What the desperately ill and Ukraine have in common

Death beats slavery every time

Preface: I am in a “rehab” facility as a consequence of back surgery last Monday (Luigi Mangione had back surgery; repeated and desultory encounters with the medical industrial complex will nourish a homicidal disposition.) I am writing on my phone, without any word processing tools, can barely see and my once graceful prose may seem awkward and error_ridden. The myriad misery- inducing factors may rob this of beauty or verbal fluidity. Read this for ideas; not linguistic finesse.

THE RUSSO UKRAINE WAR AND THE RIGHT TO DIE

When I was young and strong, I was often miserably unhappy. My highly neurotic, upwardly mobile Jewish milieu taught me that if my SATS were 1550 out of 1600 it was time to die because Ronald PerfectKaplinsky got 1600.

We were all frightfully stupid. Being physically ill underscores the preciousness and preeminence of freedom and the elemental joy of being able to MOVE. To run with your feet or to take off in your old ramshackle car which made you feel like a general commanding a tank when you were driving to Philadelphia to see a general admissions rolling stones concert.

People will tell us about that brilliant physicist (I forgot his name; he died of ALS not too long ago) who spoke via high tech devices that Made his simulated voice seem more eerie and castrated than Hal's voice (the computer from “2001, a Space Oddysey”) , but most of us are not designated fantastic people whose every word is aural manna from heaven. Most of us are not billionaires.

Most of us will rot on increasingly mediocre Medicare (for four decades reimbursement formulas have been tendering dwindling funds to providers). Hey, Mr. Catholic who believes life should never end. Hey Mr. Naive nudnick who has read too much hifalutin poetry extolling the glories of life. Hey, Mr historian who knows that FDR was a swell dude even though he couldn't walk. Learn something. Walk out of your classrooms and examine “long term” facilities which are permanently suffused with the odor of piss and shit, and old piss and shit that has fermented and become more prodigiously funky (if you are drunk on oxycontin) or fundamentally feral and vomit-provoking if you experience the “real politik” of life undressed by meds or political bromides.

You, Mr. opponent of euthanasia: how would you relish lying in piss and shit for six hours hopelessly waiting to be cleaned up. My doctor urged me to prepare legal instruments authorizing death when I want it because, he told me, new york hospitals are filled with forlorn and frightfully frail (that's an understatement; sometimes the emaciation recalls Auschwitz) patients who want to be given the gift of rest.

Ah, but you will remind me of all the great things FDR did despite his enchainment in a wheel chait.

I don't want to sound like an inveterate Marxist, so let me refer you to Liza minelli and Joel Grey singing “money makes the world go round “ in “Cabaret.”

(I am having trouble accessing you tube so I can't give you a clip of that sneeringly perverse performance)

Money matters and fdr triumphed over polio because, in part, he was loaded. (He was so liberal because he knew dollars had to be spent to alleviate pain.)

He hailed from Dutch settlers who bought Manhattan Island from “the Indians,” in 1620, for 16 dollars in the form of beads and cute necklaces. In 1680, or 16 years after the British took ny from the Dutch, ONE COULD BUY EVERYTHING FROM 14TH STREET TO 34TH STREET, FROM THE EAST RIVER TO THE HUDSON, FOR 200 DOLLARS. Today that would cost many trillions of dollars. Plus he was related to president Theodore Roosevelt, and in three hundred years in America his kin made themselves firmly ensconsed in american republican aristocracy. On top of that he was brilliant, gutsy and had relatIves and friends who could convince the media not to film his wheelchair and to orchestrate the very best press. He did fantastic things, but his power was forged by familial and financial power.

Without enormous financial and social assets choosing death is not cowardice. It is not running from life. It is looking at life with a stern and steely gaze, sans the fables of Bible stories and sacharine Barbara Streisand affected singing, and recognizing that life is both good and bad. It may be joyous celebrations, but when the cakes and candles are gone, and you are swimming in your piss snd shit, it's time to give an affirmative to that old biblical chant, “let my people go.” Let them go to sleep.

WHY UKRAINE HAS FOUGHT SO MAGNIFICENTLY

Some years back, some students, at one of our allegedly most enlightened universities, were protesting military involvement. (I dont remember the military conflict at issue) One impassioned girl waved a sign that said “nothing is worth dying for.”

IF YOU LOVE LIFE, SOMETIMES YOU WILL CHAMPION DEATH

Student activists have, quite rightly, often fought for peace.

But we have had too much pride to ever stomach the degradation of slavery. The people of Ukraine, apparently, consider Russian rule something frought with so much barbarism and abuse that they will die to deter it.

And three cheers for the man who bravely embraces death and will not be a slave. Like the Jews of Masada who knew that death was better than being a slave, like the civil rights marchers who understood Exodus so much better than most, like Spartacus and the concentration camp inmates (led by captured Soviet Jewish soldiers) who rebelled and destroyed the doom of Sobibor, freedom is more important than anything. And that applies to Ukrainians and miserable patients in hospitals who must wait 5 hours till an aide will give him a glass of water or a urinal ( I HAVE BEEN WAITING 5 HOURS FOR WATER. I BELIEVE THE STAFF DOESNT LIKE JEWS).

BTW: I may recover. I have no plans to do myself in. I simply wrote this to underscore how valueless life is when you have to beg for a urinal.