May 20, 2022
Dear Interested Readers,
IIliberalism And The Future Of Healthcare
It is easy to get lost in the despair of the moment. My newspapers and TV commentators tell me more than I want to know about mass shootings in Buffalo and Southern California. It is clear that almost sixty years after Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and described a dream of acceptance our country is still riven by injustices and hatred that flow from racial animosity. The rising numbers of COVID infections and the one million people who have already died are a continuing source of concern. Every day the stock market falls and the cost of gasoline and food rises as the result of the concurrence of disease, war, and political dysfunction. There are fears of an impending recession. Every day we hear of violent weather and forest fires that are the dividend of global warming and the abuse of the planet. The likelihood of the Supreme Court reversing Roe v. Wade seems certain, but there is no certainty about how our society will process the loss of confidence we once had in the ability of our courts to render wise decisions that would endure over time. Hanging over all our despair and confusion is the ever-present tragedy of the war in Ukraine and all the possibilities for human suffering that can flow from the ego of one man. In the midst of so much disorder and disaster, it is easy to see how the social determinants of health, the cost of healthcare, and healthcare equity have fallen off most lists of our most pressing current concerns.
A recurrent underlying theme that runs through all of our active issues is a proliferation of disinformation and the reality that a growing number of Americans, like people in Russia, China, Brazil, Hungary, India, and elsewhere are drawn to illiberalism and the autocrats it spawns. The shooter in Buffalo was one of the millions of Americans who have bought the lie of “replacement theory” while rejecting the logic of “critical race theory.” Why do millions of Republicans believe that the 2020 election was stolen? Why do millions of Russians accept and support Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and turn a blind eye to the war crimes and atrocities that have followed in the wake of the invasion? We remember the terrors of Stalin, Hitler, Mao, and Mussolini. Can anyone of the billions of people in nations that are embracing autocracy remember a dictator who made life consistently better for everyone? What about us draws us into dysfunctional anger like bugs to a lamp and makes us gullible to those who spew hate for those we decide are different? Why do we ignore the problems that autocratic wannabes create and the lies they tell as we follow them despite the damage we know they have always done and will continue to do to our best interests?
The issues that surprise us and confound us are often hard to understand when we look at them as occurring spontaneously in the moment and fail to follow them back to their root cause issues and motivations. We err when we expect everyone to reason, behave, and affiliate around their own economic best interest and in support of efforts to improve rather than desecrate our collective future.
The world’s religions and even the modern mythology of “Star Wars” and the popular heroes of the Marvel franchise reference the world as having dark and light sides. I read a theologian recently who stated that the perpetrators of most sins and crimes large and small can rationalize a justification for their actions that may sound ridiculous to others but make great sense to them in the twisted reasoning of their worldview. Putin presents his rationale for invading Ukraine as a defense of Russia and a resolution of previous wrongs. A jealous husband commits a heinous crime because his honor has been violated. A thief justifies a robbery because the cards of society are stacked against him and he feels that he has no other option. Even churches turn a blind eye to awful internal crimes by reasoning that coverups are ultimately better for their mission than cleanups. Why are so many of us drawn to the lies of the dark side when there is so much collective benefit to moving toward “enlightenment”? These questions and more were the subject of a fascinating conversation between Ezra Klein and Anne Applebaum, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and journalist who previously wrote for The Washington Post and now is at The Atlantic. Her most recent book of many is Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism, The interview was structured around Hannah Arendt’s 1951 book The Origins of Totalitarianism. Applebaum wrote the introduction to a recent edition and is an authority on totalitarianism in her own right.
In his introduction to the interview Klein says:
So much of what we imagine to be new is old. So many of the seemingly novel illnesses that afflict modern society are really just resurgent cancers, diagnosed and described long ago. That’s how Anne Applebaum, the Pulitzer Prize winning historian and journalist at The Atlantic, begins her introduction to a new edition of Hannah Arendt’s 1951 classic, “The Origins of Totalitarianism.” Why do people keep going back to this book? What is it about Arendt that matters, and that keeps mattering decade after decade? I think it’s this. Arendt was the master theorist of liberalism’s most fundamental blind spot, its inability to account for or even understand the appeal of its shadow, of illiberalism. And look around today, it’s still happening — look at Putin, look at Trump, look at Xi. Look at how deeply liberals underestimated all of them, and the appeal they would have and continue having, even when they failed the very movements they promised to help.
