Division Into Two

Of all the "two types of people" sayings, my favorite is this one: There are two types of people: those who separate people into two types and those who don't.

I'm thinking now about government and something I'd heard or read once about what I latched onto at the time as a real heavy question: What is the proper role of government? So, for the next thirty years I thought about that occasionally, hoping to have a ready-made answer if I was ever asked. You see, it's important for me to have an answer on the tip of my tongue so I don't stumble around looking like I'm baffled.

I have to admit I don't have an answer. Still, I'm intrigued by the question.

I've tentatively gotten this far: there are those who see government as Dear Ol' Mom, and who feel the government should protect us all from any and all things that threaten our existence. Then there are those who see government as a harsh father whose job it is to punish those who commit crimes, but is otherwise mostly non-existant.

I think about cave men a lot when I think about government, also natural selection. The Mom people want to prevent any humans from ending up behind or on the edges of the pack and think we should all be kept alive and saved. We band together as societies and surrender our personal goals for the sake of the many.

Still, I don't think the notion of a government necessarily implies that no one within its jurisdiction should starve or die. That's a good thing, to be sure, but I don't think it's intrinsic to government's proper role. Human history has developed, written by the winners, in such a way that consideration for those less fortunate is synonymous with more civilized, but I'm not convinced that's a logical necessity.

Last week I had an appointment with a representative of the County Hospital where I was taken following my accident. I have no insurance and was more than a little upset to find that during the hours of my unconsciousness I managed to wrack up over five thousand dollars in medical bills. Had I been able to do so, I would have declined any treatment, knowing full well I couldn't afford it.

When I was able to tell that to my care-givers, they told me not to worry, that it would be all right. The collection agency who received my account (some harried clerk had copied my address wrong, so I never got any bills or anything from the Hospital) saw otherwise, and that precipatated my visit with the above representative. She was a delightful beauraucrat, filling out all my forms for me save for the afadavit where I state my case.

I filled that out, but it wasn't to her liking. I'd said too much, and she, knowing how the County functions and what needs to be said, gave me another form with hints about what to say, and only what to say. In the end she was satisfied and my record is now clean.

Her job, or at least how she saw it, was evidently to give the tax-payers money away.

I should point out that the hospital, effectively, did nothing. I received a CAT scan or MRI or something and a couple X-rays, but that's hardly treating anything. I consider that to be ass-covering. They kept me to see if I'd need some surgery, but didn't, and couldn't tell if my ribs were broken or anything, so I mostly got an IV and slept. Around the clock monitoring of my vitals, but, again, that's preventative medicine, not treatment.

I'm saddened that what they did caused over six thousand dollars worth of health care providing. That may be the trouble with our current system, with insurance and so many people lacking coverage, the exhorbitant fees charged. I'm all for people getting well, but for whatever reasons it costs too damn much to go to the doctor. Gardners are worth the twenty bucks or so, but Tylenol isn't worth ten bucks a pop.




I met up with Donavan and Daniel, two great guys, for their NaNoDeDa, and we swapped current versions of our novels. I had a great time chatting about writing over dinner and coffee, and I'm certain anything I contributed was mild compared to what they'd been listening to earlier.

As I was getting their copies of TRE ready I, of course, looked at the pages to make sure they were in the correct order and whatnot, and even at this stage I found on every sheet I looked at phrasing changes I needed to make. I'm still unsure if I'll ever be happy with anything I write! A novel may have far too many words in it for me to ever be satisfied that each and every one of them is the word I need it to be.

Part of the problem there may be vocabulary. Or, something worse. I don't have enough words for "look," which is something my characters do continuously. It occurs to me that I need to go over the ms again, getting rid of all that looking and just jumping to what's seen. I break up far too much dialogue with gestures, and far too much of it are the same ones.

I used to believe I can write better than this, but the question remains: Why don't I?