there long after we moved out.
When I say we, I mean my spouse Rachel and I. We replaced our septic system. We dealt with shit. Our shit. Other people’s shit. We worked together. We had children together. We lived life and imagined our future together. We imagined it as easily as one imagines the future of a tree.
Rachel was pronounced dead on May 4, 2019 at 2:52AM CDT. This morning, May 4, 2020, while making coffee, I discovered I lost our tulip tree in a storm last night. I don’t know exactly what time. For the tree I have no official certificate. No longer tall, it’s now long. Fallen awkwardly, leaning on lesser trees as it slowly dies and finds its way to the earth.
What an odd thing to write about on this, the first anniversary of Rachel’s death. What an insignificant grief I feel for this loss. This tiny drop of a loss compared to the ocean of other losses. How dare I feel this when there are so many bigger things to feel. How dare I give this loss time when others have lost more. It’s an odd thing to write because grief is an odd thing. It tempts me with the sweet smell of solace if only I taste it, yet it’s bitter and berates me with guilt if I indulge. How dare I? Well friends, I dare. Absolutely I dare. I dare to grieve that fucking tree.
That lesser grief changes nothing about other griefs. It steals nothing from others grieving. And to those of us who need it, I hereby give us permission: We may grieve trees.
I can’t imagine a better way to remember Rachel than to remember how much she cared about others. About you. You who lost family. You who lost marriages. You who lost jobs, pets, plants. You who lost community. You who lost an author you never knew. You who lost a friend.
I can’t imagine a better way to remember her than to remember you who give birth. You who continue the work. You who bake bread. You who escape oppression. You who write. You who find love, sign contracts, succeed. You who raise kids. You who care. You who put good things into the world.
Rachel’s dead. I can’t fix it. The greatest gain I’ve found to wring from our collectively drenched grief cloth is to empathize with others who have lost. It’s ok to grieve. It’s ok to stay still. It’s ok to move forward. It’s ok to deal with our shit. Perhaps dealing with shit is more elegant than we realize.
I know what it means to lose a future so I know what I’m about to ask is no small request. I ask it nonetheless. I ask that we allow ourselves the grace to embrace the past, the generosity to share griefs in the present, and the fortitude to invent a new imaginary future.
Good Friday
I hoped she would be brought from her coma. Extubated.
She wasn't.
I hoped she would rise from her bed. On Easter.
She didn’t.
Sunday would be poetic.
Sunday was banal.
Thousands of prayers by thousands of people.
Millions of words.
Still she died.
The mother of our children.
The partner in our life.
Of those that offer unanswered prayers, I think.
About those that live lives with laughter, I smile.
There is still good.
For empty, cold, sides of beds, I hold space.
With those that mourn, I mourn.
The Principled Campaign of Donald Trump
Donald Trump may be one of the most transparently principled people ever to run for public office.
The real estate mogul has been telling us how to understand him for decades. We just weren't listening.
Mocking? Sure. Laughing? Yep. Listening? Nope.
But now that this man is poised to become a leader of the free world, it’s important to understand a few things:
Donald Trump is not a mastermind; he’s a salesman.
Donald Trump is not an evil genius; he's a rich real estate developer.
Donald Trump may be one of the most transparently principled people ever to run for public office.
The real estate mogul has been telling us how to understand him for decades. We just weren't listening.
Mocking? Sure. Laughing? Yep. Listening? Nope.
But now that this man is poised to become a leader of the free world, it’s important to understand a few things:
Donald Trump is not a mastermind; he’s a salesman.
Donald Trump is not an evil genius; he's a rich real estate developer.
He's a reality TV star, whose biographer describes him as a “bottomless pit of need.”
He's a confidence man from Queens who duped rural America into believing he's on their team.
Trump has been forthright about his nature and what he values most. If you want insight into how things are going to unfold, what to expect, you first need to know his list, and know it well.
Trump's list of principles in its entirety is:
Win.
Race relations, LGBT rights, the environment, pro-life, the economy, jobs, the rust belt, the working class, the little guy. Everything that other people take principled stands on are points of strategy to him. I expect he has some personal feelings about various political issues it's just that they're trumped by his principle.
