An Insight into the Monstrosity

  When I look at him, I see a man who fairly oozes rage and hostility, thinly disguised at times as “humor” or pseudo-congeniality or bluster. Or pretense at depth. But the entitled sense of alcoholic umbrage is still always already there beneath it all. It is truly painful to watch.

I see a wounded little boy who was raised with the horribly mistaken notion that money is the key to everything, including especially happiness. A little boy who grew into a youth and then a man and has long since realized, unconsciously, that money cannot buy everything, least of all the most important things. But now it is far, far too late to acknowledge the truth. He is invested, literally and figuratively. He is all-in on money and power, and the animal soul that will never be satiated, but it will never really satisfy that little boy.

And so he rages on, loudly and quietly, by day and in the dark of night, against anyone who gainsays him, anyone who doesn't like him, anyone who doesn't look like him but dares to speak anyway. For that rage will never be assuaged. That greed will never be sated. That wound cannot be healed, no matter how hard he tries to bandage it with “success” that is not success at all.

And meanwhile, that helpless little child is in there, just wanting to be loved for who he is, not for what he can earn. One can have pity for him, at least, as indeed one may have for Mary Shelley's monster. For they have this much in common: They want only to be human, to have what others have in abundance. But they cannot, because they have been created otherwise.

Alas he is indeed the apotheosis of American exceptionalism itself, the living, breathing, blond incarnation of all the intoxicated selfishness and entitlement that we have foisted on the rest of the world. As a nation, we are capable of great feats of generosity (we have the resources to do that, anyway). But true generosity must be selfless and cannot come with strings attached. Are we capable of that? Is he?

https://soundcloud.com/user-56350616/so-long-miss-america

* Credit where picture credit is due: patcegan.wordpress.com/2018/10/25/wounded-child/angry-boy/

Dr. Vaxlove, or How I learned to stop worrying and love the Needle

Lookit, I’m ludic, no question. But I’m not a Luddite. I’m highly skeptical of people’s motives when there’s money to be made, but I’m not interested in tearing down a system built upon solid scientific foundations. There is no question but that the principle of vaccination has saved countless lives and brought some very, very nasty diseases to their knees. Where and when it has been available, the Needle has done a huge amount of good, overall and in the big picture.

And yet.

[I’m going to put forward here some arguments, which I am compelled to say, due to the highly suspect nature of privacy and security as they stand in the public realm in the 21^st century, are purely for the purposes of discussion. Pursuant to Section X of US Public Law IF6was9, the views expressed in this editorial are not necessarily those of etc. and etc. “Parents should consult a professional skeptic before trying this at home.” Etc.]

I want to rely on science, wherever possible. And in general, I do. Anyone who knows me knows that I’ll play the science card first, in nearly every case. I make it clear to my students that as an historian I am, first and foremost, a Marxian: I am convinced that if you want to understand some event in the past, you have to look first at the material conditions that produced that event — and then consider how people’s ideas and beliefs shaped their engagements with those conditions. Nothing in human history has ever sprung purely from human thoughts and feelings. Nothing. On the contrary, one finds as many examples where human ideas and emotional orientations have been driven by circumstances, as the other

The Bee's Knees?

way around. Beliefs, philosophies, religions, have an elastic relationship with reality.

So why would I, hypothetically, of course, not want a child in my care to be vaccinated? Isn’t the Needle the medical equivalent to the Bee’s Knees?

Make no mistake, the medical system in this country is indeed an industry. So despite the crucial and valuable work done every day by jillions of fine, good-hearted physicians across this country, the larger structures in place that often drive the bus, so to speak, have proven themselves to be remarkably unreliable in standing for what is really the best for patients.

Let us leave aside here the for-profit medical insurance system in this country, which is an unethical and morally bankrupt monstrosity designed to privilege denial of treatment over actually helping people. We’ll set it aside because, after all, doctors in general do not have much say in how the system works. They are inmates of the asylum, just as surely as their patients are.

But consider: The vaccination regimes of my childhood were very different from those today. Children’s immune systems today are exposed to much more potent vaccines and much more intensive vaccination regimens than before. The list of “required” vaccines in the State of New York is long, much longer than when I was a kid. Varicella, for example, which I actually had as a child. (I do bear the mark of that illness today: a tiny scar next to my eyebrow where I scratched one of the little red itchies.) Or measles, which a number of the kids in my neighborhood had, as did my wife (the MMR vaccination coming a bit later than that). These are serious and unpleasant illnesses.

