Tag Archives: Compassion

It Comes Down To Compassion?

Unable to sleep, troubled by an ongoing metaphorical mental picture of a horse being out of the barn, galloping  full-speed toward a cliff from which there may be no return, no salvation, I pick up the remote to switch on CNN and Don Lemon.

And there it was.  After years of wondering why there is such a division in thinking between the political poles of left and right, suddenly it became very clear.   It came from a cancer survivor.

There was Jeff Jeans,  cancer-free for five years he said, a former Republican, and former opponent of the Affordable Care Act.  He is now making the rounds on the talk shows after being featured on a town hall with Paul Ryan.  He spoke about his conversion to compassion.

That’s what changed him, he said, a conversion to having compassion.   It took a trip to death’s door to get him there but now he has it.   Simple compassion.

Before being confronted by cancer, he said, he felt that any and all government programs were bad.  And then the Affordable Care Act, also known as “Obamacare,” saved his life.

It’s inconceivable that there are still people who think they’ll be fine after the Republicans repeal Obamacare, because they will still be covered by the Affordable Care Act.  Inconceivable. But those people do exist.  You can see them if you watch enough tv  or take the time to read.

Before his conversion, Jeff Jeans said, he was a “Libertarian-leaning Republican,” who believed in material things.  Now, he says, he believes health care is a right and not a privilege to be  afforded only by those with pockets deep enough to pay the going price, whatever that might be, dictated by the “every man for himself” free traders who think everything will be just fine if only government will just get out of the way.

That’s what he believed before being diagnosed with cancer.  Before he needed Obamacare to  pay the bills so that he could live.   Before he learned that compassion is a real living thing and that without it we are no more than wild dogs snarling and snapping over the scraps thrown out by a butcher’s helper preparing the finest cuts for the rich folks who live behind a tall fence up on the hill.

Can it be just that simple?    Can it be  such a simple thing as half the country having no compassion?   How can so many of these people call themselves Christians, going to church on Sunday and still be without compassion?   Can you even imagine Christ without compassion?   Aren’t they one and the same?

Is that why so many of us who already believe, if not  in Christ then in compassion, lie awake nights, wondering why the horse has been set free,  while compassionless Republicans chop their way through political hash in Washington, designing bills to destroy the Affordable Care Act, replacing it with nothing, because that’s what they have, absolutely nothing but the idea that government programs are bad,  compassion and caring be damned.

End affordable healthcare.   Gut Social Security and Medicare.  Cut assistance to the poor.   Kick out the Dreamers, split up families, send the immigrants packing behind a big, beautiful wall, covering your deceit with one lie after another, telling the already misinformed that it will all be so beautiful and good if only they continue to follow, unthinking, unquestioning with faith in ongoing ignorance, abandoning compassion.

And so the horse tumbles into a bottomless black hole from which there may be no salvation.   Is that what it will take for greedy unbelievers to learn compassion?   Must we all go over  the cliff with them?   Will there be any coming back after the fall, or will we find ourselves in some brave new world, ruled by an unholy alliance between Russian oligarchs and Trumpist corporate chieftains, the poor crushed under the boot heels of those who believe that “might makes right” – children and the elderly left to their own devices while the wealthy few keep the gold for themselves, comforted in their certainty that only  they deserve what they have because they are better than all the rest because they have never had to feel the sting of being at death’s door without the ability to pay for life-giving care?

Surely the hand of God has delivered the wealthy few to live in a privileged bubble, with no need for the compassion of government interference.

And so the horse gallops toward the cliff while untold numbers of Americans can’t sleep at night wondering if there will be any return from the fall.   If  compassion will in the end trump greed, delivering us from the evil of raw and mindless financial lust and all the suffering that goes with it.