Early Death and the Greening of America

Dear George,

Health care! Health care! Health care! That’s all people whine about these days (other than losing their jobs, their homes and their pensions.) All of this agitation for health care and health insurance is reaching a tipping point. If it is allowed to fester and grow, it could further undermine our economic prosperity.

Fortunately, you have two things working for you: an economic meltdown and the Shock Doctrine. Now that the public is all in a dither over inflation and plunging real estate values, the time is ripe for a bold initiative that would solve the health care problem once and for all.

Very simply, cancel health care all together. Close the hospitals and send the nation's physicians overseas. Keep just enough in place to care for the one-percent who matter.

It is time to step back and allow death to find its natural ebb and flow. Biologically, we are programmed to live into our forties. Anything past that is tantamount to giving God the finger.

Look at what is happening now: a poor fart is pumped full of medication that enables him to survive into senility so he can pass his golden years strapped to a wheel chair in the corridor of a run-down nursing home, screaming demented obscenities while pissing in his diaper.

Show the public the beauty of natural death. Better yet, call it “green death.” Put together an ad showing a man in his prime, passing over to the other side in the comfort of his own bed, the bed in which his children were conceived. Those children, now grown, surround him, their grief tempered by the prospect of an early inheritance, an inheritance made possible because his estate has not been sucked dry by exorbitant medical expenses. His dutiful wife sits by his side, placing cold compresses on his fevered brow. His dying body is pure, uncontaminated by harsh chemicals or medications. Soft music plays in the background; a spotlight illuminates his peaceful face as he quietly slips into the arms of eternal sleep.

Christ! It makes you want to run out and croak!

Early death is the American way. It is the ultimate exercise of personal responsibility. Only the selfish would beggar their families by clinging to life. And the up-side is that early death solves the Social Security problem. Cancel health care and you cancel retirement.

Ah George, life is sweet down here in the muck of apathetic detachment, supine in the shadow of the mountain of compassion. O brother, why bother going up?

Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones