From the Edge of Darkness: 7

From the Edge of Darkness:7

Trash Can; Charley Freiberg photo

Liars, Cheats and Sneaks 

I really, really, really hoped that the reason the Republicans were writing their healthcare legislation in secret was because they’d decided, like thoughtful, reasonable, civic-minded adults, to fix the ACA so that we now would have a one-payer system, like every other well-off country in the western world – all of which prefer to know their citizens receive decent medical care when needed and thus avoid the sight of indigent old folks and poor people dying in the streets. I figured – hey – the Republicans knew that if they told everyone they were going to do the decent thing beforehand, there’d be a lot of argument from the mean-spirited, money-grubbing, flint-hearted members of their party, so they decided it would be better to dust off the old – now practically ancient – universal, one-payer system plans and get the thing written before scroogieness and meanness muddied the waters. I figured they decided the surprise would turn Washington upside down, the Democrats would join them and throw a real appreciation party (unlike that self-congratulating shameful silliness of Trump’s in the Rose Garden after the last health care vote), and the ends would salvage the means. Besides, if they were the ones to actually institute a one-payer system, they could, for once, one-up Obama, something they’re dying to do. They could be the party that finally did the right thing and salvaged US healthcare access from the tar pits – and the crabby, foolish, mean-spirited and morally-corrupt minority Republican contingent would be gob-smacked and shut up, for once, while the legislation sailed merrily through Legislature. Trump would sign it and claim a victory, everyone would rejoice and throw compliments at him (not just his minions, under duress, and in front of tv cameras), and all would be well in the world, all would be well, all manner of thing would be well, for a change. 

That’s what I hoped. But I’m a lucid dreamer, so I should have known better.

What we got, of course, was what we should expect to get from liars, cheats and sneaks. 
No surprises there – nothing nice, nothing that will actually fix anything that’s wrong with the ACA, only stuff that will further enlarge the pocketbooks of rich people and make healthcare access worse or non-existent for the people who need help most: old folks who aren’t independently wealthy and have used up their modest means, truly poor and disadvantaged people, the very ill and those with prior diagnoses, and working poor people like me, who some years am on Medicaid (which actually has reasonably decent coverage -  but the new plan if it passes is going to fix that and soon eliminate much of it), and some years, when I’ve made just a few bucks too much, I’m back on the cheapest plan offered in the Marketplace because the tax credits that lower this poor person’s monthly premium  aren’t high enough to cover a decent healthcare insurance plan (and let me say here that the premiums for the crappy insurance plan are stupidly, unethically high, and that’s something else that a single-payer system would fix). So I’ll end up with a plan that has a $6500 or $10,000 deductible, which, unless I get into a horrible accident or get some nasty disease, will never kick in – and then only if I can first produce the deductible, and keep paying the premiums, which are unlikely. In effect, I’ll spend about $800 I can’t afford to buy insurance that’ll pay for one measly check-up a year – it would be cheaper to pay for it without help, but the fine for not buying  insurance is nearly as high as the premium.  And the other stuff I’m struggling to slowly pay off – at the moment, a new muffler and tailpipe and tires for our cars – will get paid off even more slowly, because a major part of what I could have used to pay that bill will now be going to some insurance company that is going to be getting more than $4000 this year, between what I and the federal government pay it, to pay for one measly annual exam.

Which is something else that needs to be fixed, but I’m not hearing anything about that; instead I hear an awful lot about the poor, beleaguered insurance companies that are burdened by having, under the ACA, to provide insurance for everyone, no matter what’s wrong with them, no matter how long they live. Sounds like the new plan will fix that problem for the poor, overburdened insurance companies, if it passes. We’re headed back to the dark ages – no health insurance for you, unless you have endless supplies of money to buy it! Rotten as the cheap ACA plans are, they’re marginally better than having no insurance at all; and the new Republican plan from the Gates of Hell, will apparently make the currently crappy plans many times worse, and gut the Medicaid expansion.

