Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy (Matthew 5:7)
Matthew 18:33-35 New King James Version (NKJV)
33 Should you not also have had compassion on your fellow servant, just as I had pity on you?’ 34 And his master was angry, and delivered him to the torturers until he should pay all that was due to him.
35 “So My heavenly Father also will do to you if each of you, from his heart, does not forgive his brother [a]his trespasses.”
Nurses. Who needs ‘em. Am I right? Senator Maureen Walsh sure stepped in it. While arguing against a bill that would give required breaks to nurses, she talked about how rural nurses were just playing cards. It’s bad enough she’s a Republican, but she has to further offend the sensibilities of good people by pontificating about a subject that obviously has not researched. One would think that her hospital stay last year for a heart attack would have given her some heart about the profession. But no.
Ok, all you nurses and everybody on the other side of the aisle, grab your pitchforks. That’s what we do now, right? Someone says something stupid, and we have to drag them. Then, they further insult us by providing half-hearted apologies for their comments. Maybe, Maureen lost her heart at the hospital. Bet those good nurses trucked it down to lost and found between card games.
As a Rational Republican, I see a multitude of problems with her awful statement and her even more pitiful apology. But I am just going to focus on a couple.
Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.
Nurses are the embodiment of mercy. They work long grueling hours and receive consistent grief for doing their jobs. They have doctors who fail to listen to them. They have medical decisions determined or undermined by companies worried about the bottom line. They have patients who argue at them, spit at them, who come in drunk or stoned; worse yet, they have patients who sabotage their own recovery. Surely, we cannot forget the peanut gallery of family members and friends who barrage and berate nurses with their infinite knowledge of medicine, most recently acquired via a Google search.
Then, we also have to address the issue of nurses in urban areas vs. nurses in rural areas. If a nurse works in an urban area, then I can imagine churning through a twelve hour shift without the possibility of sitting down to eat. If a nurse works in a rural area, well then, they probably are sitting around playing cards. Or more likely, they are at the only clinic for miles around which are consistently understaffed due to the paucity of providers in rural areas and most likely with no one to cover for them to even run to the bathroom.
I live in a rural area. Our clinic is open on Monday and Thursday. So you can’t be sick on any other days. If you are, then you are looking at a minimum of a roundtrip drive of at least an hour to a bigger clinic. We do not have a doctor. We only have a nurse. Our nurse commutes from a bigger city to our town of 800. Her commute is an hour each way. She lives in another state. I am sure that she is not playing cards. People in rural areas are less likely to seek medical care because 1) if one has a job, then the benefits are probably not great, and 2) just the travel time alone will make you hesitant to run to a bigger city with chest pains or medical emergencies. I am willing to bet that the esteemed Washington GOP Senator did not encounter that problem when seeking medical care for her own heart attack last fall. Oh Sorry, Senator Walsh, your chest pains are on a Tuesday—the lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on our part! You don’t mind an hour drive on an icy road to get help for that medical emergency?
Nurses show mercy daily. Politicians, not so much. Republicans, well, over the past couple decades, they have ascribed to cold and callous positions. They have supported unsupportable arguments and have become everybody’s asshole dad. You know that dad—the one where you are an idiot, and you are so stupid that he’s going to strip you of any modicum of self-respect you have remaining. You’re too dumb to sit with the grownups, so we are going to send you over to the children’s table while we make the decisions that are best for you.
The Republican Party has become the unyielding voice of reason that is not even remotely reasonable. Worse still, Republican women are (with a straight face) repeating this trash. The Republican Party has become the “NO” Party.
I am a Republican because I am a “YES” person by nature. Want to start a business? Why, yes I can. Want to go to college? Why, yes I can. Want to take care of your neighbor? Why, yes I can. Want to love all people? Why, yes I can.
I ascribe to being a Republican with the truest sense of being one step below anarchy. If I want to be a unicorn hunter with a tribe of fellow unicorn hunters, then I want the government to stay out of my way. Mainly, I want to be left alone. I want us to be able to all pursue our own happiness, and I want the government to stay out of it. I support everyone’s right to open companies, but I do not support the government being involved with running those companies. Frankly speaking, everything I have ever seen shows that the government is unable to turn a profit, so they should stay out of businesses. But, unfortunately, corporations have been given the status of humans
Somehow, the GOP is right in the middle of everybody’s business now. Now, the party of less government wants to weigh in on what is happening in a hospital? That’s madness. So it’s back to the jackhole dad who has been at work all day with the awfully important job of providing for his family (AKA the present day GOP), and he is going to come in and solve all of mom’s problems with a mandate made from absolutely no logic and is all about just getting his wife and children to shut up.
