Just What We Need, More Violent Idiots.

I truly believe the universal healthcare coverage is crucial to our remaining a just, humane society. I've believed it since the early 90s, when two things happened: a, the Clintons started selling their healthcare reform plan, so it became a topic of many conversations, and b, I got out of college and needed to get a 9-to-5 job to get health insurance before I aged out of my parents' plan. Everyone's advice to me about health insurance signaled that they were terrified of not having it. (I, as a 21-year-old and therefore immortal, couldn't have cared less.) No one should have to choose between crushing debt and their life and health, or the health of their family.

It seems to me that the moral high ground in that argument is pretty damn clear: there's very little to be said for putting the profits of giant insurance companies over the health needs of everyday people.

Well, it would be clear if idiots like this guy weren't biting people's fingers off. Yeah, he was punched. So what? Ideally, he should just take it. Find a cop, get the guy arrested for assault. Then it's a whole other story. (Another point: Ideally, you shouldn't provoke someone into punching you in the first place, which seems to have happened here.)

Plan B should be to punch back. Plan B is a bad, bad plan. It's especially bad if the guy punching you is a senior citizen. It's human nature to fight back, sure, but no good will come of it. It will potentially escalate the violence, and of course it brings you down to their level.

Plan C is to bite your assailant's finger off. Screw Plan C. There is no Plan C. Plan C changes the whole story. Suddenly, instead of a garden-variety jerk, you're a raving dirtbag psycho. What kind of idiot would think this is acceptable? I'm sure we'll find out later today, as an arrest is made and the media does its frenzied little dance. Plan C sucks... and worse yet, it obscures the high ground.

So bottom line, don't fight. Just don't. But if you must fight, fight like a man, not a goddamn dog.

Rob
(And if you must bite someone's finger off? Do it over a topic where the health and livelihood of so many people don't hang in the balance, m'kay? Maybe argue about the infield fly rule or something?)