It’s Gonna Get Worse

Holy Shit, right?!? So, I’ve been saying it for a few years now. Since around the time Trump won the 2016 election. Our democracy. Our freedoms. Our democratic way of life. They are all in jeopardy.

US Supreme Kangaroo Court

The rumored leak that the US Supreme Court is about to strike down 50 years worth of precedent-upon-precedent on abortion should strike fear in your heart. Not just fear. Terror.

Because this horror is just beginning, I’m afraid. The Republicans have accomplished nothing less than a political coup of our highest ‘impartial’ court, in order to further the extreme Right Wing’s agenda. 80% of Americans think women should have the right to choose, but here we are anyway. Experts say #LGBTQ rights and #Obamacare are next. The War on the Rest of Us has begun.

This ‘Us vs. Them’ phase that we’ve entered into is actually predictable, as the far right religious extreme that steers the Republican Party finds themselves in a battle against Satan to bring about some ‘New Jerusalem’. This is not just Red vs. Blue for them. It’s a battle for their very souls. This is about God’s Will, and what their leaders have taught them was right and true. It’s worth dying for. Or killing.

Approximately 25% of our country is trying to purge themselves of their sinful nature and guilty consciences, by forcing their religion on the rest of us for our ‘own good’. They say it’s what The Founders intended, when the First Amendment clearly says the polar opposite. They say it’s about #RightToLife, but threaten to kill women who have an abortion via the death penalty. This is a powerful cult, and they’ve found a validated soapbox, thanks to Donald Trump.

The Truth is, they fear their decline. They are staging this battle, this Holy War, because they see a growing threat from a majority that knows we need change. We can’t go on pretending that everyone is equal while clearly some of us are ‘more equal than others’. While so many of us are hungry or homeless. Billionaires cannot multiply their wealth while the masses die, in any society that will succeed without drastic change.

“No one is looking out for the little guy, except to carefully place a foot upon his head as a boost up the ladder.”

~Jamie Gray ’22

Social justice doesn’t just happen. It is a hard won prize, awarded through protest and politics. It can happen here. It IS happening here. But the same guys that brought you the #WarOnDrugs and #WarOnTerror are not kidding around this time, and they are out to stop it from happening at all costs.

The leaders of The Right are against equality under the law. No equality for women. No equality for black and brown people. No justice for all. They believe in the Almighty Dollar, and use God-the-Whisperer to control their zombie hordes. They believe in lies, and use guns to enforce their unpopular beliefs upon others, and they have mobilized for War.

It’s time the rest of us get serious too, because if we keep saying ‘This is Fine’, we’ll soon find out it’s much worse than we can take. Worse than it is already. ~jg #Vote. #Protest. #Resist.

Jamie Gray is a writer, musician, and critic of the inane and insane.

Authors Note: All opinions expressed here are just that: opinions. If you don’t like mine, I probably won’t like yours either. Let’s just nod, and walk away. Maybe come back with solutions instead of opinions. Because of the two, only solutions actually matter.

Fuck Insurance (Especially health insurance).

All insurance is a scam. Health Insurance is a fucking crime.
You have insurance, you think, ‘Cool I’m covered’. But nope…you still have to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars. How is that fair?

Insurance should be fucking insurance. I get sick. I’m insured. Insurance fucking pays, not me. It’s not really insurance if they get you coming and going. You pay all that money up front…every month…hundreds of dollars, maybe thousands per year. Sometimes they take it right out of your paycheck, before you ever see it.

Then you get sick. You give em the card, cross your fingers and pray. Deductible here. CoPay there. Deny this. Pro-rated that. You get out of the hospital, and before your recovery is even complete, they start coming: A bill from this doctor you don’t remember. A charge for this test and that screening. You haven’t even gotten back to work, and you’re buried in red ink.

