The System

The man pictured above is David St. Germain, who I and most others knew only as Doc. Doc killed himself last week by jumping from the top of the parking garage at Providence Place Mall. He was 43.

Doc had Thanksgiving with my family last year, and I had the pleasure of meeting him on a few other occasions. I last spoke to him one week before his suicide.

Doc was a big man, with a big mouth and a big heart. He spent his time trying as best he could to be a voice for the voiceless. He was led to that calling by his own personal tragedies. Doc's story is not only tragic, but it is tragically American. And it got me to thinking about The System.

People of my parents' generation and political leanings have a certain view of The System that I don't entirely share. In their view, the system is essentially a conspiracy, a vast apparatus of privilege and power that actively deprives their fellow citizens of their due liberty and happiness.

That view of the system never entirely made sense to me. Actively oppressive systems have of coursed existed (Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, etc.). But it always seemed to me that the system in this country is not one of oppression, but of neglect. That is the system to which Doc fell victim.

The System in America does not exert its might in actively oppressing people; it simply ignores them. The system here is not vast; it is very small. It is an exclusive club. And if you're not in the system, you're ignored by it. The system in America today does not crush people. To crush someone, you have to give a shit. No, the system here simply ignores people.

Doc was an EMT driver. He was in an accident. He broke his back and his foot was severed and re-attached. Now, you might think that an ambulance driver was an integral enough part of the system that he would be protected by it. And you'd be wrong.

Doc's medical trauma and the bills resulting from it cost him his job and his home. This was a good, intelligent, skilled and employed man who lost everything because of an accident. Something that could happen to me or you at any moment.

We all know that someone with access to the system would not go bankrupt and homeless because of a car crash. These privileged few would simply concentrate on their physical recovery. But neither Doc, nor me, nor you are in that system. And because we're not, we're all one accident away.

The accident left Doc in constant physical anguish. His injuries were the very things for which painkillers were invented. But since Doc was not a member of the system, he had to beg the system for physical relief from his suffering. And the system helped him for a time.

The system gave Doc a "pain contract". Needless to say, members of the system do not have pain contracts imposed on them. Doc violated his "pain contract" when he lost part of a prescription and went for a refill earlier than scheduled.

Because of this violation, the system labeled Doc a drug abuser. And the system was thereafter entirely closed to him. No individual member of the system could legally do anything to ease this man's physical anguish because the system itself had decided that he was an addict looking to leach from the system.

So, in the system's eyes, Doc had committed two mortal sins. He was in an accident. And then he misplaced something. And that was all it took for the system to write him off. In the system's eyes, Doc had nothing to contribute and he had proven himself unworthy of any help because of his sins.

Doc worked, followed the law, served in the medical field, voted, organized, paid his taxes. He was a full-bodied citizen. But that wasn't enough. It wasn't enough to grant him access to the system.

When the system cost Doc his life, it didn't do it with a firing squad. It did it by simply looking the other way. What would it have taken to give Doc the painkillers he needed? A man with so many causes and so many friends would surely not have chosen death if his chronic physical torment had been alleviated. What would it have cost the system to save Doc? Too much, evidently.

Often in the face of tragedy people are driven to exaggerate, to conflate, to romanticize. So let me make these things clear: I did not know Doc very well. I do not pretend to have been a confidante of his or to have had any deep knowledge of his heart or mind. But what I do know down to the marrow of my bones is that what happened to him could happen to any of us.

So what sort of System do we have? It is not a vast apparatus of oppression. It is an exclusive gated community that brutalizes us not by physical force, but by simply locking the gate.

Every one of us, no matter how low, spends money. When we spend money, we pay taxes. When we pay taxes, we are paying into the system. But we are paying to polish the gates, not to have them opened for us.