Swimming....

Trolls.... There's a yahoo group I follow (haven't ever enough time to really READ what they post, for the people there are largely thinkers & their posts detailed) that was overwhelmed with teabagger-istics recently (on one hand) and hyperactive sniping Christianity on the other.

How did the religion of the Prince of Peace become the province of these bullies and blowhards? Oh, well, that aside....

The 'bagger kept lambasting the President and so on - but the group's forum was supposedly about philosophy and although there's no reason that Reason can't be applied to current quandaries, when it becomes a political forum the passions infect it & it ceases to be a thoughtful place. The troll in question rightly cited Musonius Rufus (as I recall), saying that one SHOULD be roughed up & dismayed at one's self in an actual philosophical venue, but his high-testosterone bully-boy Right-Wing snapping and sniping also killed the flow of ideas and info about the topic. It became a brawl-venue for the trolls and the rest of us were shoved to one side.

What would Epictetus have said?

Chaos is a General Thing

Re Healthcare -
My "Improved Medicare for all!" guy, Don McCanne (don@mccanne.org), reports that:

Comment: Those individuals with good incomes and who have employer-sponsored health plans should not be complacent, but should be very concerned for the following reasons:

* The largest increases in the financial burden of health care have been occurring amongst middle- and higher-income people

* Among those with employer-sponsored private insurance, 18.4 percent face a high financial burden (spending over 10 percent of income on health care)

I'm inclined to accept this, since Don McCanne is not an apologist for the rich, and is moreover a confirmed universal healthcare proponent.

But this surprises me - the corporations soaking the middle- and upper-income brackets re healthcare costs? Progressive taxation by the corporations? Hmmmmm. Of course the rich can manage it (with good or bad grace), but that shrinking middle class is in more trouble.

GUILTY!

Guilty I am, of goldbricking today. "Must ... get back ... to ... work!" I chant mentally as I watch myself type away - my harmonia animae is out of kilter, or rather my proper ingenium is worming its way out as laziness or something similar.

And so - Farewell, Trent! Your term runs for ages, mine for only a bit longer, Earthly in years as I am....