"Spew actual facts if you want," Dolt growled, "but if Obamacare passes, mark my word: soon there'll be a hammer-and-pickle on every flag."
The only pickle I could visualize was the one my sister and her husband were in. They'd just received the bill from the county hospital for Dimina's birth and, without healthcare, bankruptcy was imminent.
"Dolt," I said, "you slave away and yet you're still destitute, and now your medical bills will break you. How could you possibly be against affordable healthcare for you, your family and 47 million other uncovered Americans?"
"Because," he spat, "socialized medicine is un-American!"
Dimina wailed. I could relate.
"Don't buy the lie," I pleaded. "Polls show a huge majority of Americans want healthcare for all, and most also know that single-payer is the only real solution. Which, incidentally, is not socialized medicine, but socialized insurance."
"I'm against socializing. Period."
Well, so was I -- at least with my brother-in-law. Inexplicably, I pressed forward. Why did lemmings come to mind?
"Don't get hung up on pejoratives," I urged, thinking of all the ways the extreme right has sullied once-perfectly respectable terms in recent years.
"Then how're we supposed to buy food that doesn't rot?"
"Come again?"
"Without pejoratives, food spoils. Everybody knows that," Dolton declared triumphantly.
"I believe," I said slowly as I wondered what I'd ever had against disinheritance, "you may be thinking of preservatives, which is what they'll be dipping my brain in in a few hours after I donate my body to science immediately after leaving your place."
"Ha!" he snorted. "There won't be any donating needed once you liberals get your death panels in place."
"They already exist."
"Huh?"
