27th
Indefensible
I can tell you some of the reasoning behind the folks who are against universal healthcare in the US. I am very much in favor of it, but my parents are very much against it and I can sum up part of their reasoning for you.
Money and resentment.
My parents grew up very poor on subsistence farms. Their families were basically sharecroppers. They ran away, got married, had kids, and worked their asses off to get ahead. They had some bad breaks and some good ones. They will tell you that they pulled themselves up by their bootstraps and that is what everyone should do. They resent people who don’t work for a living. They think families should take care of their own. They always paid for their own healthcare, and everyone else should do the same.
How can they think that way? Because they have never really been sick. Not really. They have been very lucky with good genes and mostly healthy eating and the like, so they have never had a staggering medical bill. They are also hypocritical. They think it is okay that Social Security and Medicare take care of their parents who worked hard all their lives, but they don’t think anyone else who has a misfortune should get a damned thing from them. They don’t want to help anyone else. They fought with their siblings over paying for assisting my elderly grandparents. They worked for that money, damnit, and no one else should get a nickel.
Do you know anyone who had a rough time growing up or was very sick and after that it is always such a one-upper that no one else can win? “Oh, you think you have it bad? We had to use an outhouse in the winter in the Midwest, so fuck you, you pansy.” That is how they look at it. They want what they need when they need it but no one else has worked as hard as they have, so no one else deserves any help, regardless of the situation.
They hate the illegal aliens/undocumented workers, and they don’t want to help them, either. They think universal health care is another form of welfare for a bunch of people who are too lazy to do for themselves and want someone else to support them. They think it will reward people who came into the US illegally, unlike their forefathers. They don’t give a rat’s ass about the less fortunate, because they think it is them.
It isn’t right, but that’s where they’re at.
It’s the same selfish reasoning that ensures fraternity hazings and 36-hour shifts for medical interns continue. “I suffered at the hands of fate and those who came before me; someday I’m going to get mine.”
