pathetic
Every monday and wednesday, I get to spend some quality time downtown. I have 3.5h between when school gets out and my ASL class so if I am done with my homework I usually go and kill time out at Pacific Place and other “malls” downtown. I really hate shopping, so I usually talk to people on my cell and go to barnes and noble and read a little. Every day, there are the same two guys on the corner of Pine and 6th. One guy is a Vietnam vet who I take it has been mostly out on his ass since returning from the war. Sadly, many vets were not well received and ended up having a hard time finding jobs. Nearly every homeless person downtown or on Mercer St. is a Vietnam vet and it almost always says so on their cardboard sign they wave pathetically requesting any assistance. The guy downtown is wheelchair bound and if I didn’t know any better I might think he stayed there all the time and never moved day or night. He is there with his Yuban coffee can shaking it so the tiny pile of change jangles loudly as his way of saying “come on, be generous this afternoon”.
We had a discussion in history class about supporting the government and what we felt the government should do. My history teacher said we were all socialistic in our beliefs and quite frankly I don’t see whats so bad about that. I don’t see why the government shouldn’t help low-income families pay for healthcare, or why we shouldn’t work to rehabilitate the homeless and makle sure that schizophrenics (sp?) get medication if they can’t afford it and that every child reads at a high school level when they graduate. We won’t do it because it costs money. It means we have to pay for other people to get help rather than on a vacation. It means we have to make sacrifices for people who have already sacrificed everything, and yet we don’t do it. Is it a slippery slope? Are we just going to end up another empire in the gutter of history if we do, or perhaps that will be our fate if we don’t.
Late at night last summer while I was staying in South Bend waiting for my cousin’s wedding, I saw a movie with a title something like “race for the cure”. It was about a man living in the future whose child came down with a terminal illness. All the hospitals were run by a huge healthcare monopoly that charged outrageous sums to let people suffer under poor conditions with inadequate treatment for their illnesses when effective treatment options existed. He ended up having to sell himself to the healthcare company for medical experiments, and after he did so and got compensation, it was too late to save his son and he died. Then, after the company essentially owned his soul, they forced him to subject to cruel experiments…and then I fell asleep. Perhaps this is our future?
djno Iquestionthetruth