[lit-ideas] Re: Guess where the USA ranks in terms of health care

>>I'm willing to vote and pay money for my selfish desires, but it seems that most people are less self-centered than I am, and are not willing to pay for the kind of lifestyle that I want.
This inclines to the views of Mencken, who when asked why he didn't move to Europe, explained that he had a deep-seated need to feel superior to 95 percent of the people around him. He could do this in the USA, he insisted; however, if he were to move to Europe, he'd just be another guy.
Willem Dafoe, when working with his wife's Wooster Group players, made a similar claim. "In Hollywood," he claimed, "I'm considered the big intellectual; yet when I work in New York, I'm the dummy."
It's always better to feel intellectually, morally, artistically, imaginatively, and physically superior to at least 95 percent of the people in one's life. That's why I live in an self-contained plastic bumper car orbiting Triton, Neptune's largest moon.
But if I had to choose between superiority claims, I would choose moral superiority ... it's so smug and comfy, so irrefutable and so graciously absolute. 

Yours,
Rocketman
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