This is not a lesson that’s been learned. So Arendt is interested in what makes people and societies vulnerable to this kind of takeover, takeover by totalitarianisms in the moment she’s writing, but I’d also say in our moment to authoritarians, to demagogues, to con artists. And our diagnosis is fundamentally about the weaknesses of liberal societies, the way liberal, political and economic systems can paradoxically open the door to the figures they fear most, to the passions and yearnings they refuse to understand…
Klein is a master at setting the stage for enlightening conversations. He begins the conversation with Applebaum with a statement followed by the central question that will be discussed. In essence, he is implying that much of the frustrations of progressives and even less radical liberals who are nearer to the center of the political spectrum arise from what they don’t understand about the motivations and methods on the far right.
Ezra Klein
So what’s striking to me, reading “Origins of Totalitarianism” and Hannah Arendt today for this conversation, is how focused she is on what makes seemingly liberal societies vulnerable to totalitarian, or now maybe more authoritarian takeover, and how she sees liberalism itself as creating a lot of those vulnerabilities. So what does she see that liberals often miss?
It’s a good question and Applebaum’s answer covers most of what the two of them will discuss and dissect over the next hour.
Anne Applebaum
I agree with you that that’s one of the most interesting things about her. And of course, what’s also interesting is that she was observing liberal societies of the 1940s, which we now are nostalgic about, and we imagined to be so much more solid and deep and rich than our own. She talks about loneliness in a way that’s important and unusual. And by loneliness, she means individuals who are cut off from other people…
And people who aren’t connected to other people in society, she believes, are much more liable to be persuaded by forms of totalitarian or autocratic propaganda…There’s a quote from her, where she says what prepared men for totalitarian domination in the non totalitarian world is the act of loneliness, once a borderline experience — so once, something that only elderly people experienced — and now, it has become an everyday experience. And here, she’s talking about modernity, the way in which people move around more often than they did, the fact that people work in anonymous factories, and not at home or not in communities.
And of course, all of that is as bad today, if not worse, than it was then. Almost every form of modern technology, almost every economic change and every technological change, often has the impact of separating people even more from one another…
If our isolation was exacerbated by the world going online with the rise of social media, the necessary disruption of usual social life associated with the pandemic was like pouring gasoline on a fire. Arendt contends that people who are isolated are much more vulnerable to propaganda and misinformation than people who are in a community where they enjoy many social interactions. One way that autocrats acquire and maintain power is by segmenting the population with misinformation and creating mistrust among those who are “in” and those who are “out.” Trump’s presentation of illegal immigrants who are rapists and violent criminals is an example. Another recent example is Q Anon’s description of “progressive elites” as a ring of child abusers. Q Anon’s assertions may seem ridiculous to you but a recent article in The Guardian reports that as many as 22% of Americans want to believe the fantasy.
As rediculous as both of these examples may seem to an individual who is in the mainstream of society, the frequent repetition of improbable ideas can make what sounds nuts to most of us seem plausible to isolated individuals.
The young shooter at the Tops Supermarket in Buffalo last weekend was motivated by “replacement theory” which began on the far right in white supremacy groups but migrated to more conventional media. Nicholas Confessore, an investigative reporter at the New York Times has recently published an extensive four-part series on the rise, methodology, and dramatic influence on conservative and far-right groups of Tucker Carlson. Confessore has documented that Carlson has mentioned or discussed in depth “Replacement Theory” over four hundred times over the last few years. That sort of repetition followed by the idea moving into the vocabulary of mainstream politicians and Donald Trump is an example of the captive power of much-repeated falsehoods.
As the conversation between Klein and Applebaum continued, she emphasized the psychological reality that for all of us it is important to “belong” to some community that has a world view “where we share values with others and we feel reinforced by that experience.” That comment reminded me of how empowered I felt when I sat with 5 or 6 thousand other healthcare professionals, more than 99% of who I did not know or would ever see again, at an IHI annual meeting where Don Berwick would present challenging ideas in inspirational speeches about the necessity and possibility of improving healthcare for everyone. I desperately wanted to transport all of his message and the shared enthusiasm of the crowd back to my colleagues in Massachusetts. At one meeting it occurred to me that the 6000 enthusiastic souls at the IHI meeting looked like a huge crowd, but they represented less than 0.002% of all healthcare professionals. We all long to be part of something important even if we are just a member of the audience. Applebaum puts it well:
Yes, I do think she’s [Arendt] pointing at something quite important, which is that human beings need to be in a narrative, as you said — we would now call it — or part of a community, as others would call it, part of a world where we share values with other people and we feel reinforced by that experience. The thing I think that we’ve learned in the last few years is that that experience and that narrative don’t even have to be real. So I think people are genuinely nostalgic for past institutions, or what they imagine past institutions to have been.
