Three topics today: The Kardashian Culture, Transgender People, and Cancer.
(i) Reading about Dangerous Donald's life time of crude sexist behavior and his manipulation of power to get people to admire him and enrich his life in some manner, I was reminded that is what the Kardashian's are all about.
I know that RedStateVT dislikes the Kardashian culture. So do I. Yet, a Donald Trump victory and presence in the White House for 4 years would place the Kardashian culture as an every day existence in each of our lives.
So, Democrat's, let us not focus on the racist positions that Dangerous Donald projects as core positions of his. You need to focus on the issues that underlie those racist positions. The issues have validity even if the answers Trump presents do not. Public Safety, respect of individuality, and fairness in economic opportunity are valid issues.
(ii) My own thoughts on sexuality and gender identification have been evolving for over 40 years, slowly. These are not things that can evolve quickly. So I am left with the feeling once again of questioning why the Obama Administration is pushing an issue that is really not much of an issue in practicality for most people, and trying to protect, a few people with a national policy as opposed to simply letting people on the local scene work things out.
I am referring of course to the bathroom availability for transgender people. My son, in his class of 88, had two transgender people. His was a private school where people had to pay tuition so these young people came from family's of means. This brought home to me that transgender people are just people. They are not weirdo's, they are not predestined to be prostitutes, cross dressers, pill poppers and night lift hangers on. They just want be themselves, as they believe they should be, and carry on their lives with dignity and respect. But these people are not numerous, incidents of discrimination are scattered through out the nation, and I am left wondering why the Administration had to issue a policy. Somewhere in this administration, and I do believe it is somewhere below the President, there exists a strata of power that is determined to root out discrimination everywhere and that cannot be done from a centralized place. It can only happen on a local level. Even when laws are passed, they require enforcement and that can be important. But guidelines and executive decisions just rile up the opposition who want local customs to left alone. That may result in discrimination against some people, but a national directive is not going to change that.
(iii) Cancer is complicated and the Human Genome Project has given cancer research great insights into how complicated a disease it really is. And an extensive article in the NYT Magazine prompted a thought. Cancer is expensive to treat. A lot of high priced medical talent is focused on giving care to people with cancer. The Drugs take a lot of people who need to be paid good wages to develop and test. And the cost of all that has to end up in society either through higher health insurance premiums or higher taxes. Someone has to pay for all this; there is no free lunch, someone always has to pay for it.
So I was left to ponder the economic role of cancer in society. It is not a productive use of resources in every instance. It is easy to see the productive use in a young person who hopefully will recover and have a productive economic life in our society. There is also value in keeping parents alive who will offer guidance and love with a rich family life for children and grandchildren. But at some point, the expense and the pain of treatments becomes futile. That is where palliative care is so important.
From there I started to ponder just how much wealth is enough. I know many GOP supporters don't think there is such a thing as enough wealth, and they want lower taxes so they can have more wealth. But once you have given your kids a debt free education, and maybe set aside some money for your grandchildren's education, how much do you need to pass on. What about each individuals need to contribute to society through church, charity, and being part of the insurance pools? That has benefit to everyone by lowering the cost of insurance and spreading the enormous costs over a larger pool.
I like Hillary's idea of opening up Medicare to people over 50 or 55. I would be there in a nano second.
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