John Doe Dimslow wanted to debate me. The nerve of that impoverished fellow.
“As if your ideas aren’t dead weight from the get go,” said I.
“No, come on,” he replied, “I doubt it could get any more Tropetopian than this — a Dimslow-Garde debate.”
“Well, I guess it would be something to fill my journal,” said I. “Some light diversion. So what shall we discuss? Peace In Our Time? Please.”
“How about health care?” said Dimslow.
“Don’t make me ill,” said I. “The uninsured are damn lucky to live in this vibrant country.”
“As opposed to Canada?” said Dimslow much too predictably, “where health insurance coverage is universal – provided for all by the government.”
“The Great Socialist Nightmare,” said I.
“Oh, it’s the Great Capitalist Nightmare here,” said Dimslow with his typically obscene logic. “And here it’s a fact that tens of millions of people go uninsured, are less healthy, die sooner, and still the health care system – what there is of it – costs more money per capita than in Canada. It’s literally costing and killing us.”
“You forget one thing,” said I. “The marketplace here provides all the freedom a person could want to choose to be insured. Just work hard and pay your dues.”
“If you can find a job, let alone a healthy one,” said the insufferable Dimslow. “Then there’s the choice between food, clothing, shelter, heat, transportation, and medicine.”
“It’s a free country, I’ve always said. We are ever free to choose.”
“Oh sure, to sleep under the bridge at night, to suffer, to die young. Great. Why not just harvest the ill and be done with them – children especially, since they live in such high rates of poverty? We could grind up the little girls and boys into dog and cat food for the pets of the affluent.”
“You call this a debate, Mr. Dimslow? Sounds more like a gratuitous spewing of vitriol to me.”
“You have my ideas,” said Dimslow.
“Where would the money come from? There’s no money to insure people.”
“From you and your wealthy friends. It would come from eliminating the profit rape of the pharmaceutical companies, and others.”
“Impossible. Congress would not dare.”
“You may be right, Stan D. Garde.”
“I’m glad you finally think so.”
“There may be only one solution then. The final solution.”
“I have no idea what you are talking about, Mr. John Doe Dimslow, and I have no wish to find out.” I’ll admit, here — I shivered. “There is no solution, and none is needed.”
“We must have a solution,” said Dimslow.
“I think not.”
“Possibly it has come to this — We must eat the rich. We must eat you, Stan D. Garde.”
“I assure you, Dimslow, any wealth of mine is newfound, and utterly indigestible.”
John Doe held his belly, as if, I thought, to belch. Instead he laughed. “See you at dinner, Garde,” said he, and walked off, laughing. “See you at dinner!” he called back.
“You’re all bark and no bite!” I hollered after him. I shook my fist at his threatening form, but he only laughed the more.
A Practical Policy 