Did you ever ponder the organizing power of Make America Great Again? Is that much different than Putin’s concerns about his Russia? His invasion of Ukraine was part of his own grand design to “Make Russia Great Again.” There is a tremendous organizing power in presenting the past as better than it was and the future as compromised by enemies of your values. Applebaum refers to Trump’s natural understanding of the allure of the big rallies where the faithful can emerge from their chat rooms and gather together for mutual inspiration. Liberals with the exception of the brief experience with Obama’s articulation of “Hope and Change” have built their strategies on logic and reason and our politicians infrequently generate big crowds of devoted followers. To a large degree, the quality and safety movement in healthcare has made the same mistake. The concepts articulated in Crossing the Quality Chasm excited a few of us as I experienced at IHI events, but the large denominator of those in healthcare who were too busy with their clinical responsibilities never bought the message.
Applebaum channeling Arendt points out that liberals have always championed ideals that they failed to demonstrate. Worse yet they have been terrible at translating policies into programs and outcomes. She refers to the liberal elites who champion the ideals of reducing the use of carbon-based fuels and then jet off to their posh second homes. She also points out that while the illiberal world understands the darker human passions, liberals continuously rely on reasoning. She presents Tony Bair and Bill Clinton as two liberal leaders who always believed that they could sell their ideas with data and reasoning. It takes a lot more focus and strategy than a good argument to win the day. If you are going to be an effective idealist you need to hold yourself to the ideals that you want others to respect.
One understanding that has escaped many liberals who imagine that good ideas and humanistic concerns will win the day is the reality that many many people believe that “elites” are surreptitiously corrupt. If you point to Trump and assert that he tried to run the government as a family business his supporters will say yes, he is a liar, he cheats, and he is unapologetic about his egregious behavior. Many of his most loyal supporters will agree with you. They will then say that all politicians are corrupt liars, but Trump doesn’t try to hide. He does what he does in the open and the liberal politicians are just as corrupt and try to hide their corruption. Plus, Trump has delivered or tried hard to deliver what he promised to them. Benito Mussolini made the trains run on time. Trump delivered huge tax breaks and a court that will render decisions that will protect conservative values. Klein quotes Arendt to demonstrate that this sort of behavior is not new.
I think her description of what that kind of rule breaking, that gleeful defiance of normal ideas of morality and virtue offer people in these movements was absolutely my favorite part of the book. And I want to read a quote from her on this. She writes, “Since the bourgeoisie claimed to be the guardian of Western traditions and confounded all moral issues by parading publicly virtues which it not only did not possess in private and business life, but actually held in contempt, it seemed revolutionary to admit cruelty, disregard of human values, and general amorality, because this at least destroyed the duplicity upon which the existing society seemed to rest.”
And I read that, and I thought it was the single best description of how a lot of people I know on the right, who believed totally different things about how you should comport yourself in public a couple of years before, ended up responding to Trump — that yes, he is cruel and bullying and vulgar and unkind. But you know what? It just shows. It just goes to show how sick our society has become that we needed someone like that. And they began to take an almost delight in it. He’s our fighter. Arendt’s sense of this seems to me to be very, very perceptive.
An interesting aspect of the conversation is that many of the loudest voices in the populist movement that is becoming more illiberal have elite educations. Peter Thiel, a co-founder of Paypal and an original investor in Facebook, is an enthusiastic supporter of Trump and right-leaning politicians like his friend J.D. Vance and the showman physician, Dr. Mehmet Oz, who now pay homage to Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen. The actions of Vance and Oz breed cynicism in me and show how powerful disinformation can be. Thiel has a BA and a law degree from Stanford. Ted Cruz, Ron DeSantis, and Tom Cotton are graduates of Harvard Law school just like Barak Obama. Josh Hawley and J.D. Vance are Yale Law grads just like Hillary and Bill Clinton. Tucker Carlson (Trinity College) and Laura Ingram (BA Dartmouth, JD Virginia) are much better educated than many of their millions of followers who love to hear them rale against the liberal elite. The discussion between Klein and Applebaum of the right-leaning elite morphed into a conversation about cynicism, gullibility, and apathy. Klein set the table:
This gets to something that is also big in Arendt’s thought, which is this interesting intersection of cynicism and gullibility, which I think are two conditions people often think of in tension with each other, right? If you’re cynical, you can’t be gullible. If you’re gullible, you’re definitely not cynical. But her argument is that they play off of each other. They coexist in a way that’s really important to these movements. Can you talk a bit about that?
