Wonderland or Not

The ups­cale but pri­va­tely owned cof­fee shop is crow­ded. I sip the dou­ble Espresso (meant to calm my sore throat), while rea­ding about the health care bill that covers an addi­tio­nal 31 million indi­vi­duals, the bill the insu­rance com­pa­nies and big phar­macy are pat­ting them­sel­ves on the back over. I won­der what will hap­pen in 5, maybe even 3, years when 105 million out of the middle will be choo­sing bet­ween food and hou­sing or health insu­rance and medi­cine. The shame of no natio­nal health care haunts me.

I don’t miss the irony. A dou­ble espresso is costly, and this is my second.

I con­ti­nue rea­ding, this time about millions of hungry peo­ple in this country, many of them are chil­dren, and though it doesn’t spe­ci­fi­cally say so I’m fairly cer­tain some of them are vete­rans. I know because we feed a lot of vete­rans at the mis­sion and home­less shel­ter here.

I’m not alone. I’m con­si­de­ring lunch, while lis­te­ning to co-workers dis­cuss the poli­ti­cal anth­ro­po­logy of our orga­ni­za­tion. At the same time I’m con­cen­tra­ting hapha­zardly on a dis­cus­sion bet­ween two indi­vi­duals I have great fond­ness for. A Chi­cano and a Cuban Ame­ri­can. The conversation/argument surrounds the dif­fe­ren­ces bet­ween Chi­cano and Cuban Ame­ri­cans. I, being neither Chi­cano or Cuban, unless non bio family osmo­sis counts, am a happy to moni­tor this type of thing after a cou­ple of glas­ses of wine, but I pre­fer not to deal with it while drin­king my 2nd pre-lunch Espresso.

I grab the lap­top, briefly click through to TPM where they were high­ligh­ting John Stewart’s wtf talk with Lou Dobbs. I appre­ciate the obser­va­tion made by one com­men­ter — “that for Dobbs advo­ca­ting for the mili­tary indus­trial com­plex is the middle of the road and advo­ca­ting for health care for the sol­dier run­ning up Omaha beach is taking a hard turn to the left “. I want to add that Dobbs has always been covertly irra­tio­nal. Covert because his voice doesn’t squeal with hys­te­ria and he doesn’t cry like Beck. His patro­ni­zing, yet almost cal­ming, tone decei­ves those for whom overly cyni­cal, strict fatherly love has a cal­ming effect, giving the illu­sion of a ratio­na­lity he does not pos­sess, and making him all the more dangerous.

peace