Other politicians use a totalitarian approach in their campaign so they can win, and then promote their political agenda.
To Trump, winning is the agenda. It is the end goal. Once he's decided what winning looks like, all other principles be damned unless they help him win.
He became a conduit of hate and racism because many people in this country still feel hate and are racists. He needed those votes to win.
He became a conduit for the frustration of working class because there is frustration in the working class. He needed those votes to win.
He became pro-life because evangelicals are pro-life. He needed those votes to win.
On this single, absolute, point he has been nothing but honest, straightforward, clear and predictable.
It's the lesson his father taught him as child and he hasn't wavered since.
It's his absolute, his defining principle.
In Einstein's universe "C" is the constant. In Trump's universe it's "W."
Why must understand this?
Now that he's won the presidency, his political inexperience will create a power vacuum. Politicians, lobbyists, everyone within earshot will fight to fill it.
Some will succeed.
Good or bad, for better or worse, there will be one defining way to gain ground with Trump during his presidency: Convince him your agenda is what winning looks like.
The people who do this best will guide his decisions and heavily influence the future of our country.
And that leads me to my biggest concern.
I'm not sure enough of the best people in our country will have the stomach for it.
Our healthcare dilemma in the USA
The two rational options for healthcare in the U.S. are:
A) A free market system that denies care to those that can't afford it.
B) A socialist system built to provide universal care.
Two rational options
The two rational options for healthcare in the U.S. are:
A) A free market system that denies care to those that can't afford it.
B) A socialist system built to provide universal care.
Our current state of affairs
The patchwork of private insurance corporations we have now is failing us. Your insurance gets billed directly by your healthcare provider without you knowing the costs ahead of time. Hospitals provide care whether or not a patient has insurance and must try to make up for losses. One of the only options to do this is to bill as much as possible for every single item, procedure, test, to those who are insured.
Healthcare has (unintentionally) become a protection racket
In addition to being inefficient, this patchwork of private insurance and private providers and individually negotiated maximums, has given birth to what is essentially a protection racket of "in network" providers. You have to be "in network" to get the benefits of pricing that the insurance and providers have negotiated ahead of time. If your Doctor or hospital is not in the right network, even if you could afford paying for their services out of pocket, you wouldn't get fair pricing. For example, once I had an emergency room visit that lasted about three hours. The bill I received from the hospital, not including the doctor's services, was around $5,000. After it was sent to my insurance, it magically became $800. Insurance hadn't paid a dime at that point because I hadn't yet met my deductible. Just the fact that the provider was "in network" made the price difference.
So how much should that visit actually cost? Was it a $5,000 visit or an $800 visit? Those are not similar numbers.
While frustrating, I don't believe that this somehow comes from malicious intent. I believe this is the natural outcome of regular people doing regular day jobs that happen to work in a broken system. The system is fundamentally broken because we, as a society, hold two competing ideals that are irreconcilable and we haven't seriously examined them. It's uncomfortable to confront two competing ideals. It's cognitive dissonance.
Our irreconcilable ideals
1) It's immoral for hospitals to turn away someone who needs medical help if they can help them.
2) If you can't afford it you shouldn't buy it.
Pretending like these two thoughts can somehow both work in the context of healthcare is why we're in the current mess we're in.
The free market approach to the complex healthcare situation would probably work, but it would require that hospitals not provide care to those that can't afford it. That's option A.
Or we could acknowledge that, as a society, we actually already believe in universal healthcare and then create a socialized system that fits that belief. Option B.
I'm a capitalist when it comes to most markets and transactions but not health care.
Health care contains too many inelastic costs, decisions that are life and death, to which bankruptcy pales in comparison. It's not a good fit for the advantages free markets provide.
Conclusion
I choose Option B.
Money should not be a deciding factor for providing care. We need a system that lives up to that ideal. Universal healthcare in the U.S. is not an easy problem to solve, but the first step is to look at what the problem actually is: We hold two competing and irreconcilable ideals.
I appreciate what John Green has to say on this issue, this video is worth the watch.
