Wealth Disparity [#3]

#3 Democratic Party Principles

Wealth Redistribution

There is no way a democracy, or even a republic hoping to do the greatest good for the greatest number can allow the winners in the economic game to win so much that others cannot thrive.

The British tried this and the collapse of their Empire and their economic power and their own well being ensued.

The Republican Party tells us we should believe in social Darwinism: The fittest survive, the fittest prosper. If you lose, that's on you.

We know the rules of the game. The game is fair. If you lose, you deserve to lose. If you win, you deserve to win and you deserve all you win.

The fact is, this is the Big Lie.

We all start from different places: Some are born on third base and believe they hit a triple.

All you have to do is to look at the current tax bill in the Republican Congress. If you own a business you pay a much lower tax rate than if you are a wage earner. This is only fair, say the Republicans: The guy who takes the greater risks gets the greatest reward. The wage earner chooses safety over the adventure and risk of entrepreneurship. But the fact is, the guy who takes the risk most often can afford to take the risk. He's got a safety net provided by his family.  The wage earner cannot afford the risk.

You can think of many exceptions in your own world to this, but the fact is, the guys who are really rich in this country, who are in the top 1-10% of that pie graph started rich and used their head start to get richer. 
They were never going to starve or become homeless if they failed. 

Health Care [#2]

#2 Democratic Party Principles
Health Care

Everyone, save the most libertarian or Tea Party of Republican, would likely agree, that in an ideal world, a utopia, every citizen would be provided with health care from cradle to grave.

Only the most ardent absolutist would argue that the man or child brought bleeding to the Emergency Room should be denied life saving help if he has not made an investment in his own or his child's heath care.

If we all agree emergency care should be provided we ought to ask ourselves why? 
We agree on this not only because we might sympathize with the patient in need but because we do not like to think of ourselves as hard hearted enough to turn away a suffering person, to walk by the child drowning in the pond and make no effort to rescue him.

If we feel this way about emergency care, then why do we not feel that way about all medical care which may prevent people from reaching the point where they need emergency care?

Here we get to the idea of the grasshopper and the ants. It's a matter of deserving. Those who will not invest in insurance get what they deserve. That's the essence of the Republican line. We don't owe any human being anything. Take responsibility for yourself.

But if people want to take the risk, that's on them, the Republican argument goes. Thus, no individual mandate to buy health care.

Practically, what that has meant is those who gambled and lost, wind up in the Emergency Room, getting admitted and the whole system sags under their burden.

Then there is the second half of the Republican argument: Government run health care is always inefficient and poorly done; if you want efficiency, innovation, first class health care, the best health care in the world, power it with private enterprise, make it a profit center.

Trouble with this argument is history: Private enterprise has been a dismal failure when it comes to American healthcare. American healthcare demonstrates just the opposite: Compared to the government run systems of Western Europe, American health care is like the American automobiles in the 1960's--dismally low quality. That's why the Hondas and Toyotas blew the American auto companies out of the water. America had become complacent, stopped improving while the rest of the world blew by us. That's where we are with healthcare today.

We keep telling ourselves the fairy tale that we have the best health care system in the world because that means we don't have to do the hard work of changing it.

It also allows the profiteers (big pharma, big health insurance companies) to keep making billions in profit.

Profit is a poison when it comes to running a health care system. Health care should not be a profit center. It is more like electric power, and infrastructure. It should be designed to deliver the greatest good to the greatest number at the lowest cost.

We have examples of the Veterans' health care system,  the military health care system and Medicare. For all the complaints about specific facilities, specific problems, these are marvels of efficiency and models of what American medicine and surgery can be.

We need a system more like England's: You can fly first class, with your private, union insurance or you can fly economy on the national health system, but you get to the same place, when you land in the end.