The logic is: Well, if we can prevent an illness, shouldn’t we, even if it is not debilitating or fatal? On the face of it, this would seem to be a very simple and compelling argument. Who wants another person — especially a child — to suffer, when suffering can be prevented?

And it would be a fine argument indeed, if there were no other consequences. But one of the problems I see is that the medical industry — as with the energy industry, the plastics industry and a host of others — has not always fully understood the costs that come with their achievements, because it’s not on their radar, and because there is no financial incentive to see it.

Large corporations that fund medical research (sometimes directly, but more often through foundations and donations to universities and so on) have a lot of say over what passes as “sufficient” science. The money is there, so why not spend it helping humanity? What does it matter that someone powerful stands to make a lot of money from it? Science is science, right?

But consider: What are the most infectious, disease-ridden places on the planet? Hospitals! If you are seriously ill and go to a hospital, the odds are very, very good that you will contract a significant and untreatable secondary infection. You will probably be treated with drugs that compromise your immune system — already compromised, perhaps, by the illness that put you in the hospital — and then you will be exposed to infectious agents that are themselves immune to all the drugs intended to stop them.

Some people actually die in hospitals, not because of the illness that brought them to the place, but from the secondary infection they contracted from being in the hospital. But what alternative is there? What alternative, that is, that turns a profit?

Case in point: My mother, 87 years old and ailing from an unexplained dizziness, as well as high blood pressure (which did not in fact exist, as was proven when she went into the hospital and was taken off Lipitor…and nothing happened!), fell in the shower and went to the hospital with what looked like a concussion. In fact, she also was experiencing early-stage Alzheimer’s. But that didn’t stop her from contracting a tenacious case of pneumonia that itself was immune to the antibiotics she was given. Fortunately, we had the good sense to bring her home to live her last days in a comfortable bed, surrounded by loving family.

Meanwhile, the cash registers continued to ring.

Consider: There has been a significant outbreak of unchecked measles in a community of Orthodox Jews in New York City. These people were lucky: They live in a country that has hitherto respected their religious beliefs that contest the supremacy of allopathic medicine. They’re not vaccinated; measles happened. That’s a more-or-less natural state of things.

But because of this outbreak — and the spread of measles (not rubella, not varicella, not mumps, not polio or tuberculosis or smallpox or even tetanus) to unvaccinated people in nearby communities — the State of New York has recently passed a law revoking people’s First Amendment rights when it comes to vaccination. All vaccination. Not merely to measles, the actual source of this alleged crisis, but all vaccinations. If the law stands court tests, every child in New York will have to be subjected to the entire range of ten vaccinations for the “required” diseases. This without any effort at quarantine as a solution, for example.

Not just measles: It’s now all or nothing, notwithstanding the fact that unvaccinated children present zero risk to vaccinated ones.

So, what is that about? Who is so determined to get these vaccines into children? Who stands to profit from it, and whose campaign coffers will get an infusion as a result? And keep in mind, this will mean that children whose families hitherto have been protected from enforced medical-industrial action by the First Amendment will now have to have literal barrages of vaccinations — two, sometimes three rounds of 10 different vaccines in the space of just three months or so. Even vaccinations that make no sense for particular age groups, or that make no sense at all (like varicella). How does one not see this as being driven by broader agendas than merely public health?

Defeat diseases — yes. Relieve suffering — yes. But isn’t the situation in modern hospitals perfect evidence of a serious limitation inherent in the worldview of allopathic medicine, especially when hitched to the engine of commerce? And what happens to the health of large populations — not to mention the ecosystem as a whole — when the collective immune system is no longer exposed to a broad range of stimuli from the environment, thanks to the industrialization of medicine? What other kinds of “complications” await when we have finally defeated all disease?

The truth is that no one knows, because that’s not on the radar of the allopathic medical industry. It’s a flaw in the reasoning: A failure to understand the bigger picture, which may point right back at the limitations inherent in allopathic approaches to the smaller picture. Especially: failure to understand that balance always returns within the natural system.

