I selected this topic mostly to see what followed. Uh-oh, colonoscopy, what’s that about!

                  To dispense with suspense, I’m clean. Not dying this time. Twenty-two years ago I wasn’t so lucky. After a routine exam my doc wanted to see me in his office. I do not take a good picture, but this was the worst. “See this?” What I saw was moist pink and red abstractions; what my doc saw was a tumor. “Will I live till my wedding?” I asked; it was scheduled in four months. “I won’t know till I operate,” he replied. “And I’m operating tomorrow.”

                  Thus does the world turn. Thus, on a sunny, joyous day, do we slip on the banana peel of chance. An hour before, my life had been commencing, with trumpets and pennons; now it was ending, with an ugly groan.

                  That yesterday’s colonoscopy was routine doesn’t keep the ghosts at bay. We fast-forward ourselves to graveside notwithstanding stern orders not to. Sooner or later we’re carrion, we jut our jaw – and maybe sooner.

                  This morning I’m buoyant. Clean! No need to revisit my interior for another three years! I wonder who – or if – I’ll be – at that distant hour. Younger, we tally the future in decades; in one’s seventies, in months.

                  Wonder boosts my buoyancy. What competence these attractive young professionals – doctors, nurses, helpers! What deliberation and discipline in their protocols! What science behind their prescriptions! And in this Manhattan hospital, what a range of nativities! If my caregivers weren’t immigrants, their parents were, or their parents’ parents. And the wealth our society expends on this one barely useful citizen! Three docs, four nurses, associated attendants, supplies, a pristine OR – all for me – whose only accomplishment has been to live so long. 

                  Then came dread: that our nation’s present leadership schemes to destroy these goods: to undermine science in favor of superstition and quackery, close our borders to newcomers who might contribute to our weal, starve pensions and medical benefits to enrich the rich. How sickening the greed, cruelty, luxury and mendacity of our controlling class. Will we waken in time?

                  History will long debate what curdled our American soul. A nation, founded on passionate and innovative ideals, rocketed to world domination and unrivaled prosperity, then sank into turpitude and idiocy in a few generations. We committed suicide – to gain what? More for a few?

                  We may save ourselves – if enough of us waken in time. But the mystery will persist. What failed in our mental machinery to drive ourselves off the cliff in the noonday sun? How did we betray both the common good and common sense?

                  I sadly conclude democracy doesn’t work. We the people are susceptible to mass delusion and folly. Alas, no other form of government works either – tyranny, monarchy, oligarchy, gerontocracy, aristocracy, plutocracy, communism – not for long. Governments that fail are overthrown; governments that succeed get gobbled by the greedy. “Striving to better,” observed Shakespeare, “oft we mar what’s well.”

                  What’s the optimal form of human organization? For my money, that which most enables and empowers the individual. That means participatory government, its powers monitored and restrained in the public interest. Lincoln got it right: “The legitimate object of government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done, but cannot do at all, or cannot so well do, for themselves—in their separate and individual capacities.”

                  I pray for a return to sanity before the onset of barbarity. Time on a gurney gives you time to think.