Inadvertent gymnastics on street corners; and a rider regarding health care reform

They say one's life flashes before one's eyes. I only saw a flock of kindly faces and vaguely wondered what the fuss was about, but then, mine was hardly a near-death experience, though it might well have been. There were witnesses, whose brains did not, unlike my own, block out the details and could remember in vivid technicolor the ungraceful pirouette my body did before colliding with the windshield of the car. This entirely unintentional feat was described as a 360° gyration or some such nonsense, but I really have no business questioning it, since I cannot recall a single thing in between heading intrepidly across the street and dazedly hearing strangers contemplate calling 911. Even then, I didn't have a clue. I felt more or less all right, as though I might just get up and keep going after a bit of a rest. Little did I guess the actual ordeals in store.

The emergency room was abuzz with activity, each of us sequestered in our own corner of the hive, awaiting our turn under the hot lights of medical attention. It was a busy night, considering it was a Wednesday, and it seemed to be a night for car-on-pedestrian mishaps. The doctors left me to my own devices in order to stabilize a similar case, but that poor fellow was a hit-and-run. My driver, though, was felicitous to a fault and I have no qualms in saying the whole experience has reaffirmed my faith in humanity.

However, the past two weeks have served to underscore the desperate need for health care reform. The actual care I received was top quality, so far as I can tell, but if the driver's insurance wasn't paying for things, I can only imagine how we'd manage. The prices are phenomenally high for every single thing, and though my mother's insurance is a decent lot as these things go, even they might bat an eye at shelling out nearly a thousand dollars to have an X-ray looked at.

Speaking of which, bully for Congress passing the health care bill, as imperfect as it is. Of course, as an Anglophile and a progressive-bordering-on-socialist, I wouldn't mind a single-payer system; the public option showed some promise too, before it was shown the door. But still and all, there is a lot to like about the bill, and you've got to start somewhere. Evolution in all things...

Or devolution. The right wing seems finally to have gone completely off its nut. Bricks lobbed through windows, an anarchistic gateway drug to further violence; death threats, racist and homophobic slurs, really classy; and from the supposed adults, the elected representatives, undecorous outbursts and ambivalent statements condemning property damage while implying that the opposition actually deserved it.

A recent poll by NBC and the Wall Street Journal found that 50% of voters would replace every single member of Congress. I'd go along with that if Democrats retained their majority and we got lawmakers with some sense on both sides of the aisle. I'm not diametrically opposed to fiscal conservatives, and I don't mind policy debate. It just shouldn't fall so far into the weeds that we can't pull ourselves back up.