I know what it is like to have no hope.

[renate]

9. she probably really thinks she knows what "no hope" means... she doesn't even realize she doesn't

Of course it must have been terrible for her to find out that she has MS. No matter how rich you are, that's never going to be good news.

But because she has never experienced anything but security in her life, not for one single minute, she doesn't even realize what "no hope" means to most people--it's not just a scary diagnosis, it's wondering whether they can afford even adequate medical care, let alone the best. Will they lose their job, their house, will their family be okay?

I'm not minimizing her experience such as it was; I'm sure it made her more compassionate than she was before, which might be why she seems to believe that she knows what "no hope" means. All the examples you gave of what it really means for people who don't have her resources are not examples that she could even begin to imagine... which is why having the Romneys in the White House would be so damn scary. They don't even know what they don't know.

Your OP is magnificent. I would like to hope that if she ever read it with an open mind, she would feel embarrassed, but more than that, I hope she would learn something about what life is like for 99% of the people she was talking to. I hope that, as a mother, the idea of children not having anything to eat until they get to school the next day would break her heart, and that the reality of soldiers killed or disabled in war would make her look at her five healthy sons and feel like the luckiest woman in the world.