Death Panel

I've spent a lot of the last month or so--taking it as a given that the sitting president of the United States wants to murder the elderly, retarded and the unborn with the potential to be retarded or eventually elderly--trying to figure out exactly why the president not only wants to kill so many people, but why he's going about it in such a public way.

I guess the least difficulty I'm having is with the wanting-to-murder-the-socially-incovenient. I get that. My kids are all past the potty-training self-feeding stage of development, so yeah, the deep, icy, coal-black well of resentment has gotten somewhat shallower over time. But we got a new puppy recently, which has served to remind me that some people/creatures are really more trouble than they are worth. Kids and puppies, that's just a taste. The retarded and the elderly? There's no growing out of either of those phases, right? I imagine feeling what I have felt, trapped in the tragically self-selected hip-lock of human need and responsbility, then with no potential for respite over the natural course of time.

I shudder. Maybe the main reason so many people are screaming, foaming, self-mutilating non-processors of rational thought on the health-care issue might have less to do with the protection of life and more to do with the desperate shouting-down of someone about to lay open a long-held poorly kept secret. Just consider: how many old, retarded people have you ever met?

If suddenly we legalize euthanasia according to President Death's Apprentice's plan, the old grandma-in-a-burlap-sack-with-a-brick scenario suddenly moves from dark family rumor to something for which you must fill out a series of forms in triplicate.

The form of protest depicted here is clearly stupid and has no place in public discourse. But now consider it in the context of people trying to avoid the momentum-killing hassle of finding a notary at 3 am to solemnize the agonizing amount of paperwork that Obamacare will require on the night they've finally screwed up the courage and resolve it will take to smother their idiot nephew in his sleep. The tree of liberty must from time to time be watered with the ink of Magic Marker.

Naturally we're on board with the murder part, so the only issue that remains is why is all this taking place in public? I blame the internets. Times were that 90% of society operated on the nod-and-wink system. Now that information is instantly publishable to a global audience, there's almost nothing left for us to pretend is not happening. Housewives have their own TV doctors validating their lifestyles, gays are everywhere (in the military AND getting married!) and the vapid daughters of very wealthy people aren't dying alone in opium dens, anonymous to all but a few Cantonese-speaking stalwarts circling like carrion to roll the corpse when it finally begins to cool.

No more best-foot-forward. No more stiff-upper-lip. No more hearty-soul-crushing-lives-of-denial-and-quiet-desperation-until-the-sweet-release-of-death-by-heart-attack-at-40-years-old. The secret America of our tense, WASPy youths is dying. Ironically, it will be this health-care bill that finally pulls the plug. And we'll probably be able to watch iton Ustream.

Yes, OK, I've thought about strangling a puppy. It's not like I posted it on Twitter. Must you know everything about me?