I’m not sure why the evil Republicans hid themselves away to come up with their current plan. They took a really nasty one and just tweaked it a bit so it’s significantly worse. Which is, after all, what we expected them to do – so were they hiding from us, or hiding the truth from themselves? May everyone who votes for this version of the Plan from Hell soon find themselves and their families in circumstances that require them to have to get their health insurance in the Marketplace, and may they only be able to afford the cheapest option available. And may they all have prior conditions. Those who vote for it should have to live with it, and all their loved ones, too – just like we and ours do.

Like That Isn’t Enough

Dad was a cop. Eventually, he was a retired cop, and so he had to get a permit to carry a concealed weapon. His gun traveled with him in his car, usually in the glove compartment, occasionally on the floor under the driver’s seat - an ill-advised place for it as any fast stop or bumpy road or fender-bender could send it sliding forward amongst feet and pedals.

I was in the car with him a couple of times when he got stopped for routine traffic violations (Dad, like many one-time cops, had a bit of a heavy foot on the gas pedal). Always, the first thing he said to whatever cop had stopped him was, “I have a gun in the glove compartment.” Always, the cop who’d just stopped him would quickly move backwards several feet and loosen the hitch on his holster. Never did any cop shout at my father, “Don’t touch the gun, don’t touch the gun, don’t touch the gun!” and then kill him. Dad, it’s worth mentioning, wasn’t a black man.

Never did a cop who’d stopped Dad say “Don’t move, don’t move, don’t move!” and then shoot him, either. Probably they didn’t say these things because, if the person with the gun is going to comply with the cop’s request for license and registration, and the gun is in the glove compartment where the registration is stored, and the wallet with the license is in the back pants pocket where most men keep their wallets, the gun owner is going to have to move around a bit to get the license, and then open the glove compartment and move the gun to get at the registration. Cops know this, and they’ve been trained – they’re supposed to have been trained – how to respond when stopping a car for a routine violation, and the driver says, “I have a gun.” The training doesn’t include the instruction to shout at the person who said they have a gun and then shoot them. The training doesn’t include shooting into a car that has passengers and children in it. The training is designed to protect the cop, while enabling the person in the car to access his license and registration, which the cop needs to see, in order to verify who the gun owner is and maybe even if he has a gun license.

The first thing cops do when someone says, “I have a gun in the car,” is step towards the back of the car several more paces, so they can see the driver and into the car but the driver or a passenger can’t shoot the cop without turning awkwardly around. Dad learned this methodology when he was a cop, and when I was in the car with him and he got stopped, before the cop approached the car Dad told me what was going to happen, and also told me to sit with my hands in my lap, and not make jokes about guns. Having a gun in the car when you’re stopped by a cop is dangerous. It’s believed by the cop to be dangerous for the cop, but it’s also dangerous for the gun owner - but it’s much more dangerous for some gun owners than for others. Never did any cop shout at my father, after he told them he had a gun in the car, and then shoot him. Dad, it’s worth mentioning, wasn’t a black man.

The cops who stopped my father for speeding didn’t know Dad had been a cop – not that knowing that would have changed how they responded when Dad said, “I have a gun in the car.” Having been a cop didn’t change that he was now an unknown man with a gun. Even here in the sticks, cops have been shot when making a routine violation stop and they didn’t follow their training, or let down their guard, and someone suddenly pulled a gun and shot them. Dad knew how scary it was for a cop to hear “I have a gun.” But no cop, even if they were scared, ever shouted at him “Don’t touch the gun, don’t touch the gun, don’t move, don’t move!” No cop who stopped Dad when he had a gun in the car ever shot him. Dad, it’s worth mentioning, wasn’t a black man.

Being a cop is scary. Someone might shoot at you, or pull a knife on you, or something else horrible at any moment. But usually it’s not someone who just told you they have a gun in their car when you stopped them for a routine traffic violation. Usually, if they want to shoot you, they don’t want you to know they’ve got a weapon, so they don’t announce it. Usually, if they want to shoot you, they don’t have their young daughter with them in the car.

