Get a Life

A longtime friend, a woman who is now a multimillionaire, one of the brightest women I know, recently remarked that people who chat on blogs, "need a life."  Having read through Reddit progressive comments, Huffington Post articles and comments, the comments section of various New York Times sections, I thought I understood what she was talking about.

The gods have their own problems, and right and wrong have nothing to do with it

During my residency, one of my friends, Michael,  was the son of the owner of a grocery store, and he had no interest in discussing politics or political theory or philosophy about how things ought to be. What he cared about was how money is made.

The war in Vietnam was still going on when I first met Michael, and he got quickly bored when friends would talk about the war, the injustice of sending the poor off to fight the war, while the better connected often got student deferments, or assignments to the National Guard, which in those days remained stateside.  All he cared about was he had his deferment. 

When fiberoptic technology arrived and meant the inside of the gut could now be visualized directly with endoscopes and colonoscopes, he quickly realized this was a surgical procedure which reimbursed generously, and for which no formal surgical training was required. Surgical residencies took five to seven years after medical school graduation, but colonoscopy could be learned in six months.  Rather than hanging around to do the typical year of training after internship, Michael learned he could begin his specialty training that second year, a "fellowship" and if he hustled, he could spend most of that time perfecting his skill with the colonoscope. Two years after finishing his internship, he was done with his fellowship and he purchased a colonoscope and opened his practice, with a mortgage on his first office and a cash cow in the colonoscope. 

Over the years, I would get phone calls from him asking about something he had read about in the "New England Journal of Medicine" but he was not interested so much in the science as in the investment potential of a new drug or procedure. 

He, too, became a millionaire. 

Michael would not be interested in whether or not it was moral or just to exclude Muslims from America, or whether or not calling illegal Mexican wetbacks "rapists" was just.  He was simply not much interested in things which did not affect him directly, or which were unrelated to making money. 

I don't know Donald Trump.  But I suspect, having watched him interviewed, he is like Michael.  A reporter asked him which bathroom he would make a transexual use at the Trump Hotel, and he shrugged and said, "Whichever one he wants to use."  He simply did not see this as a question of principle.  When asked how he could justify excluding Muslims as a class, rather than as individuals, he looked confused.  Issues like "group guilt"  are too abstract for the man. What he wants to know is how what he does might affect profit.

Like his supporters, Trump has simply never wanted to learn about constructing an argument using evidence, logic, dialectics. He just wants to make money and to use money.  Like Trump, his supporters are bored by the questions which inspire such passion in the readers of Huff Post and Reditt Progressive.  Is it right that 40 million Americans don't have health insurance?  Is abortion right?  When does something cross the line between abortion and infanticide?  Is it right for the government to force parents to vaccinate their children before allowing those children in schools? Is public school a right or even a good idea?  Is it right that 10 percent of the upper strata of wealthy people own 90% of the wealth of the country? Ought we try to change the distribution of wealth? 

The only question among all these which is of any interest to the me-thinkers is:  How would the answer affect my own personal wealth? 

Is it right for a man running for public office to vilify his opponent and claim she is a criminal and then refuse to offer any evidence for that charge? Well, how does that affect me?  What do I care what he says? Is it right for a man running for public office to respond to a question about his bankruptcy by calling the journalist who asks it a despicable failure as a journalist who is a liar and corrupt?  Well, how does his attack on a reporter or on the media in general affect my bottom line? Not at all. 

Then what do I care? 

I suspect America has drunk the Kool Aid prepared for it by Ayn Rand--you take care of yourself, and the country will take care of itself.
My father lived long enough to retire and spend the winter in Florida. He liked the weather and the fresh orange juice and he would call every Sunday and ask what the weather was like up north and I always emphasized how icy and miserable it was in Washington, D.C., which delighted him.  But he could not abide the men and women who he met around the swimming pool at his condominium. "What bores!" he would say. "They never talk about anything but money. They have no other interests."

My grandfather had no money but he had lots of interests. He walked down the four flights in the tenement he lived in in New York City and, picking up two newspapers at the news stand, he proceeded to the park. When I was visiting, I'd accompany him.  In the park, on the benches, sat a dozen of his friends, most of whom were retired on their union pensions and within minutes, animated arguments would begin, in whatever language was most convenient, never English. I would listen, picking out words which had English cognates, and every once in a while, someone would pat me on the head and say, "Schoner kopf" to reassure me they were all really friends, just arguing. Walking back home, I asked my grandfather what they had been arguing about that day, "Oh, which newspapers are good and which are rubbish, whether the Ukrainians are worse than the Russians or the Poles, who was worse to the workers, Rockefeller of Carnegie. Politics."

I guess my millionaire friend would say they should get a life. All they did was sit on the benches with each other, these comrades in arms who had fought for their union when fighting for a union meant getting beaten up, jailed and threatened. Now they were old and there were still fights worth fighting, things to make your blood boil and get your juices flowing. Somehow, I think they have a life.