"The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them but to be indifferent toward them: That's the essence of inhumanity."
--George Bernard Shaw
"What you have to understand about my people is that they are a noble people. Humility is their form of pride. And if you can humble yourself before them, they will do anything you ask."
--Frank Underwood, "House of Cards"
Reading the article by Peter Hessler in this week's New Yorker (Jan 13,2025) about the resurrection and triumph of Lauren Boebert, who touted her personal history--a high school drop out, pregnant at 17, arrested, down and out, "I'm straight out of Rifle, running a restaurant with my four little boys and with my G.E.D," she told her constituents.
All this put me in mind, somehow, of doing rounds at the New York Hospital, in the early 1970's, as a a medical student, the lowest of the low in hospital hierarchy, a part of what one patient called, "the thundering herd," a group of men in white uniforms, nurses, and a phalanx of professors of medicine, entering a patient's room with the chief of service, in his spotless, long white lab coat, his pinstriped vest, Brooks Brother's tie, and everything but angels hovering above blowing horns, heralding the arrival of the great man at the bedside.
And, what really stopped me in my tracks was seeing the patient, who might be a Bowery Bum, now scrubbed by the nurses for the arrival of the great man, sit up and look around him, suddenly the center of attention, rapt attention, I might add, everyone hanging on his every word, as the great man in white asked him, with utter politeness, about his symptoms. Had he become short of breath walking up a hill, or was he short of breath all the time? Had he noticed the swelling in his ankles was gone in the morning only to return later in the afternoon?
And what was really striking, when the great man was really a good clinician, is that he conveyed to the patient and to every member of the ward party, that this man in the bed was among the most important people on earth, because he was a patient. Didn't matter what he was outside the hospital, once in that bed he was not Dirty Joe, or whatever his friends called him on the outside, he was Mr. Smith and he was treated with the utmost respect.
And the great man was truly interested in his answers, listening carefully, asking questions to clarify the information. Did he find he could tolerate some foods, but not, for example fatty foods?
After the thundering herd moved on, as the medical student, I often had to visit the patient later, to draw his blood or to do some other task, and the patient often asked who the great man was, even though he'd been told before. "Well," the patient would often say. "I hope I did okay."
"What do you mean?" I would ask.
"Well, you know, I hope I gave the right answers. He seemed pretty concerned."
After all the build up, the patient had been told by the nurses about the coming of the great man, prepared by the interns, rehearsed by the residents, and after all that unaccustomed attention, he didn't want to disappoint anyone.
Sometimes I found myself saying, "You know you are just as important as he is."
Don't know why I said that.
But it seemed like the lesson I had learned.
This was a medical school where we were constantly told that we had been selected out of the multitudes, and we had to prove we were worthy of our spot in the class constantly, and even if we were lucky enough to be selected to be interns, there was a merit pyramid, so there were half of each class eliminated each year with only 10 senior residents left from a class of 30 interns. But, no matter how select we were, it was basic gospel truth, the patient in the bed was the most important person in the room.
And that's maybe where Lauren Boebert's appeal, and maybe Trump's appeal, is.
Doesn't matter if people call you white trash or disrespect you or ignore you, you are important, and just as important as all those folks with Harvard degrees.
As we say in New Hampshire, "Just saying."
The thing that struck me in that Boebert article was the plea of her clueletss Democrat opponent urging her upon concession to protect our democracy. Boebert sagely responded she would protect our constitutional republic. The far left and democrats purport to be educated when many are fundamentally ignorant or brainwashed by radical thought. Thankfully, The US is not a democracy we are a conditional republic and Boebert understands and appreciates that fact.
ReplyDeleteAh, that is a slick technique, and not necessarily a bad one--taking a synecdoche (a shortening, using a part to stand for the whole) and elaborating or refining it to make a point. So we all understand we do not have a true democracy--the Electoral College, having 4 US Senators from the Dakotas while California gets but 2 is reminder enough of that. As Benjamin Franklin, famously said, "A Republic, madame, if you can keep it." It may well be true that Democrats, on the whole, would like our republic to be more of a democracy and less a republic, where Senators representing sagebrush, grassy plains and high mountains get more say in government policy than millions of people in LA, Chicago, Philadelphia, Seattle, Denver and New York City.
ReplyDeleteIf that photo is indeed Mad Dog's medical school one should note not one person of color, and if it was pre-1970 Jews were limited in many schools by actual quotas. Case in point, as patriots like Lauren Boebert's male counterparts, and minorities, were being killed in the rice paddies of Vietnam while rich white elites were benefiting from credentialing and perpetuation of the American economic caste system. Thank you Mad Dog for this photographic evidence of the elite roots of liberalism which has only contempt for those who defend this nation, uphold its laws and fight its destructive fires both literally and metaphorically, evincing how transparently false is the pro-democracy rhetoric of liberalism.
ReplyDeleteAnon,
ReplyDeleteOh, it was worse than that!
This actually is a photo of the housestaff class (interns and residents) not the medical school class. Note there are only 4 women and no Blacks.
The medical school photo was even more White. (Well, there were two Blacks out of 90 students, but one of them literally had blonde hair and blue eyes.) There were 4 women, and it was clearly stated there were only 4 spots for women in that class.
As for Jews, at this particular medical school, until about 1960, Jews need not apply. No Jews. But then, in the 60's Jews were admitted and roughly 30% of the class was Jewish, by the time I arrived, and at least that many of the faculty, and of the attending staff at the hospital similar numbers.
So the whole red lining of Jews dissolved. That same medical school is now majority minority and majority female. So times do change.
I'm not sure I buy the idea that rich elite kids escaped Vietnam while the working classes died there. Walk down that black marble wall in Washington, DC and you see names from every conceivable ethnic group, and while you cannot see class on the wall, the names suggest there were a significant number from the upper classes.
And as far as medical students went, every last one was drafted, no matter who your daddy was. If you could practice medicine, you could practice it in the Army.
My brother, got his draft notice the day he finished his internship, as did every other member of his class and he wound up going down the Meikong River in a swift boat, and humping through the jungle as the great white doctor visiting the villages, winning the hearts and minds.
My own medical school class was the first not to get our draft notices the day we finished our internship--Nixon had ended sending Americans earlier that year.
I suspect one reason the military never went back to the draft was because it had reached all sectors of American society and was intensely unpopular.