People get shot too often in our country, by cops and by other people who have guns. Usually, it’s a black man who gets shot. Often, it’s children who get shot. Usually, whenever a shooting happens and we say we need to finally do something about gun violence, we need to look at how insanely easy it is for people to get and upgrade firepower and correct that, the Politicians Indebted To The NRA stand up and shout. The NRA membership stands up and howls. Speeches are made; the Bill of Rights is invoked; vows and threats fly about in the air like bullets. Someone always says, “If we want to be safer, we need more people to be armed.”

When the black man who owned the gun, who had a license to carry the gun, who told the cop he had the gun, was then shouted at by the cop and killed, no politicians stood up and shouted. No NRA member howled about how awful it was that a legal gun-owner was killed because he had his gun with him. No speeches were made; no vows and threats flew about. And when the cop who killed that gun owner was found to be innocent of murder, not a peep was heard. I imagine it would have been quite different had the killed gun-owner been a middle-aged white man. 

Dad was a cop. I know, therefore, how scared cops sometimes feel. I also know that they get, or are supposed to get, training so they know they don’t have to shout at a driver who says they have a gun, and then shoot the driver. And I feel empathy for that cop, who is surely regretting everything he did and said and thought that day, and will be haunted by it for the rest of his life. But that doesn’t make it ok that he shot and killed yet another innocent black man. 

The hypocritical men - it is mostly men - who usually shout and howl and make speeches about how the world would be safer if more people were armed should be ashamed of themselves. They should be hanging their heads and standing in a corner in the dark. They should be wondering if it’s even remotely likely that a cop, stopping one of them for a routine traffic violation and hearing them say “I have a gun,” would shout at them and then kill them. They should be wondering why they have nothing to say about the black man who was shouted at and killed. They should be wondering if anyone’s world really is safer if more people have guns. These men, it’s worth mentioning, are overwhelmingly not black men.

Another cop I know once said, “Fine. If the NRA and their supporters think the world would be safer if everyone was armed, let’s make it so. Let’s make it a law. And let’s arm the young black men first, because clearly they’re the ones who need protection most. And then let’s see what the old white farts really think about the Second Amendment.”

Dad had a gun; it traveled in the glove compartment of his car. Sometimes he was stopped for routine traffic violations. No one ever doubted he had a legal right to have the gun, or to have it in the car with him. No one ever shouted at him not to touch it and not to move. No one killed him because he had a gun in the car. Dad, it’s worth mentioning, wasn’t a black man.

And Like That Wasn’t Enough

Trump had a chance to move towards uniting the nation and ending the unjust shenanigans the Republicans have been up to, when he first attained office. He had a chance to do the right thing, the ethical thing, the just thing, the patriotic  thing, the thing that would put the evil Republicans on notice that screwing around with the way our government works – with honesty, fair play, reasoned discussion, tolerance for opposing viewpoints, respect for the worthy opponents – wouldn’t be tolerated. He could have, and should have, refused to put forth a different Supreme Court nominee until Obama’s nominee had been fairly considered and voted upon.

Instead, he gave us Clarence Thomas’s evil twin brother. And as a consequence, our national pride and what’s left of our international reputation for having an actual democracy (and pretty much anything else praiseworthy) just got smacked upside the head.

Even conservative federal court judges have agreed that Trump’s ban of travelers from mostly-Moslem countries wasn’t Constitutional, is based on religious prejudice, and shouldn’t be allowed. But the Supreme Court, with its newly invigorated Triad of Evil –--

You know what? I can’t bear to write about this. And I haven’t even gotten to what I think about his immigration policy, the budget, and – OMG – the Russia Quintet.  Let’s just say that the next four years are going to suck, and it’s gonna take forever to fix it. Bitter? Angry? Hell, yes, I’m bitter and angry, with good cause.

Written for the blog: herondragonwrites.blogspot.com; June 27, 2017

I am One Witness.
The section, "Like That Isn't Enough" was published in the Concord Monitor, July 5, 2017, as "Dad Had A Gun."