Applebaum had a ready answer:
Well, cynicism, which is very close to nihilism and very close to apathy, are emotions that are often deliberately created by autocrats. For example, it is the policy of Putin’s Kremlin, of his propaganda, to make Russians apathetic. And how is that done? That’s done by offering them contradictory and sometimes ridiculous pieces of information that don’t make sense…
…both of them come from the same thing, which is the fear that they can’t know something, or the impression that it’s impossible to know something. And as I said, they’re useful to autocratic regimes or to authoritarian movements because they lead people to feel that they’re powerless. If you don’t know what happened and you feel that you can never know what happened, then how can you do anything about it? And so I think these are sort of parallel and related feelings.
You know, I’ll accept anything, but I’m at the same time skeptical of everything. Alongside loneliness, this is a kind of precondition for autocracy.
Klein points out that liberals don’t understand the power of confusion and misinformation. When your belief that you can know the truth has been destroyed you are an easy mark for illiberal authoritarian thought. Liberals believe in the power of the truth. Illiberals, not so much. Klein comments:
I think of this a little bit as the fact checker’s fallacy, that if you can prove, or think you can prove, that somebody who claims to tell the truth is lying, that you will deeply damage their relationship with those who trust them.
And we’ve seen over and over again that’s not really true, but I think it gets to something in Arendt’s thought that once people hit a certain level of cynicism, not only do they not care if their leaders are lying, they think lying is how the game is done.
I have heard the same point made in a different way. The real test of political loyalty is when you know that your leader is wrong or lying and you don’t care, or buy into the lie as an act of fealty. Do you really believe that only 20% of Republicans believe Biden was elected meaning that 80% buy the lie that the election was stolen? I don’t, but I am cynical. Do you believe that as an act of loyalty or fealty to Trump 80% of Republicans will say that the election was stolen? That takes us back to the principle that uncertainty or the inability to know the truth is fertile ground for authoritarianism.
Klein puts it all together:
And so to lie well, and to lie effectively, is actually part of proving that you can be the leader of this movement, that you can survive in this dog-eat-dog world, you know, where the institutions are all controlled by a cabal of your enemies. But it really reverses, I think, a lot of the rules under which more traditional liberal politicians like to think politics, but also voters, operate.
The conversation moved on to the liberal misconception that politics is about self-interest. Again Klein asks the question which confounds a lot of liberals like myself. Why do so many poor White Americans vote against their own best interest and give support to corrupt leaders who offer them nothing tangible? Why don’t poor White Americans demand better healthcare, improvement of the social determinants of health for everyone, and vote for leaders who offer policy proposals that would end poverty? Klein makes an observation, and then he asks another question.
… I think Arendt’s view is that self-interest is much weaker than people think, and people are willing to sacrifice quite a lot of material gain to be part of these larger movements. How do you understand that tension?
Applebaum has a ready answer in essence she points out that economics and self-interests make sense to liberals but not to those who feel their values, culture, or way of life is challenged. If you believe you are destined to be “replaced” by a new non-white majority, economics may not be as important to you as your “culture.” Guns, flags, and political rallies with like-minded individuals in your group trump your personal economics. When your economics are not so good it is because you are being cheated by the liberal elites and not because a filibuster prevented the passage of a law that would improve your health and lift you out of poverty. Klein pointed out in his book Why We Are Polarized that culture and who we think we are, our story, and our connections are often more important than self-interest:
…It’s true for what politics is supposed to be about,,,not just self-interest, but a story. Something that I really read in her, and that I’ve seen in a lot of studies of anti liberal thinkers, is this sense that people need myths and spirit and stories and communion and narrative to thrive, not just for politics to work, but for them to thrive. And that — I see Arendt as identifying this as something that liberalism, when it is in its governing mode, begins to lose.
Applebaum connects the thought about “story” and purpose to this moment in Ukraine:
Why is Zelensky so popular — because he’s seen as somebody who is speaking for and defending a liberal society, one which is profoundly tolerant, in which people can speak more than one language, and they can have different religions, and they believe in freedom and the rule of law. And yet, he’s doing it with a military campaign, and in this vigorous and extremely brave way.
