“There Is No Such Thing!”

Resident of Trump rally-hosting Alabama city died after COVID surge left him without local hospital bed: Maddowhttps://t.co/lyZnembB83

— Raw Story (@RawStory) September 14, 2021

Due to COVID 19, CRMC emergency staff contacted 43 hospitals in 3 states in search of a Cardiac ICU bed and finally located one in Meridian, MS.," the last paragraph of DeMonia's obituary reads, citing the Cullman Regional Medical Center. 

"In honor of Ray, please get vaccinated if you have not, in an effort to free up resources for non-COVID-related emergencies," the obituary reads. "He would not want any other family to go through what his did."

Maddow explained that one of the arguments from the anti-vaccine crowd is that it's their own personal liberty.

"I mean, for everyone who says that getting a vaccine is a personal choice that doesn't affect anyone else, line that up with Ray DeMonia's obituary and what his family has just said about his death, right?" Maddow said. "I mean, your decision about your vaccine may feel personal to you. I get it. But you live in a society. You live in a country, and your decision about your vaccine is ultimately the decision that fills up hospital beds, that makes all the difference to your society, your community, your country. It makes all the difference as to whether a man like Ray DeMonia gets that ICU bed or not."

 So I went looking for this quote, and this is what I found:

I think we have gone through a period when too many children and people have been given to understand ‘I have a problem, it is the Government’s job to cope with it!’ or ‘I have a problem, I will go and get a grant to cope with it!’ ‘I am homeless, the Government must house me!’ and so they are casting their problems on society and who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first.

People do look to themselves first; if that's what you teach them to do. They can also be taught to look out for others first. This is not a commonplace of modern Western life, but modern Western life is a learned set of attitudes, not a clutch of immutable truths.  Somewhere along the line, perhaps not so long ago, some of us decided “society” doesn’t include you; or you; or me.  Or that there is no society.  I came across everal apologies for what Thatcher said here; and explanations for why she was right.  Explanations made by people comfortable with their position in society, sure of the support of society (through laws, through government, through economics) to keep them comfortably in their place, and others (of necessity) uncomfortable in their place.  Thatcher couldn’t consider that the system which made her powerful and persuasive was the same system that denied homes for others and created problems she never encountered.  And now those same people can’t imagine the system won’t provide them with healthcare when they need it, on their terms. There is no society; except for the people who care for us in hospitals, or in government; or just outside of our own families.  Do we all really look to ourselves first?

What a truly sad world that is.