Spare me the Bullshit all you who seek to capture Medicare Dollars

Like Professors Penner and Rowe, in their commentary on Plato's "Lysis", I am not much impressed by claims of pure altruism.

I was, indeed, much heartened by their forthright rejection of such claims.

And I am much irritated ((not to say pissed off)) when people have the temerity to praise me for helping my parents. I suspect that many people would like to absorb my activities under the label of "selfless love" or some other form of religous bullshit.

And that really does piss me off.

No, it's really not a "blessing". Nor is it a miracle.

If I didn't help them, no one else would.

---and that fact is an indictment of the USA system of medical provision. It is a great, big damning fact.....because it is repeated in many families....

So, when someone who makes money off the elderly tells me that I am a "blessing", I hear a large bit of false consciouness and utter ignorance--as well as Mystification to cover up the very real sacrifice that I am making. (I may never recover from the negative consquences of this
fact.)

In fact, I would say that such a person does not in the least understand what I am doing or why I am doing it.

They would like to save themselves from thinking by appealing to a bullshit category taken from religion---selfless love. Sorry, there is no such thing.

Loving Juliette, Romeo is happier---that's the sort of thing lovers do say. And a lover who doesn't or wouldn't is probably in an abusive relationship, or, at any rate, a relationship that is rapidly going downhill, and (hopefully) ending...

But trying to categorize my actions in that way is also a way of ignoring the FAILURE of the Health Maintenance 'System of which they are a part!

Instead of saying the honest thing: The USA system is failing, does not do what it should, and this person recognized it, and tried to make up for that failure....
they would prefer to say:
How saintly! How altruistic! How Christian!

I am getting sick just thinking about it.

note:
The above reflections were inspired/provoked by a very real conversation with a manager at "AM Health Care" El Paso, Texas...