The sight of that is what’s inspiring these mass marches around the world, and the fact that everybody wants Ukrainian flags hanging from their flag poles, or stuck onto their Twitter accounts. It’s the appeal of that liberalism, but liberalism with this kind of muscular bravado attached to it that people miss and that they admire in Ukraine right now.
Applebaum points out that we all respond to “threat” and manipulative leaders will exploit that sense of threat. Putin is using the threat of NATO. We are using the threat of Russia. Leaders moving toward illiberalism will manufacture threats like the invasion of criminal immigrants or Nazi leaders in Ukraine.
…You know, we are threatened by these protests, and we are pushing back with power and strength. So unfortunately, that is something that has a deep appeal to people, the sense that we are fighting something that threatens our very security and our safety, and we need to band together to do that. And that’s something that simply motivates people more than anything else.
Listening to the remainder of the conversation I got the idea that the future will be determined by the power of stories. Many of the questions that divide us have the existential reality that there is no shared solution. If abortion is legal then there will always be those who believe that babies are being killed. If women don’t have the right to make their own reproductive decisions what other personal choices do we all lose? Russia and Ukraine can’t share the Donbas region and the southern coast of Ukraine. One will have it and one will continuously feel that what is theirs has been stolen. Liberalism settles complex issues by votes and believes reason and compromise can solve complex problems. Illiberalism settles the issues by aligning its myths and misinformation with force, fear, coercion, and an appeal to some very primal tendencies and biases.
Klein is more practical:
I almost think of that as a quite optimistic way of thinking about the problem in liberalism, which is — to sum up our conversation here, one way of looking at it is that these external challenging movements are able to tell these world historic, almost mythic stories. And because they’re not bound in any way by truth, because they’re not bound by what they can deliver, they can say almost anything, and that liberalism somehow needs to come up with a counter story.
But you’re actually suggesting, I think, something different and more plausible, which is that liberalism and liberal democracies and governments need to do what they actually do well, which is govern — that while it is true that self-interest, even broadly described, is not all of what politics is about, and certainly not material self-interest, it still does matter. And being able to deliver on that, and being able to govern effectively, is one of the better ways you might have of keeping some of these contrary movements at bay.
There is more to the conversation between Klein and Applebaum, but I feel that I need to bring it back to healthcare. One obvious point of reference is that as we pass one million lives lost to COVID it is staggering to realize that the lies about vaccines and the realities of viral transmission have unnecessarily cost us several hundred thousand lives. We have learned that we have difficult problems with healthcare equity. We must admit that we have workforce problems that are only going to get worse. We know that the social determinants of health constitute a moral issue that is complicated by racial tensions that we can’t deny but don’t correct or address even after they create tragedies that reoccur again and again. The challenges that face healthcare are knotted with a lot of other problems that challenge liberal thinking and make illiberal thought attractive to many, but I have never heard an illiberal thinker address the challenges that compromise our collective health.
A Follow Up on Thunder and Lightning
My recovery since I fell on an icy road back in late February 2021 has been a long slow process. For the first several weeks I had intense pain from my buttocks all the way down the leg. The pain made sleeping very difficult. Antiinflammatory drugs including two tapering trials of steroids and lumbar spine injections provided no sustained help. A TENS unit prided some relief. I avoided opiates. There were no fractures. Diagnostic tests showed substantial arthritis of my lower spine and some nerve root impingement. When the steroids failed, the assumption was that my symptoms were from a contusion of my sciatic nerve.
Physical therapy was of little benefit. About six weeks into my ordeal as the pain in my buttock and upper leg improved and I was finally able to sleep, I developed numbness over the lateral aspect of my left lower leg down into my toes that was associated with ankle weakness and a footdrop that left me walking with a stumbling gait. Walking became an exercise in avoiding falls.
Nerve conduction studies revealed that I had neuropathy of the posterior tibial nerve. Just how it happened remains a mystery. My neurologist told me what I knew already. It would be a very long time, if ever before I would overcome the numbness and the foot drop. Fortunately, I was able to walk some with braces that held my foot from dropping, but they were very uncomfortable and clunky to use. Just getting the brace and my foot into a shoe or boot was a time-consuming challenge. The first time I used the brace I was able to walk a mile in about thirty minutes. By last fall I could do four miles at an eighteen-minute a mile pace on a flat trail when pushed by my oldest son. Most of the time, I do a four-mile course at a twenty to twenty-three-minute a-mile pace over the rolling hills on the road that runs around my lake. I have also done a lot of Pilates and bicycling.
