In the May 1 issue, everyone should read David Remnick on Trump's first one hundred days. Makes you want to break out the powder and shot and march on Washington.
Uh-oh -- after the past few days, I already want to do that! Reading the article might put me over the edge, next thing you know I'll be getting background checked at the powder-and-shot store.
My son and I were talking on the phone yesterday, and for once we agreed on something -- that when he launches his murderous rampage, the first target should be Paul Ryan. But I reneged and said, no, I'm an opponent of capital punishment, I don't really want Paul Ryan killed, though I can't say that if he died I'd shed a tear. "Shed a tear?" my son replied. "If Paul Ryan died, all of social media would be overflowing with unbridled celebration."
Then this morning, I thought, what if something one of Paul Ryan's kids, a la Jimmy Kimmel's baby, were to have a health crisis of some kind? Would Ryan have a change of heart, the way Sheryl Sandberg did when she wrote a piece after her husband died admitting that when she wrote
Lean In she didn't get it, didn't fully understand how hard it could be for single mothers (and imagine, some single mothers have no full-time live-in nannies!).
But then, getting back to Paul Ryan, I thought, nah, he won't give it any more thought than he does now because he'll be mentally and physically insulated from reality -- his family is fully and I'm sure generously insured, courtesy of U.S. taxpayers.
Some people are calling for the AHCA to be named Trumpcare, to saddle Trump with the label. I disagree. Not that I absolve Trump of blame, but any Republican president would have led to the same outcome. I think Trump's involvement in structuring the plan was, as
Slate put it, basically handing Paul Ryan a piece of paper with "Fix health care" scrawled on it. I think it should be called Ryancare, the way we call the McCarthy Hearings the McCarthy Hearings.
I'm hoping for an equivalent of Joseph N. Welch to step in and ask Ryan et. all, as they stood outside on the lawn after the vote and smiling and clapping to celebrate the suffering and deaths of millions of Americans, to step up and say, "Have you no sense of decency?"