A one-time shot at political commentary

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I have been spending time reading a blog by a woman who is far more conservative in every area of life than I. I keep trying not to go back but the blog is like a motor vehicle accident to me: No matter how much they make my innards twist, I can't stop looking at her blog entries, which proliferate hourly.

I don't know enough about anything to make any kind of political commentary. The more I try to understand, the more confused I get. The same thing happens to me every four years when the presidential campaigns go on.

That's my disclaimer.

I do know I am very very tired of angry mischaracterizations of ideas from every direction.

I am tired of reading and listening to people harkening back to previous administrations for the sins committed by both sides.

That was then and this is now.

From a purely selfish point of view, I want a public option for healthcare. Husband and I used to have an individual health care policy and we paid outrageous premiums that rose drastically every calendar quarter. I have no idea what individual plans cost now, but I think if we had to have one we would choose to be uninsured for health so that we could pay the fire insurance policy on the house. I would like to know that if I lost my job, which pays for part of our health insurance, we might be able to get treated for injury or illness without divorcing to become eligible for Medicaid or becoming homeless.

I wonder why a political group that professes unshakeable religious belief gets so mad about medical care for human beings who are in the country illegally.

And then, I have to agree that, truly, it is not fair for citizens to pay for care for people who use medical services that a citizen has paid to help support.

The theory of insurance, about which I learned so much years ago when that was my job, is essentially socialistic: The many [insureds] pay for the few [who have losses]. It's a great system until health, as well as property and casualty insurers, start penalizing people because they have losses. The insurers do that because they have stockholders who want to make money . . . and, in theory, I might be one of those stockholders.

Socialism, in and of itself, is not evil. People make it so. And democracy isn't really what we have in this country . . . I have heard it said. What we have is a republic, which is slightly different; I think it is that we have representatives who might or might not actually represent us. Since those representatives accept donations, maybe it's actually become a plutocracy.

And so my thinking has gone over the last several days.

Eventually my brain gets a cramp, I give up and think that all of it comes down to two truths. One is that the love of money is the root of all evil, and the other is that perhaps we should bow to Darwin's Natural Selection.

I don't know where that leaves the idea of being one's brother's keeper.

...What you do
Is either malice, crude defense 
Of ego, or indifference: 
I know these things as well as you;
You do not dazzle me at all--
Some love, and some simplicity,
Might well have been the death of me—

                     ~Edna St. Vincent Millay - Not Even My Pride Shall Suffer Much