I am delighted to report that things are improving. My left leg is still visibly smaller than my right leg because of muscle wasting, but I can climb stairs. My numbness persists but is improved, and I no longer use the brace on my walks. I tolerate a little limp better than the discomfort and inconvenience of the brace. I can dorsiflex my foot a little and can feel some contraction in my left anterior tibialis muscle.
All this excessive description is a prelude to saying that this week for the first time since my injury, I took a more challenging walk. On this walk, I begin on Burpee Hill Road which climbs several hundred feet over a half mile up Burpee Hill. On the climb, I pass a beautiful New England farmhouse-barn complex that is surrounded by well-maintained stone walls. There are about twenty white-faced cows in the fields around the barn. Some of the cows look like there will be calves coming soon. The road is lined with huge old maple trees and past the farm, from the top of the hill, there are spectacular views of Lake Sunapee and Mount Sunapee to the west as you can appreciate in the header of this post. On a clear day, you can look to the northwest and see all the way to Killington in Vermont. Further down the road before it descends toward another farm there are views of Mount Kearsage to the south. At about a mile and a half into the walk, I take a right turn onto a dirt road with the misnomer of “Columbus Avenue.” The name always reminds me of the other Columbus Avenues that I have known in Manhattan, Boston, and Waco, Texas. This Columbus Avenue runs through dense woods for a mile to Herrick Cove on Lake Sunapee. Along its wooded way, it passes only four houses.
The big delight for me on this walk has always been the farm at the corner of Burpee Hill Road and Columbus Avenue. There is a huge field behind the barn where there were once two huge horses. I have shown them in pictures here before. There was also a horse trailer that had a sign that said “Thunder and Lightening,” the names of the two horses. I would often take carrots or apples with me to give to the horses. I was not their only benefactor. Many other people would also feed them. When the horses saw someone coming they would run to the fence expecting to be fed. They would let you pat them and run your fingers through their manes but would be obviously disappointed without their expected payoff.
The year before my fall there was suddenly only one horse. I was concerned. Did one die? I had empathy for the survivor. Was it Thunder or was it Lightning? Monday when I made the turn onto Columbus I was delighted to see that either Thunder or Lightning was still there. The horse came running up to meet me at the usual place where the road is closest to the fence and where the horse’s watering trough is located. I had no apples or carrots and felt guilty until I saw that there was a neatly lettered sign on the fence that said. Please don’t feed me. I am old and it might make me sick. I gave Thunder or Lightning a pat on the nose and moved on. I repeated the drill on Tuesday and felt a little guilty because Thunder or Lightning looked very disappointed when all I could offer was another pat on the nose.
I continued on my walk to my two-mile turnaround. On the way back, I was delighted to see that someone was mowing grass near the farmhouse and barn. It was my chance to ask whether it was Thunder or Lightning that I had been disappointing with no treat. The farmer lady was of my generation. We had never met before, but when I signaled that I wanted to talk to her, she turned off the engine of her mower and walked over with a welcoming smile on her face. I apologized for interrupting her work but told her that I was wondering whether the horse was Thunder or Lightning. She gave me a bigger smile and told me that both Thunder and Lightning had gone on to where good horses go. This horse’s name was “Andy.” I thanked her for the information and told her that I loved her property. She smiled again and we parted. Later, after reflecting on this new information it occurred to me that Andy needed a partner named Raggedy Ann. No treats and no partner is a tough life.
I continued on my walk to my two-mile turnaround. On the way back, I was delighted to see that someone was mowing grass near the farmhouse and barn. It was my chance to ask whether it was Thunder or Lightning that I had been disappointing with no treat. The farmer lady was of my generation. We had never met before, but when I signaled that I wanted to talk to her, she turned off the engine of her mower and walked over with a welcoming smile on her face. I apologized for interrupting her work but told her that I was wondering whether the horse was Thunder or Lightning. She gave me a bigger smile and told me that both Thunder and Lightning had gone on to where good horses go. This horse’s name was “Andy.” I thanked her for the information and told her that I loved her property. She smiled again, and we parted. Later, after reflecting on this new information it occurred to me that Andy needed a partner named Raggedy Ann. No treats and no partner is a tough life.
Have a great weekend.
Be well,
Gene
