Quote:
Originally Posted by graciegirl
What do you hope will happen???
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Just as the poster states that she has to be herself, I must also be myself. I am part of a large international extended family scattered throughout the globe, many but not all in First World countries—Canada, Costa Rica, Argentina, England, Sweden, Germany, Russia, Ukraine, Japan, Australia, even Kenya for a period of time, and of course the US—and we all know each other! My immediate family are from New York and Montreal; hence I am a dual citizen.
Most of the countries where my family lived and continue to live recognize that the public health of their nations is related directly to the personal health of its residents in much the same way, analogously speaking, when it comes to universal public education and the economic success of their nations. So, what I would like to see in the US is the same recognition that a society is healthier when its residents have access to universal health care—as my international family members thus themselves are healthier and consequently better able to accomplish the goals of a successful nation as wekk as their personal goals..
When I first lived in TV, I met a woman from New Jersey who was bemoaning how difficult the Thanksgiving holiday is, having one cousin in Boston, one somewhere in Ohio, one in a suburb of Washington DC, and one more somewhere else in the Northeast. When I responded with how impossible it would be to get ALL of my family together at one time in one place, rattling off some of the countries where they live, she looked confused, and when I asked her if something I’d said wasn’t clear, she said she couldn’t understand “Why did they all move so far away?” How could I explain to someone of her mindset that my European family are all within a relatively short distance of where they were born, whereas I'm the 'DP' (displaced person)!
Further conversation made it clear that this person’s WORLDVIEW is “from Atlantic to Pacific, and from the border with the ‘51st state’ to ‘build the wall’.” But Manifest Destiny is over two centuries old; the Monroe Doctrine, essentially isolationist legislation, is nearly that old and barely if at all relevant in today’s world. Yet how many Americans share the same worldview as the woman from New Jersey? I'm answering the question honestly, but this response might be difficult for some to comprehend....