Fight for the 3.33333333 × 10 to the 9th.

I must confess.

Good, loyal pro-labor, pro-choice godless pinko immigrant that i strive to be, i don't sympathize for a moment with this idea that We are the 99%!.


Now hear me out. It's not like i got the ideas from the free republic or something. There's a reason behind it, and along with it you'll discover why I would never say I support Obamacare even if it didn't fly in the face of everything I believe health care should be.

The problem i see more often than I would like to admit on the left is a failure to set the tone. To properly frame the narrative, if i were to utilize the appropriate buzzwords.

To illustrate, a brief divergence. Immigration. There are countless people in America who are both immigrants and Not Brown. Well ok, not "countless". But a number somewhere within the range of "lots and lots" and "i'm too lazy to find an exact number for some brief divergence". When you see the right speak against immigration, what do you see? Inevitably, someone hispanic and shifty looking. So the left tries to prove the stereotypes about immigration are false...by trotting out a hispanic pillar of the community. Jesus H Christ on a badly patrolled border crossing...Can we just ONCE not play into the predetermined image of immigrants that your supposed opponents dictated?

(Honest, that was brief for me.)

Which brings me to the 99%, or so it's called. First, as i see it one can either admit that class war is real and very much active, or ignore what one knows to be true in order to preserve inner peace or whatever else may gain from such voluntary ignorance. So yes, it IS the rich vs the poor, or at the very least vs the not rich. So yes, ok..In that sense, maybe it is the 1% that we're up against.

But that is WAY too easy. Any time a message popularizes with a message or moral this simplistic, so easily consumed and black & white, it should automatically raise the hackles. Sure, you may be saying, but we MADE the message! We got the word out and they HAD to repeat it! Only, um...They didn't. You may have made the slogan, you may have put it on the signs, but you still don't determine content at CNN or the AP. There's plenty of grassroots effort that gets ignored blatantly, simply yelling loud enough does not determine mainstream adoption. The idea of the 99% became popular because it's easy. Rich vs poor. So simple anyone can grasp it immediately, and so simplistic anyone will automatically feel included. Hey, i'm not rich! Shit, it must be because the rich are greedy. Well, partially perhaps.

But you know, there's plenty of working class, non 1% people i can think of that have dedicated significant time and effort to opposing issues like rights for workers, healthcare and immigration. They're part of the 99% too. No, I'm sorry. To quote the immortal Chuck D, every brother ain't a brother. I know i wouldn't stand shoulder to shoulder to someone dedicated to RTW, deporting everyone not like him and obliterating social security, and I know he probably isn't going to jump to support me.

Not all of the rich are wrong, not all of the poor are right. It's insulting to the intelligence of the reader or listener to suggest to them that it's that easy. But hey...Give people a slogan, a sign and a cause, and they'll march. They'll cheer. They'll occupy....and then? Well, they issue a loose list of demands saying they won't leave until corporate greed is officially a class A felony...and the news proceeds to show video of the most violently inclined and unwashed among them committing petty crimes and everyone, despite technically being part of the 99%, sits smugly in the thought that the poor are lazy and self-inflicted and don't respect the rule of law. Rich are still rich. Poor are still marginalized, middle are still utilized as layer of insulation between the two.

Why do we let our supposed opponents dictate the terms? Do you really believe that anyone in the supposed 1% stays up at night worrying about the 99% ending his good life as he knows it? No, because he knows full well that when push comes to shove, he can buy off a strong enough segment of that 99% to fight the remainder. This ideal may be empowering to many, and there is value in that. But my concern is that this sense of empowerment, of being part of the struggle, of fighting the good fight simply by speaking out against the unnamed 1%...Comes at the expense of ever really fighting anything. The same logic that led to camping out in a park leading to people calling it the equivalent of the great protests of the 60's: The rules have been written for you, often enough by your opponent; now just do your part, wear your tshirt and show up. Congratulations, you're fighting the man.

No. You are fulfilling their predetermined role of someone fighting the man.

Which, in a brief closer, brings me to health reform. I still refuse to use the term obamacare, much as i may not like it. First, in brief: I am Canadian, I grew up in a place with a health care program that was perhaps flawed...but at least it was there. i needed minor surgery 4 times before i was 10, and my parents never stayed up worrying about hospital bills. i needed surgery, so i went to the hospital and got surgery and we all went on with life. THAT is healthcare.

We in the US, however, have a web of corporate insurance agencies and the marketing of health as a commodity similar to motor oil and tide. I've been hospitalized a time or 20 here as well, and even WITH insurance, i couldn't tell you what i owe. Enough that i wonder if i could keep up even if i ignored just about everything else, at any rate.

So Obama wants to reform it...OK. One: HR 676. You want reform? it's been languishing in the house for years. Pass it, reform is done. but no..because Two: Obama sold out to the insurance and pharma lobbies from day 0. As such, we got a watered down joke of a compromise that could've been written by Aetna.

Republicans, of course, still hate it because Obama signed it and Obama = evil always and forever. Repeal Obamacare! Scrap Obamacare! it's all his idea! kill it with fire! In a eerily 1984-ish feeling, i clearly DO remember democrats saying the term Obamacare was an unfair term, that this was health reform that helped Americans, not some personal presidential agenda. Smart. Sell it as reform, even if it isn't or isn't something i like: At least define the terms, that he DID something.

Skip ahead to current, and we've got Dems proudly saying they support Obamacare.

Now, is this a case of their taking the term back? Stripping its power by using it on their own terms?

Or maybe just that once again, the ground rules of the fight have been set by one side, and ironically and sadly enough, the side that I truly believe is right and has the people behind it has ceded its power to its opponents in allowing them to write them?