Abortion [#1]

A Democratic Manifesto: 
Democratic Party Principles
#1 Abortion

Getting past the trivial and puerile, to which President Dotard wants us to focus our undivided attention, Mad Dog has decided to begin a discussion of the six issues which should define the Democratic Party:

1. Abortion: When is it infanticide? 
2. Health Care: Is it a right or a profit center?
3. Wealth disparity: Should the government play a role in redistributing wealth?
4. Guns, gun violence: Is this a single issue solvable by one law or a nexus of problems?
5. Drugs and the Opoid crisis: Is this a public health crisis or a criminal problem; is there an effective set of options?
6. Immigration: Do we really have an immigration problem or a perception problem?

I believe every Democrat, given enough time in any setting, platform, meeting, TV appearance ought to say these are the key issues which define Democrats. 
There are some things so fundamental they define discussion.
That freedom of speech is in the first amendment is no accident. It is the most fundamental of all rights, without which there can be no other rights, the sine qua non of all other rights.

So, Mad Dog will discuss each these 6 basic issues in a separate post.  

Mad Dog begins with ABORTION.

Blackmun, a Republican

Have you actually ever read Harry Blackmun's Supreme Court Opinion in Roe v Wade, written in 1973? 
Few people I know have.
Nor have many read William Requist's dissent nor Whizzer Byron White's dissent.

These are good places to start, but the ultimate argument comes down to a decision in the mind of man when life begins.

The justices addressed the less important problem first--who has the right to decide whether or not abortion should be permitted? They did this because this is a matter of law, of jurisdiction, or who has "standing." 

But it all comes down to is the fetus a person? Like the Dred Scot case, in which the justices decided the slave had no standing to sue in court because he was not a person, or, at best, on 3/5 a person, so nobody could intervene from the judiciary or any other part of government on his behalf, if the fetus is not a person the whole debate dissolves.
And deciding about when the fetus becomes a person is treacherous water for a judge.
Blackmun goes through all the arguments, but in the end, if you are an absolutist, you cannot be persuaded. If you believe the moment the sperm penetrates the egg, it is a human being in the eyes of God or should be in the eyes of man, there is no arguing faith.
Like slavery, this is one of those disputes which, for some, has no middle ground.
But for many people, for Mad Dog in particular, there is a middle ground.
Mad Dog well remembers witnessing a "salting out" in medical school--in which a 28 week fetus was expelled from the womb and quickly shunted to a utility room off the operating room, where Mad Dog examined it, visually, with a nurse. It did not draw a breath. It did not move, beyond perhaps a spasm here and there. But it looked a lot like a human being to Mad Dog, in a gut check sort of way. In those days, 1971, two years before Roe v Wade, that fetus could not have survived out of the womb given the state of neonatal medicine then. 

But it sure looked almost human. It's lungs made not have been fully formed; certainly its brain was not, but it looked human. Looking human, of course, Mad Dog realized even then, did not make it human. He'd seen models of babies which looked human.
But that thing on the stainless steel tray looked, to Mad Dog, a third year medical student, like a victim of  infanticide.
But Mad Dog also saw suction curettage of 6 week fetuses which looked like nothing more than smudge on a gauze pad, and he saw fetuses, sometimes spontaneously expelled, at 14 weeks which looked like skinned newts, not human at all, although fetuses on ultrasound, magnified as they are by the technology--those images look pretty human. 

Not yet a human being

Ultrasounds of fetuses, one must remember are very deceptive--they make something look alive and human, but they are cartoons.  Donald Duck and Roger Rabbit look alive on screen, too. Just because something looks human doesn't mean it is really human--clouds can look like people, too.

Not human being

Clouds can look like angels, too, but that doesn't make them angels. 

Cloud, not angel

Ultimately, the judges in Roe v Wade chose not to believe the Catholic or Bible Belt belief that a 2 cell conceptus is alive, has a soul and commands the same right to life as a 28 week fetus. They said there is a progression toward becoming a human being, and that until 12 weeks (end of the first trimester) the fetus has virtually no claim to protection, after 24 weeks it may well have full claim to protection, it's for all intents and purposes, a person, and during the 2nd trimester, well, that's up for discussion, but since it's not viable outside the mother, it's her call.

All the arguments about who has the right to make this call are secondary--arguments the mother has the right because the Constitution implies a "right to privacy" are pretty weak. You don't have a right to kill your four year old in your home because that's a right to privacy. 

