America, You Sexy Bitch by Michael Black Meghan McCain

hard ass Jackie, is willing to concede that there are parts of the Obama health care plan she likes. The preexisting condition stuff, for example. But she worries that our health care system, “the finest in the world,” will become like Mexico’s. Or Canada’s. Jackie doesn’t seem to think the people she sees in her ER night after night—the illegals, the meth heads, the wife beaters—are going to purchase health insurance just because the government says they have to. If they don’t have insurance, well that’s just too damned bad. She doesn’t want our entire system brought down by those people.
    “But what about the coal miners in West Virginia who lost their jobs?” I ask. “What about Detroit autoworkers? What about students? What about people in the creative community? Should they be lumped in with the meth heads?”
    “No,” she tells me. “Everybody should be given a helping hand until they get back on their feet.”
    Except that these days a lot of people will never get back on their feet, I want to say. These days a lot of people are just good and forever fucked.
    But I don’t say it.
    One of the things I’ve noticed among the Republicans with whom I’ve been hanging out is that there seems to be an underlying resentment towards some amorphous group of their fellow Americans who, they believe, are gaming the system. Jackie calls them the “pimps and gangsters in New York City.” Having lived in New York City for ten years, I cannot recall too many run-ins with either pimps or gangsters committing Medicare fraud. I can, however, recall some Wall Street types raping the entire American treasury.
    It’s hard to argue with somebody against protecting what’s theirs. The question is, are there really hordes of gangsters, pimps, meth heads, and welfare queens lying in wait to steal our stuff and shoot us dead? I didn’t think so.
    That said, I’m not willfully naive either. Jackie told us a story about a rancher to the south of her place who was shot to death near the border while riding his ATV.

    “When they found him he was dead, the dog was dead. The ATV was still there, so they must’ve shot him from a good distance away. Fifteen hundred people came to that funeral.”
    How do you discount that experience? How do you persuade somebody that tragic things happen to everybody across all fifty states but that events like those, while horrible, are extremely rare? Or maybe they’re not. Maybe I’m the naive one. But then how have I gotten through my first forty years without needing to fire a gun?
    A little while later, some bad news. There is no rodeo tonight. It ended the night before, on the third. Everybody apologizes to us profusely, and I’m disappointed because I wanted to see some guys get thrown off some bulls.
     
    Meghan: There is no apologizing for America. We’re the greatest country in the world and, although we have our issues, overall it is not a country that needs a huge amount of changing. That’s how I feel; that is what I believe. Michael and I apparently have different takes on this.
    First rule of attempting to make any kind of logical argument politically with someone, especially when it’s concerning your thoughts on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, is don’t do it when either of you is drinking on the Fourth of July.
    Since the rodeo is cancelled, we decide to take Michael to Whisky Row, a quaint, all-American strip of bars surrounded by small restaurants, ice cream shops, a classic bandstand (with the bunting and everything), and a giant courthouse, complete with clock tower.
    We walk into the first cowboy bar, which is blasting Kid Rock’s “Born Free,” one of my favorite songs. Holly and I go to the bar and order a round of Jack and Cokes, plus shots of tequila for the whole motley crew—Jimmy, Mom, Michael, Kyle, and Mike. Everyone is wearing cowboy hats and cowboy boots except for Michael and me. We start drinking, shooting the shit, and having the