So...no. I can't say i'm with the 99%, noble as it is. There's just too many in that 99 that aren't with us, and we are only weakened by allowing our issues to be collectively crammed into that one neatly labeled box.

On strength.

I am, to quote whomever, not the man I used to be.

When I met Jen in 1997, I was living in Spokane, Washington. I worked in a hotel downtown (the only organized facility in town that provided banquet facilities, btw: HERE was my first union.) delivering room service, 530am-130pm. It was a great job at the time. I'd ride my bike to work from the north side, deliver coffee to haggard and grateful pilots and be done by early afternoon with a pocket full of tips. I was about 235lbs, healthy and moderately happy, or as happy one would expect a 18-19 year old with family issues who reads a lot to be.

In retrospect, this was probably that carefree time everyone has and looks back on fondly.

Skipping to current day: I'm 6'9", and it's been 10 years since i've been able to keep my weight over 200lbs. It's gone as low as 162. That may not sound terribly low, but over a frame that size, it tends to stretch pretty thin. Caused by either nasty steroids, mood swings or just general bad temper, there's been numerous instances where i've ended up in conflict with total strangers in public....This, however has never led to any sort of fighting, as i always seem to scare people off. I have no pretenses that it's because i'd come out the good end if it came to blows; I know it's simply because i generally wear enough layers that i don't look too gaunt and i'm tall and dour enough to intimidate people as long as they don't know me.

Despite all that I, in, my own way, feel very secure in the idea that I am strong.

This past November or so, i finally conceded that I could no longer avoid getting a colonoscopy. Yes, i know. Important after you're 50 or so. True, unless you're 33 and live with ulcerative colitis. Anyway, i'd been avoiding this for months to years, but wanted to give my new gastroenterologist a honest shot, so in i went for it. I'm in the lucky 20% that respond to the most effective drug with worse symptoms, so I knew my condition wasn't great. I was shown his review notes afterward: Among things you never want to hear and people you never want to hear them from, it's the guy who did your scope, and his using phrases such as "completely burned out" and "exceptionally severe in its severity". Also mentioned my heightened risk for colon cancer, as they can generally screen for it by biopsy, but i'm too inflamed to safely take a sample without risking uncontrollable bleeding. I remember thinking, you know...What the fuck. How the hell did it come to this?

Then i went back to work the next day. It all sounded awful, but not terribly surprising.

Not surprisingly i suppose, this has been the consistent source of most of my problems. By May of last year, it landed me in my dr's office, hoping they could at least tell me why i was so tired. They got my blood work back and insisted upon calling an ambulance to transport me to the hospital. Directly across the street.

10 days later, after god knows how much in IV fluids and 11 units of blood transfused, i left feeling pretty  good. I was eating well, gaining weight, and looking forward to getting back to work soon. Early June, i went out for dinner, made a dash for the car in the rain, slipped and broke my femur. i clearly remember asking, between screams of blinding pain and much profanity, why this had to happen to me. Why everything else wasn't enough.

There is a reason. I may not be privy to it yet, but I believe firmly that there is one.

After 6 hours in the ER and 3 hours in surgery, i woke up in recovery rather disappointed that I was still in pain. I was moved into my home for the next 3 weeks at 11am the next morning, and after 15 minutes or so of aid and struggle, I got up and hobbled to the new bed.

This is one of the things I am most proud of. After seeing x rays at 10 thursday night of my leg broken so badly that the cleanly snapped ends were crossed at a 90 degree angle and undergoing emergency placement of an 18" rod to hold it all together, I was on my feet (ok, with a walker) the next day when Jen came by over lunch. It hurt like hell that day and for most of the 40 or so following, but when I left the rehab center 4 weeks later, i walked out.

There are many kinds of strength. I can't run a marathon, can't lift much more than my dog, but i know I can confront the absolute worst of circumstance, take the pain and get up the next morning.

Starting somewhere.

A couple friends have told me i should write a book. I'm not sure i agree. It's hard to be convinced it's all worth reading when I wasn't that enthused about living it the first time around.

September 10, 2001 I started a temp assignment in the Maine Department of Education. I'd been out of work for a while, so that was great. The next day, of course, things went somewhat awry. I remember being thoroughly pissed when we all got sent home. I didn't fully realize what had happened, of course, but was more concerned with the fact that I as a temp didn't get paid if i wasn't working.

That friday, the 14th, i was back in the ER and the attending doctor mentioned in passing that due to my diagnosis with diabetes, they'd be admitting me. She thought a nurse had already told me. We all had a rather awkward moment when wife and I explained that no one had told us anything. I refused to accept such a thing and decided i'd just go home. At that point I'd only been in the ER 2 or 3 times, and the idea of being admitted still scared me.

Come to the end of 2011. I've been working for the state for 8 years or so, which i find a bit hard to get my head around in and of itself. I spend a week or so in mid-december in the hospital, but it's really no longer even noteworthy. I spent 1/2 the year out of work due to one medical issue or another and getting admitted is such a regular thing that the unit nurses greet me by name.

It's such a cliched way of putting it...But this is not at all how I expected things to turn out. When people ask how i'm feeling now, i say i'm pretty good, that i haven't been in the hospital yet this year. It generally seems to elicit laughter, but i mean this in all seriousness. Currently "good" means i'm usually tired and often sore, but I can generally still get up and go when i want/need to. It means i don't venture into large stores without hitting a bathroom first, cause i know if i get partway through and have to go, i can't bend my knee enough to crouch down and hold it in. It means getting IV infusions of fluids and iron weekly, but regular lab work showing my blood count hold flat or decrease. It means it sucks a lot of the time, but it beats where I have been, so I try to remain grateful.

There's more than this to say, I suppose, but that will work as a start.