It all comes down to belief and the justices in Roe said, we have to draw the line somewhere. Legislatures don't have that right, mostly because they have made such a goddamn mess of that, so we'll do it.
They drew the line at the end of the 2nd trimester.

Mad Dog believes that was the right place to draw that line, at least in 1973.  Up to that point the fetus is like  a car frame on an assembly line--it has the shape, but still is not a functional, realized thing. 
But somewhere it does cross a line, and is more realization than simple potential. Early on, it may have the frame of an automobile, but it does not have a working engine, electrical wiring, gas lines, transmission or even tires, but somewhere along the line, it crosses over into being enough of a car to be called a car. 

Cloud, not human being

And that's where Mad Dog thinks the Democratic Party should plant its flag: We do not believe in infanticide. We do not believe a two cell thing is a human being. We acknowledge as technology changes and makes it possible for a fetus to survive outside the womb, we might draw the line a little earlier, but for now, we agree until the fetus is 24 weeks, abortion is permissible. 

If you believe differently, vote against us. That's where we are.

Preservation of Self in Everyday Life

When I was an intern, there were no female interns. There were very few female doctors in the hospital outside pediatrics and obstetrics/gynecology. That all changed during my residency and the advent of more women physicians had a civilizing effect on the training programs.


When we were told to "suck it up," and work a 70 hour weekend on call, or to run up and down flights of stairs to the blood bank to fetch bloods for transfusions for your bleeding patient, or to run down to the emergency room get back in time for rounds to make your presentation, you did it. You knew you were an intern and by definition of that job, you were going to be abused. Don't be a wuss, don't be a weenie. Just do it.

Discouraging protest

Women didn't buy all that and things started to change.


The Chief of Neurology humiliated and terrified students  with his grilling on rounds, and we all said, "education by humiliation" was his technique. My brother always said the reason he and I did so well in our neurology rotation was because our father was cut from the same cloth and we were accustomed  to that sort of abuse and just pushed ahead. while others, whose fathers were more indulgent, just fell apart.

Shaming was widespread. You don't know your patient's hematocrit? And you call yourself a doctor?  What if the patient undergoes cardiac arrest because you failed to check that? Should we call your mother and tell her to come pick you up because you are flunking out of internship?

Hostile work environment

A "hostile work environment" was not a phrase in those days.


It's true, none of this sort of hazing involved authorities caressing our breasts or genitalia or insisting on sex, or locking the door to the office from a button under the desk. And we were beyond adolescence.


But abuse of power by authorities was and likely still is part of some work environments. And when women get into positions of power, they often behave just like men, attempting to put subordinates in their place, asserting their dominance while underlings have to simply take it. The Devil Wears Prada. Nurse Wratched.


When I was 13 or 14 if a boy got too aggressive with his hands in places they were not welcomed, the girl could be counted on to issue a quick rebuke, possibly accompanied by a stinging slap across the face. Nobody objected that this was a provocation to further violence by the boy. Mostly, boys treated to this simply slinked away, lesson learned.


So I'm a bit mystified why Al Franken who was reported to have caressed the bottoms of women or attempted to kiss them, was not quickly treated to a right cross across the face.


I'm not educated in this discussion, which is why I ask now. But the question occurs to me.


Why did women not respond more forcefully at the time of these transgressions? Why do they come out only years later?


In the case of the District Attorney in an Alabama town in the car with a 14 year old, I can understand the silence and the passivity. But what about the journalist or the woman at the County Fair?
Not to say they should have behaved differently.
 Just asking.

Et tu, Bernie? Party of Self Righteous Eunuchs

You all did love him once, not without cause: 
What cause withholds you then to mourn for him? 
O judgement! thou art fled to brutish beasts, 
And men have lost their reason…. Bear with me; 

Ambition should be made of sterner stuff.

--Julius Caesar, Shakes.

Tonight I am ashamed to be called a Democrat.

I search in vain through the internet for detailed testimony on the predations of Al Franken, the testimony from specific women about specific acts and I find only two women mentioned by name, and the grabbing, kissing sounds like lame brained horseplay, but in any event years ago.

