There's a big, wooded reserve right across the street from my parents' suburban apartment complex, but to get there on foot requires crossing a busy road and walking (or in my case, running) on the shoulder of the road for about a half mile to reach one of the parking lots that allow access to the trails. I always get up early to beat the traffic and mostly succeed, but there are always a few cars, and drivers go faster when they are unimpeded by traffic (as studies from lockdown have demonstrated) or speed cameras. I don't feel like I'm in danger, but it's unsettling to have cars pass at high speeds just a few feet away the space I occupy. I've also noticed that some drivers don't like having their freedom constrained by the sight of a runner and will make a point of veering as close as possible to me -- the runner -- to I guess make a point about who really owns the road. The township where my parents live isn't exactly Trump Country, but it's close enough to rural Pennsylvania to say that I do think about the final scene in Easy Rider, which has only become increasingly prophetic with each new decade.
I also think about what the government -- our government -- could do to improve our lives. Last fall when I was visiting, the road was less busy because of a big construction project at a nearby intersection that prevented drivers from using the road to reach another much wider and even busier road. I was disappointed on this most recent visit to learn that the construction project had been finished but they had made no accommodations for bikes and pedestrians, even though the planet is basically on fire, in large part because of our habit of burning fossil fuels in order to get from one place to another. Do people understand this direct link between cars and global warming? It's pretty clear that the New York Times does not.
What our government does and doesn't do for us -- meaning people who live in the United States -- was on my mind as I listened to my father complain about the food he receives in the dementia wing of the facility where he now lives. Wouldn't it be nice, I thought, if instead of privatizing health care under the guise of 'efficiency,' the government invested real money in either 1) building an infrastructure to care for our elderly, or 2) at the very least regulating the private operators in the current system so that they are required (among many other things) to serve food that is healthy and edible. 'It would cost too much money,' is the typical objection to such ideas. And yet we have no problem allowing the money to sit in the bank accounts of the country's many, many billionaires, where it does nothing.
Unfortunately, because my father has dementia, he doesn't understand the connection between neoliberal policy and the terrible food he is served by his private healthcare provider. Like many others from of his generation -- not to mention the ones that have followed -- he has a deep distrust of government, which led him to vote Republican for as long as I've known him. The exact reasons for this distrust remain something of a mystery to me, and on this visit, I regretted not being able to explore this with him.
As long as people think that government (as an ideal and an imperfect reality) is the enemy, we are doomed. Global warming and other problems are too complex to be solved without a collective action, rooted in a desire to make our lives better in ways that are not contingent on market efficiency or personal enrichment. Can a society be said to suffer from dementia? Watching my father succumb, I'm more convinced than ever that he is far from alone.
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