What the fuck people. How is THIS the ‘best’ healthcare? If they save your life and then take your house to cover the cost…and that’s if you HAVE insurance. If you don’t, good luck even getting the services you need. When they know they aren’t getting paid, they somehow manage to do the barest minimum. Imagine that. For-Profit Hospitals putting profits above the best healthcare for all. WhoDaThunk?

Fuck Capitalism. Services like healthcare, police, fire, EMS, ambulance, military, prisons, education. These should NEVER be privatized. Everyone has the right to the best services we can provide when it comes to health and safety. People shouldn’t have to worry about paying the bills for these services. It should be included in our taxes, even if they are a little higher.

Separate but equal doesn’t work any more in healthcare than it does in education. Haves and have-nots alike should be protected from harm as citizens of an advanced and equitable society. Exploitation and greed have no place competing with the Hippocratic Oath for healthcare dollars. Those dollars are best spent on research, not drug commercials, dividends and CEO salaries.

The only way you do that is to get rid of the insurance companies and big pharma. Our universities, properly funded by tax dollars, could be an amazing core of medical research and medicine development…for the good of ALL, not just the shareholders and board of directors. No more price gouging on critical medicines. No more rationing of new medical treatments to the well-to-do and connected.

That’s what socialized medicine could be. It doesn’t have to be a poorly designed and inequitable system. There are plenty of examples of socialized medicine around the world that are models for a better standard of care than ours.

Healthcare is a human right, in a society that has advanced to the point where we CAN CHOOSE between profit and doing the right thing.

Do we really want to be THAT country? The one that chooses profits? Because WE have a choice. ~jg

New York writer and musician, Jamie Gray

Authors Note: All opinions expressed here are just that: opinions. If you don’t like mine, I probably won’t like yours either. Let’s just nod, and walk away. Maybe come back with solutions instead of opinions. Because of the two, only solutions actually matter.

Happy 2022*

Happy 2022*. Staying Home. Staying Stoned.

I truly thought 2020 was the worst year ever. I was optimistic when it ended. I thought things would be better in 2021. Here we are anyway.

Last Year’s New Year’s Message: Happy 2021 It Might Not Suck

2022. Pandemic year two. They say it will become endemic. That we will learn to live with COVID-19. Like the flu.

Fuck.

Some really great things have happened this year. Most of them have come with caveats and asterisks. Just like 2020. *Pandemic year. It’s easy to forget the little joys in the big hurt. Lots of hurt.

We moved to upstate NY this year. That was a good thing.

This overwhelming sadness is what I’ll remember most about these times. So much loss. My spirit feels beaten and bruised. PTSD seems the new norm, in a world where we must fear living among liars and idiots, who would profit or die by denial of the common sense measures to keep everyone well.

We lost Betty White on the last day of this piece of shit year, confirming it’s status as ‘worst year ever’. #RIPBetty

I don’t go anywhere that isn’t absolutely necessary anymore. Certainly not the crowded indoor areas where music and alcohol flow. The places we used to love to go. Where life stopped for a few short hours, and the only thing that mattered was how the music moved the crowd. Where we all came together, sometimes encroaching on each other’s personal space, if only because somebody lost their balance in the drunken, drug steeped swerve to a frenzied beat that infected the entire crowd. It was fun. It didn’t feel like a death threat, like now.

COVID killed businesses across the country in 2021.

If this is what ‘living with it’ will be like, I don’t think I’m ready for that. I’m not ready to go ANYWHERE without an N95 mask and a litre of hand sanitizer. I don’t see that changing because they start calling it an ENdemic instead of PANdemic. Call it whatever you want. I’m staying home.

So Happy 2022 from my house. Where I plan to spend the year, with the (vaccinated) ones I love most. ~jg

*Pandemic year three.

Jamie Gray | Musician and Writer. Pessimistic optimist.

Authors Note: All opinions expressed here are just that: opinions. If you don’t like mine, I probably won’t like yours either. Let’s just nod, and walk away. Maybe come back with solutions instead of opinions. Because of the two, only solutions actually matter.