Suddenly there are Republicans who would have us believe that they have grown spines and moral fiber. The scales have fallen from their eyes and they see that Cluck’s character and policies are – omigosh – very bad things.
We can be forgiven for thinking that these are false epiphanies. A rat is a rat is a rat would be something to keep in mind. Even the Prince of Rodents, vice-president Vance, has put on his running shoes and is attempting to make his escape.
But then … MAGA is accustomed to being lied to. They even seem to prefer it to being fed anything remotely resembling the truth. The important thing is that they are now scuttling aimlessly about among the trash cans and garbage heaps that have collected in the dark places in America. I think – good – as long as they are directionless they are causing less trouble. We’ll eventually get to them.
We’ll see a lot of that in the weeks to come, as indecent and dishonest men and women have to explain … hey, just what have you been doing for America in the past few (days? weeks? years?). And the follow-up question … what have you done TO America?
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Liz Cheney has never been a favorite of mine. Too much like her awful father, with that same cruel streak. But, following the principle that even a stopped clock is right twice a day, she came up with this statement in 2022.
Tonight, I say this to my Republican colleagues who are defending the indefensible. There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain.
Liz Cheney
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During my pediatric residency I saw a lot of things whose memories occasionally still come floating by in the debris-filled river I called consciousness. At that time the University of Minnesota Hospital received the sickest children from several neighboring states as patients. These were states which were not yet fortunate enough to have their own pediatric facilities. At the same time even our technical ability to care for these kids was often wanting, almost medieval by today’s standards. Put those two things together and you have a situation where those of us in training had many opportunities to watch lovely small people die in unlovely ways. Sometimes nightmarish ways, actually.
After one of those days I remember sitting at the supper table in our apartment. My two daughters aged 1 and 2 years were strapped into highchairs on my left. They were doing what they did very well, which was to use their food as sources of nutrition and an artistic medium at the same time.
At some point I heard my former wife calling my name and she brought me out of the trance I was in. Apparently for several minutes I had been staring at those healthy and boisterous children just a couple of feet away who were doing the absolutely natural thing of being their ages. I had not spoken nor moved. The contrast between what I’d seen and done in that afternoon at the hospital and the beauty of an ordinary evening at our table couldn’t have been greater. There was no way that I could reconcile the two worlds I moved in and I didn’t even try.
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On one of our evening walks this week I glanced down and saw this leaf. Struck by its patterns and colors, I put it in a pocket, carried it home, and took its picture.
In Nature’s way of planning, the tree was everything and the leaf was expendable. But what intricacies it contained at even this late stage of its life. So much beauty out there … that something this lovely can be simply tossed away.
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Here’s an interesting article. In a recent study, one-quarter of parents admitted misleading their physician in order to get antibiotics for their child. That’s an interesting number. Even more interesting is that eighty per cent of the time they were successful.
One easy conclusion would be ignorant parents plus weak-willed doctors equals drugged children.
It’s bit more complicated than that, but when I was in practice there were many parents who left my office without a prescription, muttering imprecations under their breath.
Their magical belief in antibiotics and what they saw as my unreasonable denial of their request/demands was the source of their unhappiness. Most of those parents never returned to see me. They sought out, and usually found, more compliant physicians.
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This morning fate pulled me in and I watched the “tears in rain” scene from the original Blade Runner yet one more time and that was that. I know I’ve put it in this blog (I really dislike that word, it sounds to me like clearing a great glob of mucus from the throat) at least twice over the years, BUT I DON’T CARE.
It’s one of the great short scenes in movies. Rutger Hauer secured his spot in cinema history by writing it for himself, and then acting it out, as the android character Roy Batty he had played a resourceful villain all through the film. But each android had been created with a programmed-in lifespan so that they could never take over the world (are you listening, AI programmers?), and Roy’s number was now up. In these few seconds his character goes from evil genius to a tragic everyman. Such an amazing transformation.
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Everything is only for a day. Both that which remembers and that which is remembered.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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Closing today, five days after an election that surprised and elated many of us in its rejection of the fascist nightmare we’ve been living in, I will offer one of the more famous anti-fascist speeches in cinema history.
The Great Dictator was Chaplin’s first film with dialogue. Chaplin plays both a little Jewish barber, living in the ghetto, and Hynkel, the dictator ruler of Tomainia. In his autobiography Chaplin quotes himself as having said: “One doesn’t have to be a Jew to be anti-Nazi. All one has to be is a normal decent human being.” … Chaplin spent many months drafting and re-writing the speech for the end of the film, a call for peace from the barber who has been mistaken for Hynkel. Many people criticized the speech, and thought it was superfluous to the film. Others found it uplifting. Regrettably Chaplin’s words are as relevant today as they were in 1940.
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