CSotD: This Time It’s Personal
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There's a lot going on in the world, but I'm devoting today to stuff that hit me personally.
For instance, Jeff Stahler addresses something that has occurred to me, because this year (2017) we're still on the old tax system but next year, we go to the new, improved system and the year after that they begin breaking the promises.
The immediate message is that, if you have anything in mind that might include a personal deduction, you need to do it now. It might be hard to schedule some medical procedure in the next three weeks, but you can at least give to the college of your choice or the ACLU or NPR.
After Jan 1, none of it will change your tax liability, as I understand it. We still don't know what's in the Magic Bundle, but I'm not digging through the pile expecting to find a pony.
It has occurred to me lately that I'm glad I'm in my late 60s, and Zach Weinersmith's piece, which is too long to post in its entirety, is an excellent reason why. Go read the rest.
I'm on Medicare, so, while the Magic Bundle may include some cuts there, it would be far worse if I were struggling along at midlife, and Zach explains why.
His piece is reminiscent of a cartoon Jen Sorensen did five years ago — which you can read here — but, in 2012, Sorensen's open letter to the Supreme Court was a plea to people who didn't realize what was going on.
Weinersmith's piece, by contrast, is about a situation the greedy sonsabitches have created on purpose, to crash the system and once more free the bloodsuckers.
The people it hits are not the poor, though they've also monkeyed with Medicaid to limit the number of people who can get on board, and it doesn't target those who make a fat living.
It goes right to the middleclass, the bluecollar people who are trying their best to be honest and productive and to make it in the economy we've handed them.
I'm on Medicare, so it's not a crisis for me.
But a more central point is that my kids are grown and gone, so I can be as idealistic as I want, because, as I've said before, it's just me and the dog, and he thinks sleeping in the park and eating out of Dumpsters would be a blast.
Which is a funny line, but not if you're looking at your children and wondering how in hell you're going to provide for them.
And here's a little truth: If I had gone through my Year of Cancer without coverage, the costs would have first wiped out my retirement savings and then added to the national debt, but that's not the bottom line.
If I hadn't had good coverage, I wouldn't have been in a position to casually start the "Hey, doc, by the way …" conversation that led to my being diagnosed.
By the time it became obvious, it would have been both ruinously expensive and simply too late.
"If they would rather die," said Scrooge, "they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population."
Juxtaposition of the Day
Anne Morse Hambrock talks to God with tongue in cheek, but the Sufi way is no more solemn, rejoicing as it does in zen twists and conundrums, and here it is as if the imam answers the Lutheran.
As said, I'm happy to be older, in part because my immediate responsibilities are over, and in part because I expect to miss much of the worst of that which is to come, while my grandchildren will live long enough to see the world rebuilt.
I'm just glad not to be in their parents' generation, because the current shitstorm bears most heavily upon them.
But in terms of mortality, I find that the older I get, the less I care what happens next.
If there is an afterlife, I've lived as decent a life as I could and if I get to the Pearly Gates and find out there was a secret password and a membership card to get in, well, that's not my idea of paradise anyway.
And if there is no afterlife and if virtue turns out to be its own reward, I'm okay with that because I won't know the difference.
As for reincarnation, I don't remember any past lives and I don't expect to remember any future ones and so it's the same as no afterlife.
So I don't care, but that's not to say my soul is already dead.
And I like Imam Ali's advice. I walk the dog through a cemetery several times a week and reading the stones has become a combination of doing the math and imagining lives for the people there.
At first glance, I pitied Submit Porter, whose name suggested a life, at best, of a miserable, burdensome religion.
But over time, I realized that her name signified submission to the will of the Lord, which is much the same thing taught in various Eastern religions.
It is a message simply of accepting what happens without losing your balance and if there turns out to be no purpose, you have at least achieved earthly serenity, which is not to be despised.
And I don't worry about the kids there, though I grieve for their parents. But kids naturally accept the limitations of a world they have not yet quite figured out, and they're okay, I think.
However, I have still not come to peace with Jake Jackson, who lay for more than a century without a stone until the American Legion offered him one to honor his service in the Civil War.
I wonder how a young veteran from Massachusetts ended up in New Hampshire, dead before he was 30 and buried in the poor folks section.
I hope he was okay with how things turned out.
That was a short time for such a long journey.
Time, of course, being a somewhat fluid concept.
Mike Peterson has posted his "Comic Strip of the Day" column every day since 2010. His opinions are his own, but we welcome comments either agreeing or in opposition.
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