Dying of Whiteness
I came across this anecdote in an interview with physician and social scientist Jonathan M. Metzl, whose book, “Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America’s Heartland,” was recently released. The book is about how rural whites came to embrace policies that are quite literally killing them, and this anecdote sums it up nicely:
Trevor is 41 and dying of liver disease. He lives in a low-income housing facility in Tennessee and he doesn’t have health insurance. Had Trevor lived in neighboring Kentucky, he might have topped the list of candidates for expensive medications called polymerase inhibitors, a life-saving liver transplant, or other forms of treatment and support. But Tennessee repeatedly blocked efforts to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act.
But Trevor is not mad at the state’s elected officials. “Ain’t no way I would ever support Obamacare or sign up for it,” he tells Metzl. “I would rather die.” When Metzl prods him about why he’d choose death over affordable health care, Trevor’s answer is telling. “We don’t need any more government in our lives. And in any case, no way I want my tax dollars paying for Mexicans or welfare queens.”
Trevor got his wish. He died of hepatitis C. That is an attitude that can be neither reasoned with nor compromised with. We have no choice but to defeat it.
“That is an attitude that can be neither reasoned with nor compromised with. We have no choice but to defeat it.”
A-fucking-men to that. No compromise. No wasted time and energy trying to persuade the unpersuadable. A loud & proud, unequivocal Democratic message at all times, and onward to November.
41 years old… damn
I know a few of these people, their desire to avoid being labeled a hopeless idiot overrides all else. Complete agreement with Jason, there is no fixing or even improving these people, as stated an “unequivocal Democratic Message At All Times”. Nothing less is acceptable, and it’s about time.
Very legal. Very cool.
I am glad he is dead. One less conservative bigot in this world.
I have tried and failed to understand that level of meanness — meanness in the old-fashioned sense, of petty cheapness, of caring more about a small sum of money than the other people hurt by his hard-heartedness. To prefer death to seeing other people benefit from your taxes? How do people learn to hate with such intensity, over such a self-destructive position? It’s stunning to me that you can get people to willingly destroy themselves to serve their billionaire masters.
It is 200,000 year old wiring in our monkey brain. There is a normal distribution curve of course, but that poor dupe really regards Mexicans as a bigger threat than the liver disease that was killing him.