Oh, I know. I am well aware.
For if we forgive Al Franken on the basis of time washing clean the wounds, then must we not forgive Roy Moore?

And maybe, the unthinkable, Roy Moore as the sexual predator is not quite as hideous as we want to believe.

And it's what we want to believe that counts.

But oh, the unkindest cut is that driven home by Bernie Sanders. 
We thought we knew you well, but no, ambition stains the brain, liquefies the spine. 
Sanders, for whom I knocked on doors, now knocks down the pillars of respect.

And Elizabeth Warren, who once looked so clear eyed, who dared speak truth to power, now languishes among the malodorous slime, as if to even voice the obvious, that we need not rush to judgment, now dwells with perfidy.

Kirsten Gillabrand, Maggie Hassan, ambitious women, willing to climb over the body toward their next step up. 

Oh, what a sad revelation to see those who have been our hope for salvation are just as dirty and corrupt as those they oppose.

The difference is they fight for the right cause.
Patton, Sheridan, yes even Sherman, were loathsome on occasion, and yet they fought to the right side of history. Eventually we forgave them, for the truth is, the good men and women do does not get buried with their bones, but may live after them. The evil also may survive them in memory, but for some the evil is outweighed by the good.

So it was with Al Franken, but those moral midgets were too frightened to see it. 
This once noble party has become a den of self righteous eunuchs. 

Diversity in Silos?

Writing in the New York, Thomas Chatterton Williams raises ideas about globalism, multiculturalism, race and identarianism, which evoked a reaction in me both personal and sublime.

T.C. Williams

Let me begin with three observations.

1. Some years ago, at a Department picnic at Yale, one of the Finnish doctors in our department announced he was leaving to go back to Finland. "Veikko," I said, "Your work is going so well here. You're one of the real stars in our department, how can you leave now? A few more years and you can go back and become the chairman of any department at any university in Finland or anywhere."
He smiled and he nodded at a raucous group of children, ages 5 to 14, rampaging about a set of jungle gym equipment. 
"See those kids?" he said. 
"Sure."
"Can you tell which ones are mine?"
I looked and all the kids wore pretty much the same clothes--jeans, T shirts. All were babbling in English. There were many colors of skin, hair, some blond, some Asian, some Black, some mixes of all of these.
I shook my head, "They are all just kids. Wonderful kids."
"Yeah, well, but three of them are mine. They blend in, just as all those kids do. But I want my kids to know they are Finnish. A few more years of this and they'll be like everyone else--Americans."
"But Americans can be anything. We are diverse. We are everything."
"Everything but Finnish," Viekko said.

American kids. Melting.

2. Forty years ago, I spent a little over two months in London. I'd always wanted to go there. I'd grown up on British movies about the heroic, debonair, plucky Brits muddling through the war against the virulent, racist Nazis And London was just like the movies, double decker buses, black taxicabs, rosy cheeked children. In retrospect, very White. Visiting again, about fifteen years ago, I was stunned to see Arab men sitting outside at small round tables in mid day, drinking from tiny coffee cups, not at work, and certain neighborhoods, I could imagine was not in London but in Baghdad. 

3. Just last week, an NPR story about the change in a population of fish in some lake, which had been "taken over" by some "invasive species" of fish was presented as a sort of eco warning story about climate change. It seems beloved trees, fish, a whole ecosystem was being transformed by global warming. It was all I could do not to throw something at the radio.  "That's what evolution IS!" I shouted. Environment changes, a species which is adapted to that new niche flourishes. Other species cannot compete and die out. More species by far are extinct than extant.  Why make this a morality tale, when all it is is nature playing by the rules of evolution?


Now back to The New Yorker and the article "You Will Not Replace Us."

What Williams was describing was the thinking behind the alt right's chant at Charlottesville, which has been heard across Europe from France to Poland. White people, White nationalists, White supremacists, neo Nazis, identitarians all fulminating about the "invasion" of previously White nations (England, France, Germany) by Muslims and Blacks. 
Sounds pretty easy to understand--"racial purity"  antisemitism, fear of the "other," all very familiar in Trumpland.

