America is Already Great

Whenever I walk around in an American supermarket, I am nearly overwhelmed by the abundance. I can choose from a truly amazing selection of fruit and vegetables, meats, canned goods of every kind, snacks and treats. Thanks to refrigeration and modern transportation, I have access to products from all over the country, and all over the world. Look how many varieties of milk there are! Try to count all the flavors of yogurt! The breakfast cereal aisle is astonishing. And there is a special deli section where salads, main dishes, and casseroles have been prepared for people to take home. There are beautiful pastries and fancy cakes in the bakery. There are also departments for housewares, beauty products, health supplies, and more. How lucky we are! ^@realrkwest
 

It Will Happen to You

Maybe you don't care if Republicans pass laws that let county clerks refuse marriage licenses to gay couples, because you're not gay, don't know many gay people, and tend to think being gay is kind of icky. And maybe you won't care when they decide to extend refusal to interracial couples, because you're a little more comfortable when people "stick with their own kind." But eventually, it will reach you or someone you actually care about.

They could decide to refuse marriage to couples of different religious backgrounds. Or they might decide you can't remarry if your first spouse is still alive. Remember, they won't actually pass a law that says adulterers can't marry their mistresses or that infertile women can't marry. They'll leave it up to the "conscience" and "sincere beliefs" of the county clerk, who attends a church you've never heard of but nevertheless gets to tell you their church controls your life.

And maybe you really don't care if a restaurant refuses to serve Black people, because you're not Black, and you'd rather just be around people who look like you.

Sooner or later, there will be something about you that someone else doesn't like, and you'll be the one who can't shop, can't eat out, can't get married, can't rent an apartment, can't get a good job, can't live a full life being respected as a human being. Be ready to comply.

 

I've Looked At Arsenic From Both Sides Now

Imagine there are two or three people who, for unknown reasons, think arsenic is good food for babies. In the meantime, there are at least 99,763 chemists, 1,567,984 doctors, 258,000 professors of chemistry, and 701,422 nutritionists who know that arsenic is poisonous. The pro-arsenic guys are very busy, writing letters, making podcasts, self-publishing books, and posting all over social media about how great arsenic is. They manage to convince another eight people to join them. One works in a health food store.

The online arguments get the attention of a news network, which decides to explore "both sides of the arsenic issue". Out of the roughly 2,628,169 experts who know that arsenic is poison, they invite one doctor, and out of the twelve arsenic lovers, they invite the store clerk. The interview with these two makes it look as though the pro-arsenic and anti-arsenic groups are equal.

After a few of these interviews, more viewers start to think that maybe arsenic isn't so bad after all. Conspiracy theories arise, claiming that "they" don't want you to have access to healthy, clean arsenic because "it's all about control." More people become convinced, and even a few of the anti-arsenic experts (who are disgruntled because they couldn't get tenure) change sides.

The controversy heats up on social media, fueled by people who claim their children died or suffered permanent brain damage because they were denied access to arsenic. When shown evidence that arsenic sickens and kills, they call it fake news and come up with documents purporting to show that anti-arsenic studies were falsified. One of their doctors writes a book claiming that pharmaceutical companies want to suppress arsenic because it's a natural substance and not profitable.

By now, hospitalizations for arsenic poisoning have tripled. The pro-arsenic faction claims the statistics have been manipulated; all those people got sick or died for other reasons. Many people are afraid to go to Thanksgiving dinner because they suspect Grandma will slip some arsenic into the turkey. Others refuse to attend because their hosts have declared the kitchen an arsenic-free zone. A few mass poisonings occur at church picnics and political rallies. The people most likely to succumb to arsenic poisoning are the elderly, infants, and people with pre-existing conditions. The arsenic lovers say those people were weak and would have died anyway. Portable arsenic test kits become popular. Restaurants lose business. Politicians claim that immigrants are bringing arsenic across the border. China is blamed.

The news media continue both-sidesing the issue.

 

Work Until You Die?

Think about the people who want to raise the retirement age. What kind of jobs do they have? Most have what I call think-talk jobs, jobs that require very little physical exertion, but rely on talking about situations, thinking about problems, attending meetings, applying learned information to situations, reading documents, occasionally writing documents, expressing opinions.

These think-talk jobs are held by Congresspeople, business executives, bankers, some TV personalities, and others whose work is mostly not physical. As long as people retain their mental faculties (and sometimes even when they don't), they can continue doing this kind of work well into old age. People with this kind of work often consider it a big part of their personal identity, and are therefore not interested in retiring. All or most of the people they know do the same kind of work; their contact with other kinds of workers tends to be superficial. It is easy for them to imagine a world in which no one retires before age 80, and maybe not even then.

Compare them to people who have body-using jobs: Construction workers, gardeners, janitors, garbage collectors, farmers, warehouse workers, food servers, and many others. Some jobs that may not look physically demanding really are, because they require the worker to stand for hours. Think of grocery cashiers, hairdressers, department store clerks, and others who are on their feet all day.

People lose strength and stamina as they age. A person at 65, even if healthy, is not as strong as they were at 45. Physically demanding jobs can be hard on the body over time and are often not practical for older people. Yet the people with think-talk jobs often fail to understand the challenges of body-using jobs. A lot of these people ignore the fact that older people are often let go by their employers, sometimes because they are at a higher pay grade, sometimes because they are physically outperformed by younger workers. It is very difficult for people over 50 to get hired anywhere (although it sometimes happens), and it is a rare employer indeed who wants to hire someone over 65.

If we imagine that every person who reaches age 65 has the option of keeping their current job or getting a new one, we are kidding ourselves. Besides, having 75-year-olds on the roof laying shingles or operating a steam press all day doesn't seem like a good idea. Who would feel good about making a great-grandmother clean public restrooms until the day she drops dead from exhaustion? People who have paid into Social Security or some other retirement plan for decades deserve the chance to finally relax and get what they paid for.