Shades of Gray

Nothing in life is black or white. Everything is a shade of gray. Beets are good for you. An exclusive diet of beets (Steve’s Dream?) will keep your heart pumping and your arteries clean until age 120. With zero calcium or protein intake though, your healthy heart will be pumping to honeycombed bones and zero muscle mass.

Nothing in politics is black or white. The Republican Study Committee, a bloc that includes 80 percent of Republicans in the House and every member of House leadership, submitted its Fiscal 2025 budget this week. It, among other things, raises the retirement age for Social Security and endorses a bill that would codify that life begins at conception. Screw over old people and cater to the Evangelicals. That’s so MAGA. Let’s go back to the good old days of the elderly shivering to death in hovels and back-alley abortions. Naturally, I want to oppose every jit and jot of the Republican plan.

The “life begins at conception” stuff is pure black, but the Social Security changes tend toward gray. People live much longer today than they did back in the 1930’s when Social Security began. With one exception all of my grandparents were dead by age 71. They collected Social Security for all of 6 years max after reaching age 65. My parents made it to 80 and 82. They received that magic government check for 15 and 17 years. They were lucky to do so. My father had a quadruple bypass at 64 that would have otherwise killed him before he collected Social Security at all. My mother had chemo at age 68 that saved her from lymphoma. Thank you, modern medical science. Social Security paid the price.

Modern medical science likely saved me from dying at 40 from that liver tumor. It surely saved me from Stage 3 kidney cancer at age 66 and from heart failure two and a half years ago. Here I am still collecting Social Security at 76.

Raising the retirement age for Social Security may not be the counterbalance to depleting its funds due to longer life spans, but something must be done.

Leave it to the tone-deaf GOP to bring this up in an election year though. Sixty year olds don’t want to hear “Sorry, you’ll have to work until 70”. Twenty year olds don’t want to hear “Birth control of any sort is actually murder.”

People vote black or white, candidate A or B. Life and politics are really gray, but you can’t vote that way.

By Ed Dufton