The 13th of this month was special. It was Judy’s and my 32nd anniversary. That, folks, is longer than I thought I’d ever have as a warranty period when I was a kid. Over 30? Old, over the hill and probably ignorant of anything relevant to me. That’s the way I looked at it, anyway. If I made 30, anything over that was gravy. I had no idea I’d be given the gift of spending 32 years with the girl with the best smile in the world. Lucky me! But I was a difficult child, lemmetellya.

A very famous French guy once said “if you aren’t a liberal when you’re 20, you have no heart. If you’re not a conservative when you’re 50, you have no mind”. I’ve always thought there was some truth to that. I’m now old and conservative. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen too many young people with heart lately, but I’ve seen a lot of old folks who’re about as conservative as Stalin. Since he, like Lenin, was an early Communist, right-wing “conservatism” wasn’t something either of them had much time for. The same can be said for Americans Against Everything.

I’m an old, comfortable, bald, busy white guy who was recently carted off to jail for not setting a parking brake. When I was a kid, I WASN’T carted off to jail when it was discovered I headed up a group of Students for a Democratic Society members who’s sole mission was to render inoperative the majority of Washington DC’s police cars (I’m blushing).

A lot’s changed since 1969. I’ve tried to keep pace, but occasionally, I can only sit back in horror and wonder how education, a free press, politicians and the basic American character could have become so polluted with hate, purposeful misinformation and self-interest. It’s a different country than it was before 1980. I don’t want to recognize it.

In case you don’t already know, my training is in sensory neurophysiology. I did what most college professors do. I performed and published my research in basic science and I taught. I taught grad students, medical students, undergraduates and I even taught residents. I had graduate students in my labs and they learned as they helped conduct the ongoing work of my laboratories.

I cut short my academic career for several reasons. Some had to do with me. Others had to do with the students I was finding in the early ’80s. They were generally white, rich and their expectations showed they’d never, for instance, had the learning experience of driving a cab in an urban setting because they needed the money to eat.  They were like most very wealthy, very protected middle-class kids. They lacked “seasoning”. They went where they were pointed, but had very little idea of what to do when they got there. I had very high expectations.

The old farts raising Hell at town meetings are quite different. First, they give every appearance of treating utter ignorance as a major positive character trait.  They aren’t interested in discussing much of anything, particularly health care. Their sole intent is to make sure that whatever programs President Obama campaigned on and was elected to accomplish fail. But (incredibly), my guess is that about half of the most disruptive I’ve seen are eligible for, and probably happily participating in Medicare; the Public Option.

There don’t seem to be many young people at these affairs. I’m sure they’re there. I just haven’t seen them. It just seems to be raggy, yelling, old people  like me. Unlike me, they seem to have a lot of free time on their hands, so I guess they’re either unemployed or retired. In either case, they’re the ones who’d benefit the most from a system that included a public option for all citizens.

It’s not that I couldn’t be wrong. I could be. But when you’re thinking about your health care, and I include those of you with so-called “gold-plated” insurance plans, think about this. When you get cancer, or any other life-threatening disease, you’ll find yourself spending more time figuring out the reality of your health insurance than figuring out how to not die. It’s in your insurance company’s best interest to settle your illness as quickly as possible. While you’re fighting to “not die”, will you have the extra strength to fight your insurance company — alone? Don’t kid yourself. At the precise moment you’re least able to deal with anything but not dying, you’ll have to take energy away from that life-or-death struggle to fight to get the care you think you paid for. If you’re in Medicare, it’s not an issue.

As I said at the outset, I’m as conservative as I can be. I’m old, out-of-date and thinking the world I’m living in has little or nothing to do with the world I was born into. But I do know that the present American health care system is broken. I’ve been a part of it in the past and I thought it was broken then. I watch as well-meaning people with little or no empathy for the plight of others rant about matters that are just mis-information placed there purposely by the capitalists, the  moneyed interests who, for some reason, feel threatened by competition.

Irony is not dead. People are dead. And the system’s to blame.