Health, Terror, Belief.

What is the greater likelihood: that Al Qaida will target your home or that you will be refused medical care?
We have spent the almost eight years being told we should be afraid of Al Qaida coming to get us. Al Qaida has struck no American school, no American home. Refusal to cover basic medical procedures has struck millions. Bankruptcy caused by medical bills strikes more people, more families, everyday. The youngest victim of 9/11 was two, the oldest was 85. Lack of healthcare strikes Americans of every age.
There is no way to absolutely stop terrorism. If some faction, somewhere in the world, decides to strike us there is no way to stop them from driving a car into a gas station, damaging the piers of the bridge you travel most frequently, possibly spreading a silent, invisible disease. These people, filled with hate, can strike you or me.
But you can save me from not having healthcare. You can take preventative measures to protect yourself should you or your spouse lose their jobs and thus lose their health benefits or, at least as common, finding out that the insurance you have paid for year after year just flat refuses to cover a needed procedure or treatment. And it will not slow you down at the airport or keep you from travelling freely. How about we create universal health insurance through the group that has the lowest overhead for such service?
Is any percentage of your income more important than humanitarian care? Does your religion not tell you that you are, indeed, responsible for caring for others? Is your greed for 300 cable channels, a bigger car and another vacation so great that a child should die for it?
You pay for roads and education for others and these things will not prevent an untreated illness form mutating into something that kills a member of your family. Are you so secure in your income and absolute marketability that you are positive you will never need this care? IS your position in life permanent? If it is, feel blessed…and responsible for helping another.
If you are a Christian can you not spare a few more dollars, even a lot more of your paycheck, for others after someone else died for you? Did Christ not compel you to charity? (Matthew 25:31-46) If you are a Muslim does the Zakat not compel you to care for your brother and sister?
I hear a lot that the current proposal is being rushed, but universal healthcare has been near the forefront of political debate since Clinton took office in 1992. That is 17 years, far more time than we have debated our right to start any war. I hear people stating that they support reform but it must be done better than the current plans aims. Does this mean we cannot impose this plan to protect ourselves until you come up with a better one?
Think on it. Think on it without outside influence. Pretend you mother is watching. Know your God is watching.

Cowards, Cultists and the Close-minded.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away I was told that the beauty of America was that ANYONE could grow up to be President. We were encouraged, even in that more sheltered time, to explore ideas and situations, to find out all we could.
And now? Now I look around me, ear to the wind, and see a significant portion of America howling that their child should not be “exposed” to a speech by the President of the United States of America.
I understand not agreeing with the President. I understand not liking President Obama’s ideas, ideals, goals and methods. I understand not wanting one’s children to think like the sitting President. I understand, and would defend to the death, the ability and right of people to feel this way.
I do NOT understand anyone who is so insecure, as incomplete as a person, so singularly unevolved as a thinker that they would stand against their child hearing what the President has to say. I can think of very few people who could speak in such a way that a child should not hear them.
Assuming these children are in schools with history lessons they will be exposed to the words of Hitler, a mass murderer and racist and genocidal maniac. They will be exposed to the words of slave-owners, pagans, heathens, witch-burners, conquerors, the deluded and insane. Shall the schools have to ask parental permission to expose their children to history? How about to the genocides, rapists and murderers of the bible?
As we move through the twenty first century we wish to show the world who we are. As Americans we are constantly watched and judged. Are we attempting to show the world’s despots, terrorist and war-mongers that we are this cowardly? This country was built on the backs and in the minds of men and women who were raised exposed to the harshness of the wilderness, the ravages of war, the vagaries of disease and the realities of disparate ideas. Are we raising citizens or marshmallows? Are we going to continue to play the words of Osama Bin Laden on every TV screen and hide from the words of our own elected President?
If you wish for a barometer of any society’s trajectory I would point you towards the level of fear they have towards ideas. Ideas and words. Are we rearing the generation that will leave the nest only to recoil at the hideous discovery that there are people in the world, well meaning people, who disagree with mommy and daddy? Are we prepared for our children, on their own and moving as adults to collapse under the weight of disagreement the moment they leave the protective measure of their childhood homes?
For shame. For shame America for letting this situation ever arise. When did the failure come that allowed a fear of a simple idea or speech to be so dangerous as to crush their values?

My Liver is Failing, Will You Help?

What if it was my kidneys? Stomach cancer? I already get the feeling we have all piled in behind breast cancer and leukemia and we are all obviously about making sure old men can still get it up.

How about my brain? Your brain? How about the brain of the guy with the moldy rags and aluminum cans in a shopping cart? The young lady sneaking off to vomit…again? Your friend who secretly washes his hands 10 times after a trip to the bathroom? The co-worker who has lost all motivation?

Why is it that our society immediately piles in behind any number of afflictions that threaten or complicate the lives of those afflicted but still shun those with mental health issues? Is the brain not an organ? According to the National Institute of Mental Health around a quarter of all adult Americans suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder in any given year. This translates into over 50 million people. The most recent statistics from the CDC show less than 200,000 people being diagnosed with breast cancer in a year. Are we being rational in who we are walking around that track for? With 250 times as many people suffering from mental health issues as suffer from breast cancer; more than 200 times as many as leukemia, are we really being fair in our approach to disease?

The brain is the most complex and least understood organ of the body and arguably the most important. When did we quit caring about health above the neck?

No one mocks the cancer victim. No one sees a person made homeless from Crohn’s disease and is immediately disgusted by them. Why are we so biased against diseases of thought?

Mental health is also quite possibly the health issue with the most stigmas attached to it. I frequently hear that there is a thin line between genius and insanity but no one wants to mention the thin line between dumbass and insanity. Or mediocre and Clinical Depression. Or average and Bulimic.

Perhaps, for just a little while you could start considering Mental Illness as…illness. And illness surely brings forth sympathy, empathy and an urge to assist, yes?

Think about it. Think about it clearly and rationally. And while you are at it, be grateful you can. You may even find yourself in a position to help.