Yeah, he showed up again. This time I was putting a shirt back on the rack at Target and when I pulled the other shirts apart to make a space, his face was there. That's all - just his face. When I jumped back I ran into somebody. It was him. With his face.
He gets a kick out of this stuff. I can tell because he always has this weird grin on his face when he does it, like maybe he would if he told you he'd set up a microphone in your room one night and streamed your snoring on Netflix. Anyway, he insisted on buying me lunch.
Actually, he suggested it - insisting wasn't necessary, especially when his suggestion was Tripp's for a steak. I resisted the idea of asking him where he got the money - I already had this mental picture of his face being in the cash drawer at a 7-11 somewhere when the Indian guy opened it up to make change . . .
"So, what was all this uproar about that thing - what is it, mandate? - what was that about?"
Oh, good grief; do we have to talk about that . . .
"Do we have to talk about that?"
"No. But you know, I am buying you lunch . . ."
"Mhmm - yeff - mmm - yeff yuar.."
"I remember you saying something once about not talking with your mouth full."
This was a lot easier when he didn't know anything about our customs . . .
Well, he did wait until we finished the steaks before he really wanted to talk about it. I was leaning back against the side of the booth with my legs stretched out over the bench, cuddling a cup of coffee and wondering how magnificent it would feel to step out of the booth and into bed for a nap . .
"So what about it, this mandate thing?"
"Well, the government said . ."
"Wait - is this the government that tells a small handful of guys to spend millions of dollars and years of time figuring out if a couple of other guys are good enough to have the keys to the missiles on one of your boomers, and nobody else is allowed to make any suggestions, but that allows anybody, even people who are dead or here illegally, or who can't display even the simplest knowledge of how your government is supposed to work, pick the guy that controls all of the missiles?"
"Yeah, that one."
"Okay."
This wasn't getting off to a very good start; at least he didn't bring up that thing about trying to control gun violence by giving guns to people who like to kill people with guns . . .
"So anyway, the government said our health care system was in bad shape - too expensive to get sick, insurance costs were through the roof, sometimes even if you had it they'd find a way not to pay. Fact is, that stuff was true. We really did need to do something about it."
"I understand the problem, but you said "we". We who?"
"The government."
"The government is we?"
"Well, I . . ."
"Doesn't that Constitution thing say that the "we" is the people who created the government? How can "we" be the same thing as the government?"
Sometimes this guy's naivete can find it's way under your skin - kind of like some guy repeatedly asking you for detailed instructions on how to walk. I suppose I could wish I had stayed out of Target, just gone home and had some tuna fish, but he'd have just showed up in my closet . . .
"Well, what we do is we pick people to do the government stuff for us, see? There are too many of us to all get together at one time and place, so we pick a real small number to get together in one building and act for us to make laws, that sort of thing."
"Aah, okay. So what did you do?"
"Me?"
"Yes, you. The "we". Government. What did you do?"
I can tell I'm not going to like where this is going. Happens every time - he asks obvious questions and we look like toads as a result of me telling the truth. Sometimes I wish I'd skipped The Mediterranean Cafe that night, but I keep remembering that cold cure thing . . .
"Well, they wrote two-thousand seven hundred pages of instructions . ."
"Who did? Who's "they"?"
"The government."
"But you said the government is you."
"Well, yeah, but not literally! It's those other people, so I say "they" instead of "we". Now, can I get on with this?"
"Sure."
"Alright, so they wrote two thousand seven hundred pages of instructions telling everybody involved in health care all the rules they had to follow, then they said we all had to buy insurance whether we wanted to or needed to or not, and if we didn't we had to pay a tax. I mean, a penalty. Well, actually it turned out to be a tax because the Supreme Court says that's what it was, because if it wasn't, the law wouldn't be the law."
His eyes, by this time, were completely out of focus. He looked like Data on "Star Trek" when somebody hit his "Off" button. Stayed that way for about 25 seconds before he started back up again . . .
"The Supreme Court?"
"Yeah, they get to decide whether or not the a law is okay by the Constitution."
"Okay, so at first it wasn't a tax?"
"Right."
"But now it is."
"Yes."
"Why did it have to become a tax?"
"Because if it wasn't, the law wouldn't be Constitutional."
"So why didn't they call it a tax in the first place?"
"Because they figured the people wouldn't like it."
"You mean the "we"?
"Yeah."
"Well, if "we" wouldn't like it, why did they make it?"
"Because we knew we had a serious problem and we knew we needed to do something about it."
"So they did something about it by doing something "we" wouldn't like, and they had to call the tax something besides a tax, otherwise "we" couldn't do what "we" wanted?"
"Something like that, yeah . . ."
Another 20 or 30 seconds of glazed eyes. I'm beginning to wonder if this isn't some sort of uplink action to a big mainframe in geosynchronous orbit 22,300 miles out whenever he gets confronted with certain forms of human activity. I also wonder if isn't a series of commands that will unleash about 357 average-sized suns worth of fusion aimed at D.C. Not that that would make him a bad person.
"Okay, so now it's a tax and it's Constitutional. So everybody has to read those two thousand seven hundred pages of instructions?"
"Yeah, but we had to wait until it was passed before we could."
"What?"
"Umm .. skip it."
"So that solved all the problems?"
"No; it won't all go into effect for another year and a half."
"And then it will solve all the problems?"
"No, it will make them worse."
"Worse?"
"Yep. They - we - did such a bad job of writing the instructions that it will make virtually everything worse. In fact, the damage it will cause will go way beyond the problems we had with health care."
"You wrote two thousand seven hundred pages of instructions and got them wrong?"
"Mhmm . . "
"The mandate was in there? What did that do?"
"That's the thing that says we all have to buy health insurance, and if we don't we pay a penalty."
"You mean a tax."
"Yeah, right, a tax."
"That's okay? "We" telling you that you have to buy something?"
"Well, it's not okay with me."
"But you are "we"."
Another 10 seconds . . .
"Complicated, I know."
"Mind a suggestion?"
"Shoot."
"Scrap the whole thing and start over."
Great idea. "We" will get right on it . . .
