This world is so full of cruelties and disasters that we can become numb to them. Three hurricanes, one right after another, wreak havoc. Then the next horror erupts (civilian butchery in Myanmar, for example) and then the next (fiendish massacre in Las Vegas, to name the latest)
For sanity’s sake, we feel compelled to turn the page, flip the channel, hit the “Delete” button inside our minds.
But sometimes – speaking for me, anyway – a story will stick in head or heart, hounding, haunting, nagging – even after attempts to delete it.
Two examples:
A couple weeks ago, a drunken mother was weaving crazily at highway speed near Rochester when her car scraped along a median cable barrier for 200 feet before exiting the highway. The driver then pulled over on a shoulder and started breast-feeding a baby. There were four other children in the vehicle. Later, authorities found out she had five more children elsewhere.
The mother’s blood-alcohol level was twice the legal limit. She was charged with first-degree drunken driving, child endangerment and driving without a license. This woman has three previous drunken-driving convictions. Two years ago she was charged with possession of marijuana in her vehicle, but the charge was dropped in exchange for pleading guilty to giving police a false name.
The woman’s children, thank goodness, were put into the custody of child-protection services.
That news story made me extremely angry as questions exploded like firecrackers in my head:
What was that woman thinking, with five children in her car and her obviously drunk out of her mind?
With previous drunken-driving convictions, why is she still driving around drunk with children in her car?
Are all 10 children the biological offspring of that woman? If so, when will she ever give serious thought to quit having babies?
Why does she keep getting away with such reckless behavior?
What would that scene have looked like if all five children had died hideously in a car wreck or if that woman had hit another vehicle, perhaps one also filled with innocent children?
Will Social Services take those children permanently away from the woman? Let us hope so.
When will she get the extended treatment she obviously needs? Will the treatment stick? And how can authorities make sure she follows post-treatment, post-conviction provisions and restrictions?
What is wrong with a system that apparently can do little or nothing to stop such reckless endangerment of children and others?
Why was she allowed to plea-bargain after a dismal record like hers?
Why should a woman so dangerous be allowed to keep having children?
That news story causes a smoldering anger in me, and those questions keep popping up, unanswered.
Here’s another story that sticks with me. It was written by reporter Dave Coucher and was published July 12 in The Tennessean newspaper. Coucher had interviewed people down on their luck in Appalachia. This is what he wrote about a woman named Debbie:
“Looking down at a notebook filled with numbers, Mike’s wife, Debbie, said it’s tough to care about Russian collusion when your husband needs new knees.
‘We’ve lost everything, pretty much,’ said Debbie Mitchell. ‘We can’t afford health care, period. We didn’t qualify for Obamacare, we didn’t qualify for (Medicaid) and we can’t afford to buy health insurance. We’re the ones that fall through the cracks.’ ”
Debbie’s words keep popping up in my mind, especially about her husband needing “new knees.”
Every now and then, we come across a story, an image or a quote that puts into sharp focus an urgent national problem. Debbie’s words of anguish and her husband’s need for “new knees” does that for me. It hammers in my mind, nags at my heart. Her feeling of helplessness makes me angry every time I think about the scoundrels in Congress who keep cooking up health-care schemes that will not only not help Debbie’s husband get new knees but that will give the shaft to millions who finally managed to get coverage under the Affordable Care Act. The thoughtless demagogues have spent eight years trying so hard to send ObamaCare into oblivion rather than help fix it or to come up with alternatives that actually work.
First, we need to mend ObamaCare. Then, we need to start working out details for a Medicare-for-all system. Let’s join the civilized world; let’s help all Americans gain health-care coverage.