Prying My Insurance Card From My Cold Dead Hands: My Totally Rational Opposition to Obamacare

       
       By now you have probably all heard the incredibly bad news about the Constitution being torn to ribbons and shat upon and then torn into smaller ribbons with shit on them by the so-called "justices" of the U.S. Supreme Court. At the risk of using some slight hyperbole, this decision has caused Lady Liberty to burst into flames, allowing tyranny to spread its malevolent bat wings and plunge our once-great nation into interminable, godless night, and is the worst ruling since they voted to uphold the Nineteenth Amendment. I'm sorry, what I meant to say was the Dred Scott Decision.

I'm still incredulous about it.

       
       When I first heard the news that it had been stricken down I rejoiced, doing a sort of taunting chicken dance at the television and buh-gocking my little heart out, but moments later when I learned that through some sort of satanic trickery it had actually been upheld, my knees became weak and I collapsed to the floor, where I lay shocked and unresponsive for a number of hours.

       When I finally arose from my patriotic stupor, I resolved to take meaningful action on the matter, so I immediately took to the internet to make sure people knew just how much I didn't approve of this business. I let my disapproval flow through me like a raging river, harnessing it like a force of nature, making numerous threats that I could never deliver on and breaking through walls of deadly socialism with my capitalist caps lock; catching many a liberal in outright treason and then helping them see just how lucky they were through my super-effective scare tactics. They fell like lemmings into my carefully laid traps, and after they had been exposed for the revolting chickenshit hypocrites they truly were, some of them stooped so low as to attack me personally. I vowed that I would not stand for such treason, and that if these fiendish abortions of policy did indeed take effect, I would move to some other industrialized country, one that does not believe in coddling the tired and poor whiners, the huddled losers yearning to breathe free of charge, with some kind of pinko foolhardy universal healthcare system. When they informed me that no such country exists, I laughed in their pathetic data-compiling faces, and swore to take up permanent residence on the moon.

       I felt much better once I had gotten that out of my system, so I went for a walk down to my local DMV, to get an idea of what going to the doctor would be like in the repressive dystopia of America's future. On my way there I reflected on what a shame it was that the government was systematically dismantling a health care system which, in spite of the fact that there are currently 48 countries with a lower infant mortality rate than us, 37 with a higher life expectancy, 41 with a lower child mortality rate, that half of our health care spending goes to treat 5% of the population, that lack of health insurance is associated with more than 40,000 deaths in the U.S. each year, that nearly two-thirds of our bankruptcy filings are due to illness or medical bills, that 23 countries have a higher healthy life expectancy, and that 36 countries are deemed by the World Health Organization to have overall better health care systems, was without question the best health care system in the history of the world. The fact that we spent the most money on healthcare was good enough for me, and any other true American.

   
       While passing through the once-great streets of my besieged American neighborhood, I came across a cheerful young patriot who in spite of the full weight of the perverse federal government trying to crush every remnant of her entrepreneurial spirit, had become the owner and operator of her own lemonade stand. Feeling a little parched from the rather strenuous exertion that is associated with loving the shit out of your fatherland, I decided to stop and have a cup. They were reasonably priced at only 1 USD, thanks to the fervent competition that comes with a free market economy, albeit a rapidly vanishing one. The lemonade was delicious and tasted of freedom, and as I conservatively sipped on it I chatted with my new acquaintance, who for the sake of this polemic I will call "Paula Revere." I asked young Paula what she was trying to raise money for, and she said she had cancer. She had been diagnosed a couple of months back, and the company through which she was already insured had informed her mommy and daddy that they were not able to cover her for the specific health problem of cancer, because there was evidence she was treated for diaper rash at 21 months. They had also determined that each night when her mommy would tuck her in and tell her to sleep tight and not let the bed bugs bite, that she would ignore this advice and would in fact allow the bed bugs to bite, thus putting her in a high risk group for the cancer she now had. But she totally understood where they were coming from with that, and did not expect to be let off the hook for her poor life decisions. I was so impressed that I tipped her an extra dollar.

       
       I continued on with a little more pep in my step through the suburbia of American dreams turned to nightmares, and as I passed underneath the not-so-freeway that runs over the intersection of Rockwell and Twain, casting shadows of uniformity and hopelessness where once there was gaiety and childlike faith, the rain began pouring down like bald eagle tears. I had forgotten to bring my umbrella with me and I refuse to wear a poncho for obvious reasons. So I fashioned a garment of impermeable sovereignty using only the righteousness of my pioneer virtues.

       Only true patriots could see it, of course, and I found it most amusing to note the expressions on the faces of obvious comrades as I frolicked irregularly through the fearsome torrents with all the whimsical aplomb of a latter-day Fred Astaire. They were baffled by my maverick indifference to moisture and perturbed by my refusal to fall in with their insipid ranks, as they looked on from the safety and mediocrity of their hybrids.

       They had good reason to be apprehensive of me; after all, I was their very worst nightmare. They couldn't contain me in their fuel-efficient coffins, nor could they entangle me with their spiderwebs of logic, nor could they ensnare me in the skewed booby-traps of their facts, nor could they control me with their thought control towers. I was that grassroots behemoth that wouldn't go away, that totally organic prairie wind of a movement that may very well be Old Glory's last hope, standing proudly with the backing of my billionaire overlords. In other words I was Johnny Appleseed to their Monsanto, but I was getting ready to mighty morph into Paul Bunyan and show them exactly what I was capable of.

      Yes, it was pretty apparent that they were terrified of me, for they knew deep down that I was Keanu to their Matrix. I was the great menace to their Orwellian "progress," the biggest threat to their dehumanizing agenda, with the possible exception of Sarah Palin. Oh, how abundantly clear it was that when she was so much as mentioned they peed a little, because they were keenly aware of her ability to destroy them. Were she ever to run for president they would spontaneously combust, and they were probably thanking Science that she was too grassrootsy for that. I really hoped she would reconsider, and run with Justin Bieber in 2018.

       
       But for the moment that was merely a lucid hypothetical, and I had important business to tend to. In the very same way that Republicans in the House were liberally using the tax dollars of the people they represented to make a spectacle of their butthurt and impotent rage, so too did I need to make a statement on the matter, and consequences be damned, even if it meant directly infringing on other people's liberties. I was now approaching the Department of Motor Vehicles, and not surprisingly, there was a line out the door.  As I glowered in horror and disgust at that drab formation of fellow travelers, I vowed to tear through them like Montezuma's revenge. Each would be summarily dealt a wedgie or a noogie, or, for the particularly ugly ones, a combination of the two. But just as I was thinking that, I noticed I had a cough, of a rather alarming, wet variety that was possibly consistent with the early stages of pneumonia. Perhaps I should not have cavorted through that deluge after all, I thought. But then I remembered that I had health insurance, and was perfectly safe.

poem.

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