The Judeo-Christian ethos has brought us to a place where conquering nature has triumphed over living within nature. God supposedly “gave” the world to mankind to do with as it pleases. The result? Nagasaki and Agent Orange and Chernobyl. Plastic in Arctic snow and bee pollen and the deepest part of the ocean. Tardigrades on the Moon. And a medical industry that is always two steps behind, fixing problems piecemeal rather than embracing the whole. How long did the medical industry take to figure out that diet is the most important influence on patients’ wellbeing? Decades? Only now, in the 21^st century, has not medicating become a viable recommendation for practicing physicians.

History shows us, time and again, in ample ways, that conquest is not sustainable.

Nothing in nature conquers forever. Predators lord it over prey, until they die or are put down by another predator, or the ecosystem itself. The lions that consume all the antelope die out, too. Parasites cannot afford to kill the host. In a very real sense, humans (in the Developed World, anyway) are predators behaving like parasites. And we really do not know what the full consequences will be, but we have inklings of them already, today. I don’t think I need to point them out, do I?

So the point: I’m am not against vaccination, as such. I am against enforcing vaccination regimes whose long-term impacts on the individual, the society and the ecosystem are not understood — let alone respected. I am suspicious (hypothetically speaking) of a medical industry founded on allopathic approaches that lack the ability to appreciate that there are larger questions of natural balance to consider (let alone being able to understand that balance). The goal of an entirely disease-free, suffering-free world is not only unattainable, it’s dangerous. Industry will never get us there, in any case.

Consider also: The medical industry has not always been its own best friend. And government has not always been much help, either. For good or ill, the days when the guy in the lab coat had an unrestricted claim to authority are gone…in part precisely because of the growth of the medical industry I have just described.

Rather than invest heavily from the public coffers, for the good of all, in scientific research free from the taint of the marketplace, we have allowed, even driven, bona fide science to get into bed with Capital. This has led to a number of serious public-relations disasters (not to mention some actual scandals!) in which science has been hijacked for profit by unscrupulous corporations, aided and abetted by Government’s unwillingness to invest in regulation. (The two surely are not connected, are they? Who could even think such a thing?) Names like Monsanto and Dow come to mind immediately.

Realities matter, but so do perceptions. So if you want your scientific perspective to win the day, you cannot simply assert that it’s science and leave it at that. You do have to engage with people at their level — not merely by insisting on the power of your scientific approach, but also by addressing their concerns and perceptions directly.

Vaccination is precisely one of these cases. Like it or not, despite the scientific studies that have shown no statistical correlation between vaccination and autism-spectrum conditions, still there are these pesky anecdotal cases that seem to point toward a cause-and-effect relationship. When people read about parents whose kids’ behavior and cognition changed dramatically after being vaccinated, you cannot simply pooh-pooh it and let it go. Not if you want to convince them that you are right.

You have to address exactly these anecdotal cases — directly, loudly — and explain why they are not what they seem to be…if that is indeed the case. If it really is a matter of public health, it has to be worth the effort and expense to explain these anecdotal cases. Maybe they’re urban myths. Maybe there were other conditions that can account for the changes in these children. Maybe the change has to do with an unusual combination of factors in these specific cases. Maybe it’s only a tiny, tiny minority of children who will be affected this way. Whatever. But people deserve an explanation, so get out there and to the yeoman work that is needed to deal with this…if you can…and find a handsome or pretty face that speaks well to present the evidence.

Because rest assured, your inability to do that only feeds the perception that there is something behind these cases. And sleeping with the corporate enemy doesn’t help. If it really is a matter of public health, get to it!

***

Post Script: It seems to me that much of the problem here is that we in the Developed World have become accustomed to a badly distorted sense of time. Everything has to happen at the fastest pace imaginable…yesterday, if possible.

It’s a subject for another edition of Here and Not Here. But in the case of the medical industry, a new solution, a new benefit, a new profit, is always just around the corner, and there is not enough time devoted to thinking through the holistic consequences of our actions. We — the public — become accustomed to being impatient…an impatience driven largely by fear that has been fostered by the March of Progress, but also encouraged by the Drive for Profit. Capital is only truly happy when generating more Capital, and the faster the better. Imagine what would happen (to our minds, our hearts, our consciousness, the planet) if we all. just. slowed. down.