Two Things are Certain

Death and Taxes

And I have never begrudged either, despite having lost a husband, two horses, three dogs, and two cats. Death comes to us all: it is the manner of it, and how we choose to face it, that matters. And I do not want to live forever: take it all from me, but grant I may once more ride Nes as he deserves.

As for taxes, I want to pay for roads and parks, highways and healthcare, libraries and museums, school lunches and a strong social safety net. Not to speak of funding science and the arts and yes, a strong defense, including law enforcement that actually upholds the rule of law. I felt this way when I had barely two nickels to my name, and I feel it even more strongly now because I want to live in a humane society. We are rapidly crossing the threshold to having enough cheap energy, always the limiting factor, that each human being can live a self-actualized, economically, intellectually, and physically dignified life. I want to live in that society, and I desperately want to be taxed to create it, because none of us should depend upon another person’s good will for their one and only precious life, their complete human life.

I am not someone who thinks government must do everything I want and nothing I don’t: life, much less government, doesn’t work that way.

I owed the government substantial money this year. Not the first time, and I had it set aside. (I’m politically radical and extremely fiscally conservative. I believe in tax and spend to create a good society, rather than spend and cut taxes for the wealthy—which is not, say, doctors making $500,000 a year—like Republicans.)

For the first time, I hate paying my taxes.

Not to Illinois.

I did not grudge a single penny when I wrote out my state income tax check. Governor JB Pritzker, my cousin by marriage, is working to make Illinois genuinely better for its residents, citizen or not.

As for the significantly larger sum of federal taxes: I would have happily made that check out to the Illinois Department of Revenue.

Instead, I wept as I wrote the check to the IRS.

I have paid a substantial sum to hurt my fellow Americans and America herself.

Yes, a budget is always a moral document, and every budget harms someone, if only slightly trimming a grotesquely inflated bank account and the ego accompanying it. But this is a budget meant to hurt Americans and destroy America.

I have been made a traitor. In my case, against my will.

I wonder how many of us feel this same knowledge?