Prescription for Unfairness. The Bush Administration's prescription-drug benefit plan for recipients of Social Security goes into effect today. How many people died needlessly between passage of that measure and today, no one knows. More to the point for the future, however, is the issue of how astonishingly confusing and insane this program is.
+
Ever the servants of the rich, the Republicans have 'crafted' — if one were to use such a tidy term for such an untidy "system" — a program that benefits private corporations at least as much as senior citizens. Instead of simply offering a Government-funded and Government-run program, like Social Security itself, the new drug plan requires people to contract with a private company and select from among "at least 40 plans", according to the Boston Herald. The privatization of the prescription-drug benefit is a caution against the madness of privatizing Social Security more generally.
+
How many young people, in the prime of life, could carefully and intelligently evaluate the differences among 40 different plans to decide which best suits them, and commit to at least a year with that plan, no matter what may change in one's health status during that year? The Bush plan requires old people, many of whom have trouble focusing and concentrating, to make what could be life-and-death decisions among a dizzying array of options as to coverage and company. Republicans truly are slime.
+
Why should some people get better coverage at better terms than others just because they chose one company rather than another? How could that possibly be fair? It's as tho we allowed some people to ride good roads if they chose one transportation provider but shunted others onto roads with potholes the size of foxholes if they chose another. People entitled to government assistance should get uniformly good service. They shouldn't have to hunt for good service, nor be shunted off to inferior programs because of cost or incomprehension.
+
There is one good thing about the plan as it is explained at the Boston Herald's website: it is means-tested, as all Social Security benefits should be means-tested. Rich people don't need a handout from the Government.
+
Now, if only the Republicans would means-test Social Security more generally, and set income levels at reasonable levels, we could push back the Social Security system's asserted bankruptcy date by decades. And if we also levied Social Security tax on every dollar the rich make, as we do on every dollar the poor and middle class make, the Social Security system would be rolling in dough forever.
+
Genius and Me. The Romans gave us the word "genius". To the Roman (and we are all, in the West, merely latter-day Romans), "genius" was a family's personal little deity, a minor god or demigod who, from a niche provided for it in the house, watched over the home and preserved it against dangers.
+
Somehow the definition of "genius" transmuted, to mean a spirit of invention and insight that moved individual recipient human beings to set out in writing, painting, music, or other creative medium, some divinely inspired message or scene.
+
The modest creative person often wonders where his or her inspiration comes from. Sometimes, this marveling at the result causes creative people humbly to waive ownership of their creations and ascribe them to some other source. Whether you call it "inspiration", "divine inspiration", a sudden, unanticipated "insight", a "flash of recognition", or anything else, it all comes down to the same thing: we are sometimes astonished by how wonderful some of the things that we do, turn out to be. We are ourselves impressed, and wonder, "Did that come out of me?" Yes, it did. Who knows how? Who knows why? And, does it matter?
+
I work very hard on my writing. Usually I don't regard it as work. I speak English; I write English. I speak my mind. So it should all come out easily, right? It usually does, often smoothly and (to my mind) persuasively.
+
But sometimes I look back at things I have written — and rewritten, and rewritten, and rewritten, over and over until I am content with it — and am extremely, pleasantly surprised not just that I said what I meant to say but also that what I said was so insightful and the way I said it was so apt. I then understand the humility of the Roman writer or painter, who disowns the "genius" that created his or her works of unusual aptness: "It's not me. It is the spirit of the universe, the will of the gods, the hand of God that has grabbed my feeble but obedient hand, and made me write (paint, or otherwise render) this wondrous work."
+
Religiously, I am an agnostic, inclined to atheism. I see many reasons to disbelieve in the existence of any god. But on rare occasions I feel, as uncountable numbers of other writers and artists have felt in the course of their creative lives, that what we have done is beyond our own abilities, at least as we ordinarily perceive them.
+
I occasionally reread things I have written and already posted to the Internet. Today I ran across this passage, in this blog's entry of November 8th: "Few people living at any of the pivotal points of history have ever understood that they were living at such a time, much less in the very place where the fulcrum of history resided."
+
I'm impressed. Not only is the language elegant (to my mind), but it is also clear, and expresses an idea that few people will have thought of in anything like that way.
+
Sometimes, words come easily. They just pour forth to cover the issue at hand, and a given piece of argumentation, advocacy, or exposition needs only checks as to grammar and spelling to be finalized.
+
Other times, the writer struggles to find the right word: "I think it starts with an S. It's on the tip of my tongue, but I just can't come up with it." A thesaurus often does not produce the word intended. Sometimes the writer will settle for a reasonable approximation. Other times the writer persists, putting things off a day or more, until the word finally pops into his head — and it is indeed exactly the right word. When that happens to me, I credit myself.
+
Thus do I struggle, sometimes, to come up with a text that works, be it brilliantly evocative or merely clear as to what I mean. On isolated occasions, however, the words rush onto the computer screen in eloquent, eruptive flows, perfectly expressing, first time out, exactly what it is I mean to say. I credit myself for that, too.
+
Sometimes, however, everything comes out so right — the idea pops up out of left field, but fits right in; the expression suits the context and states the case succinctly and memorably — that I am stunned. I'm not superstitious, so am compelled to give myself credit for things that people in superstitious eras dared not claim credit for but assigned to "Genius" in the sense of a demigod apart from the self, or to divine inspiration.
+
Still, now and again every creator stands in awe of his or her creation and wonders how s/he could have made such a thing. "Where did that come from?" From "Genius" may seem a convenient way to claim credit while disowning pride. But at end, it is sometimes hard to see where it came from, and "Genius" seems as good an explanation as any.
+
(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 2,068.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 1:25 AM