That’s what you did, Maureen! You said your statements came from being tired?! But they certainly were not predicated on research. They weren’t based on love and compassion. They were based on fighting against nurses being assured of breaks…which most of them WON’T TAKE! That’s your fight? What do you know about hospitals, Maureen? Or nurses? Or nurses’ needs? Is it that you are fighting for a company’s rights? Or a hospital’s rights?
That’s not Republican! Our job is to protect individuals’ rights. Not corporate rights. Lincoln would be ashamed of your anti-Republican Republicanism. Our job is to determine if nurses, themselves, feel like they need to have protected time for breaks. Not to protect some medical center’s bottom line from a hit due to compassionate lunches. Who are you people?
I am going to be merciful about Maureen. I will take her at her word that she was tired. What I will not take is a Republican woman supporting a corporation’s interests over the interests of the individual. Maureen, you can support less government while also supporting common decency for nurses. The only reason someone has to bring a bill over an issue like this is because some asinine corporations have to be forced to do the right thing.
Nurses, Listen Up—Corporations Are People
"Despite not being individual human beings, corporations, as far as US law is
concerned, are legal persons, and have many of the same rights and
responsibilities as natural persons do. For example, a corporation can own
property, and can sue or be sued. Corporations can exercise human rights against
real individuals and the state,[40][41] and they can themselves be responsible for
human rights violations.[42] Corporations can be "dissolved" either by statutory
operation, order of court, or voluntary action on the part of shareholders.
Insolvency may result in a form of corporate failure, when creditors force the
liquidation and dissolution of the corporation under court order,[43] but it most
often results in a restructuring of corporate holdings. Corporations can even be
convicted of criminal offenses, such as fraud and manslaughter. However,
corporations are not considered living entities in the way that humans are "[44]
(Wikipedia—That’s right, my English teacher friends, I am using Wikipedia)
I am sorry to tell you nurses, but corporations are treated as people in the eyes of the law. Corp in the Latin literally means of the flesh. Along the lines, your rights have been usurped by corporations. Not real people, but real people rights. And the Republican Party has taken to supporting a fake person’s rights—the corporation—over yours.
I am all about the money. I love to make a dollar. I am Scottish-American and I tell my daughters I can make a penny scream.
But corporations ARE NOT PEOPLE. Our decisions are to be made for people in this country. Not to support corporations. Republicans can’t have it both ways. You can’t say that you want a free market, and then fight for corporations. Corporations can fight for themselves. They can’t choose what is best for an individual’s best interest because they are not real people. Republicans need to stop fighting for corporations’ rights over individual liberties. It is antithetical to a hands’ off platform. If a nurse in the United States’ of America needs a lunch break and the entire healthcare industry has decided that he/she doesn’t need that break, then the nurse’s needs ALWAYS supersede the corporation’s needs.
I am sorry I have to explain it to Republicans who are so desirous of protecting the pursuit of making money and free market, but it has to be said. I like making money too. I enjoy making my pennies scream. What I will not do is abrogate my responsibility to be a good human being by protecting the rights of corporations over the rights of individuals. It is UN-AMERICAN and UNCHRISTIAN!
Nevertheless,Maureen, I am going to forgive you. I am a good Christian and a good Southern woman, and I am thinking quietly “Bless her heart!” I am going to believe that your blood sugar was low and you just weren’t yourself. But you must correct this wrong. It is grievously wrong. You must protect your constituents—not your party line nor your corporate lobbyists.
As to Nurses, there are good people who believe in what you are doing. We don’t imagine you sitting around playing cards though I hope someone out there is. Somehow, I doubt it is your bunch. Though I have seen some of those late night selfies where you nurses seem to be having too much fun…like you worked a bunch of voodoo magic by saving a bunch of thankless people and still managed to smile in the camera and say how much you love working with your team. A whole team which must mean that are either wildly overstaffed or temporarily gifted with downtime until the next crisis.
Finally, Nurses, you just do your nurse thing. If you need us to pass a law so that you can take breaks, then you just say the word. You have to tell us all what you need. We can’t just figure it out. We’re not mind readers. And in my happy joy joy place I would like to believe that most nurses work for fantastic corporations that recognize their contributions and treat them in a dignified, professional manner. If that’s not the healthcare corporation that you know love and work for, well then, we will pass laws to give nurses lunch breaks. I mean, I feel kind of stupid, like how did I not know you didn’t get lunch breaks? That’s seriously a thing?
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