Alain de Benoist

But there is Alain de Benoist who is decidedly emphatic about not being a White supremacist who argues we ought to keep the various races and ethnicities separate, not because he fears polluting White populations with Black people but because he thinks the distinctiveness of different peoples is under attack by this mixing and that diversity he so cherishes is under attack by globalists.

He argues that White Western Europeans have tried to homogenize the globe, first with the crusades, to convert everyone to Christianity, then with colonialism to foster European political principles, then with trade to impose economic development and industrialization and finally with imposition of moral principles they call "human rights."

Benoist argues, much as my Finnish colleague did, that diversity is to be celebrated, it is the most precious quality of human life and it's being threatened by mixing. The "citizen of the world" is simply an agent of imperialism.  He argues for diversity achieved through isolation.

His solution to immigration is to support local African nations so their citizens do not think of leaving for better pastures and hunting grounds, make them "self sufficient."

This brought me face to face with my own contradictions. On the one hand, I was abashed and, admittedly disappointed that my pristine, fairy tale London now looked like Baghdad, while at the same time I was furious at people who thought it was somehow a moral imperative to keep their favorite fish in their stream or their favorite tree in the woods behind their homes.

Terrible Swift Sword

And then you face the other factor: What if you say, okay, I like racial mixing and the melting pot thing, but what if a group arrives which says:
1/ We do not want to mix. We want to live here, but we do not want to become at all like you. We do not want to learn your language or marry into your family or allow you to do that to our family. 
2/ We detest your values, first among them, the freedom to disagree. We do not accept your disagreeing with our views and will do everything we can to prevent you from expressing your views. We are intolerant of tolerance.

What do you do with that? How does that fit your dream of diversity?

I'm still with Rev. King who hoped for the day people would be judged by the content of their character rather than by the color of their skin. 
And I think it a fool's errand to believe it's practical to hope to erect barriers to prevent people from mixing in today's world, just as silly as trying to prevent that new fish from taking over the pond in your back yard and transforming the aquatic fauna, no matter how much you loved the speckled trout who once thrived there.
That is the ineluctable law of nature, of Darwinian law.

Whether you can succeed in building a wall to prevent Darwinian law from prevailing over human populations we shall see.

Where Have All the Real Men Gone?

Some days, after watching Fox News, CNN, Morning Joe, The Squawk Box on TV as I do my treadmill, seeing The Dotard, Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, various pundits, I just groan inwardly.

Beneath Contempt

Phony tough guy

Phony tough guy

Phony tough guy

I think about the men I've been reading about lately, Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, Lee, Longstreet and I think, "Where have all the REAL men gone?"

Real tough guy

Just look at these current incarnations of what passes for leaders of men nowadays--puffy pink men,  full of sound and fury, signifying an inner gelatinous core. Never  had a shot fired in anger at them.  They talk tough to hide their core softness.


Then look at Sherman, Sheridan, Grant.  And, of course, Lincoln. 

Of course, these real men are not angels, nor even "heroes." 
Sheridan, after his service in the Union army playing a large part in winning the Civil War, led the cavalry as an  Indian fighter, and was said to have been the author of the immortal line, "The only good Indian is a dead Indian."


Sherman hated newspaper reporters: "If I could kill them all, I would. But then we would likely get reports from Hell before breakfast."
 And Grant, frustrated with the black market in cotton behind his lines and told (by his father) the merchants were mostly Jews issued an order banning all Jews from his department, which Lincoln, who tried to never interfere with Grant, had to, in this one instance, intervene, reminding Grant you cannot ban a entire class of people; you have to deal with individuals when you consider the law.
Lincoln, of course, was a lawyer.
Lincoln was  real man. He would have seen right through a Muslim ban.

Tough guy veritas

Lincoln was not the Great Emancipator. He was the Reluctant Emancipator. He did not free all the slaves, just those who were politically expedient to free.


But, for all their faults, they were real men.
Just look at their photographs and compare the real men to the sorry excuse for malehood we have today.