Rheumatic Rhetoric

unrestrained summer fun

One of the most fucked up parts of America’s for-profit medical system and insurance often being tied to your work is that you cannot work if you are sick and if you are not working, you have no insurance. People are fired in the middle of cancer treatment or a severe mental health episode and suddenly there is no way to pay the hospital and buy the medicine you need. Republicans will outright say “You don’t deserve free healthcare if you’re lazy and unemployed.” anytime someone mentions this, actively ignoring the fact that you often cannot work when you are sick and shouldn’t be forced to work when you’re sick to be able to afford to get better.

And you will notice that they always refer to it as ‘free healthcare’, not taxpayer funded healthcare, not socialized medicine, not single-payer healthcare, always ‘free healthcare’, like it is an fantastical idea, like healthcare for all is as absurd as a 5 bedroom mansion with a pool for all. They need to make it sound like it is logistically impossible, like they could not take a fraction of the money in the DOD’s $2.5 trillion budget and make sure no one in America dies of an easily treatable illness just because they can’t work. It is very intentional.

I love Doris and she is so cute but also she looks so much like Teddy Roosevelt sometimes that I can't help but laugh

The really funny part is that many modern sources that want to gas up Sparta will bring up this specific anecdote, but stop at the "if" and just not mention what happened immediately afterwards.

similarly, "μολὼν λαβέ" (come and take them) is a really cool thing to say, made significantly less cool by having them taken

One time when my dad was in the hospital they were testing his orientation to time and place and said "Okay and what year is it?" and he said "1995" (he had dementia). And the doctor and I unconsciously exchanged a Look because it was in fact uhhh 2024 😐 and dad saw that and so when the next doctor did the test a few hours later he said "uhhhh...nineteen...nintetyyyy.......seven...???" and I was like okay, well, that IS closer, you do have to give him that

#he still knew immediately who I was which was deeply funny to me bc I was 7-8 years old in 1997 #"yes that is my daughter who was apparently born in her 20s"

a tshirt that says I LIKE YOU AND I'M TRYING TO UNDERSTAND YOU