It’s sunny and cold, not unusual, given it’s December already. Or it was when I started writing, now it’s clouded over. Having a hard time believing we’re here already, but there it is.
The year is nearly done.
Recent events have me thinking about how money is more important than lives in the US, and the disparity becomes more and more and more obvious the further we descend. So much more important that we are trained not to give the lives even a second thought.
We reduce them to statistics, to probabilities, to complicated calculations by actuaries, and take from them, entirely, their status as people. That’s not completely surprising in a society that has decided the best way to “preserve life” is to let women die preventable deaths if pregnancy goes awry; that’s a bleak illustration we’re seeing more and more.
But those formulas aren’t plucked from the air. The systems that provide as little to consumers as they can while spewing money out the other end don’t make themselves. People make these decisions. People choose the criteria. People decide on the formulas.
So is it that shocking that the humans shouldering the burden and costs of these decisions–physical, mental, emotional, financial–don’t have a ton of empathy for the human foisting these burdens on them?
Why are these actions, which shed literal blood, treated as bloodless?
Clearly I’m not condoning violence. That implication seems like a form of defensiveness, a built-in shield to shift the discussion away from the point: why do some deaths “matter” and other deaths are merely business?
I’m also not telling anyone how to feel or what to think. If you’ve read me for any time at all, you know I don’t believe anyone should have access to guns; gun violence is its own issue, and one almost specifically tailored to the demons haunting the soul of the US.
I’m not minimizing nor normalizing, but pointing out how the preventable deaths from lack of care or lack of access to care engineered by a company people pay for the privilege are minimized and normalized. The parity comes not by treating the one death as a nonevent but treating all the deaths as horrifying.
It’s murder through accounting.
As of this writing, we do not know who the gunman was, we do not know what the motive was, we have none of the “whys.” But instead of looking at the reaction many have had as a sickness in the people, it’s time to look at it as a sickness in the system.
There’s only so far you can push people before something breaks. Whether this is that point, it’s hard to say, we have no idea what is in store for a system that no longer seems to be in the same neighborhood as health, but solely profit.
Especially when people voted for the people whose greed is insatiable.
When someone is killed through gun violence, it’s never the time to talk about guns, and it feels a little the same here, someone who was killed was in charge of these decisions that ruin and end lives for profit, but now’s not the time to talk about the system that not only allows it but generously rewards it.
The point is the callousness didn’t start with a murder on a New York street. The callousness started long, long before. It’s just not usually aimed in the direction of the person who was killed.
And that’s it for this week, I hope you have a smooth Friday and a relaxing weekend.
A Bit to Read 
Leave a comment