Being a jerk should have consequences

My daughter-in-law and I wandered through an estate sale yesterday. She's looking for a sofa, but there was nothing like that at the sale. We did spend some time sorting through a collection of oddities - an old-fashioned butter cooler, a cigarette box straight from the 40s, a silver toast server. My daughter-in-law found a pair of Mary-Poppins-shoes which fit her perfectly and looked fabulous with her leggings, and in the end that was all either of us bought.

Which is where it got weird. As we walked over to the nice elderly lady with the cashbox, with whom we'd chatted on our way in, two elderly men seated with her started talking loudly about how awful the Obama administration was, and how the IRS was going to be arresting people. "I don't have medical insurance," one of the men said, "and I don't want medical insurance. I think I get better service without it."

My daughter-in-law and I said nothing. It seemed a strange place for a conversation like that, especially one occurring at such high decibels.* We paid and left hurriedly, not wanting to be drawn into an argument with a pair of ignorant assholes. But as we got to the car and out of earshot, I said, "When he gets cancer or heart disease or whatever - and it won't be long now, since he's old - I hope he doesn't come crying to me for his insurance. Fuck him. He doesn't want to pay for it, he can damn well die without it."

We're all pretty sick of being angry, so we didn't talk about it much after my outburst. When we got home I spent the afternoon playing Scattergories and Cribbage with my granddaughter.

Despite my efforts at rising above it, though, I'm still livid. That hatriot nonsense being spewed via right-wing media is so stupid, so blatantly, unmistakeably racist and partisan that to believe it, you have to be pretty damn hateful right from the get-go. Accepting that crap without question amounts to malicious ignorance.

So here's my first proposal**: the law requiring people to show proof of health insurance when they file their taxes goes into effect in 2014. I think it should be amended to state that if you have paid a fine for failure to comply with the law within the previous year, all pre-existing condition limitations will continue to apply to you. That way assholes like Mister-I-Don't-Want-Insurance will be able to bankrupt their families through their final illnesses undisturbed!

Just sayin'.

*This only occurred to me much later. My car, parked at the curb outside the house, carries three Obama bumper stickers left from my days as a campaign volunteer. Maybe the old fuckers noticed them.

**I'm sure there'll be more. I just haven't thought of them yet.