What I Learned in Denver Today

So there I was in the Denver Airport. I found a seat near a plug so I could re-charge my laptop, not too crowded yet, an hour and a half before departure.

A very large, loud fellow, belly overhanging his gut, in fact even over his business, if you know what I mean, was seated across from me. Dressed in shorts and sandals, he was slouched in the seat, which barely contained his butt. Next to him was his wife, sitting with her back to him, chatting with the woman seated behind them. An older gentleman stood next to him in the aisle.

The conversation started simply enough, talking about how the prairies used to be farmed. Whole sections would be harvested by large crews of local farmers and some itinerants working together. As they finished, they’d move from one farmer’s fields to the next. The farmers who had dug down and purchased the equipment being used cooperatively took a cut, and whew, boy, some of them really made out well. The ones that didn’t invest in the equipment, their future, basically, had a tough time.

“So what do you think of our president?” asked the big guy. “Oh, I don’t know, I don’t really follow that stuff,” said the senior. I’m guessing he was about 80+.

Naturally, my ears perked up at this, since I was looking for a subject for our blog today.

“He scares the life out of me!” warned the big mouth. Oh, jeez, here we go, I thought. And we did.

From one Republican talking point to another, this obnoxious boob railed, his voice booming through the gate area.

National debt will be 70% of GDP … that Obama just wants to keep our kids in debt forever… he’s just throwing everything he can think of at the wall to see what will stick.

Health care reform means spending, and rationing, and, he warned, no new knee or hip for the old guy. With this Obama plan, some panel would decide he was too old and he wasn’t worth it, so he’d just be laid up for the rest of his life..

The old guy tried to change the tone, went to “I was in for 2 weeks when I had mine done, now they send you home after one day!”

Big mouth didn’t take the bait, he kept right on point.

Subtly, people around him changed seats, it seemed to me trying to get out of earshot, but I’m afraid that wasn’t possible.

Yet no one said a word to contradict or engage him in dialog. I lost my appetite for the salad I’d purchased, and every now and then I’d mutter, increasingly louder hoping he might hear me, that this guy obviously had very limited information resources. But he never heard me.

“Why do you think all those Canadians come down here – those Brits. But HE just wants to ruin it for everybody….”

Chappaquiddick. “That Kennedy was drunk when he had the “accident” (picture his chubby stubby fingers making little quotation marks in the air), and he passed all these houses with lights on and didn’t stop for help. He didn’t report it until 10:00 the next morning. He was sober by then, ya see. That guy – a drunkard, a womanizer, and the media just kept sucking up to the lefties, painting the guy as a saint. I saw a documentary on channel 10 … and we learned about the nefarious ways father Joe Kennedy made his fortune.” (I guess channel 10 doesn’t count as media.)

“And THIS is the guy they wanted to hand over the reins to to ruin our health care system…” and it went on. “Now they don’t know what to do with themselves, except ruin our economy with this fool’s dream.”

Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention that he told the old man that he’d been in the mortgage brokering business for years, and that he had arranged deals for all kinds of people, not the generation of farmers who paid cash for everything because they worked hard and saved. No, these were people of subsequent generations, who had inherited the farm, or the little store, or whatever, and they had no idea how hard it was to make that first buck. They just wanted it handed to them, and so he had done it, but look where it got everybody.

Clearly HE had nothing to do with it. He just gave them what they wanted – even when he knew they couldn’t handle it.

As is my luck, I got to sit two rows behind big mouth. A few minutes later, my seat companion arrived, wearily lugging two carryon bags. She was bald. The kind of bald you get from chemotherapy. It took me a while to get up the courage to broach the subject, but she confirmed.

“If I may ask, do you have good health insurance? Is all this being paid for?”

So far it’s not too bad, she confided, but I can’t work now and my insurance will end in three more months. Hopefully, I’ll be in remission by then… but I don’t know if I’ll be able to get insurance again.

I wanted to introduce the gentlewoman to big mouth, to put the lie to his bombast. But I couldn’t. Practically, morally, and culturally, I couldn’t put her through that, and I couldn’t bear the thought of his trying to convince her that our so-called health care system is the best in the world.

This is what we’re up against, folks. Unless people like me – and you – find the courage to speak up, the big mouths like this guy are going to dominate the public discussion. That’s what I learned today.

JM