The lethal consequences of going “woke”

 

The editorial board at Issues and Insights examines some of the lethal consequences of going “woke”:

The Wages Of Woke Are Death

Going woke means more than, as the saying says, going broke. It also means the ultimate loss of life. The grip of wokeness on our society will eventually kill Americans.

Let’s begin with health care. Medical school students, whose learning should be focused on the healing arts, are being taught social justice ideology. Apparently, white supremacy, oppression, and structural racism must be addressed by America’s doctors-to-be, as well as the sin of being white.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion studies are being required at some schools, which of course crowds out time used in the past to acquire the knowledge and develop the skills needed to be a good doctor. Politics have no place in medical schools, but there they are.

At the same time, some schools, as many as 40, are dropping standardized testing for diversity’s sake, reports the Daily Caller. The Medical College Admission Test, which “determines an individual’s ability to problem solve, think critically, and understand concepts about medical study,” does not serve the purposes of the social justice mafia. Now there are other legitimate academic avenues to medical school outside the MCAT. But as we’ve seen in other institutions of higher learning, standards designed to demonstrate and ensure competence are being killed off.

Given these facts, it’s a certainty that many of this country’s doctors of tomorrow and beyond will not have the competence needed to keep patients alive and well. Americans will die or suffer unnecessarily because wokeness demanded that the medical community marginalize them.

Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, a former University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine professor and associate dean who wrote “Take Two Aspirin and Call Me By My Pronouns,” says the ​​”quiet woke revolution” that had been capturing medicine “erupted in spring 2020 into a full-blown revolution.” 

One win for the woke insurgency is the American Medical Association’s “Organizational Strategic Plan to Embed Racial Justice and Advance Health Equity.” Goldfarb says that “unlike other social justice programs, this program is lethal” and “will tangibly reduce the quality of medical care, and almost every American will suffer its side effects.” If medical schools “cut training time in biochemistry and pharmacology for future doctors” to make room for studies that are political in nature, someone is bound to die.

Then the editors put the field of engineering under the same microscope.  Next they look at the military.  And here are their conclusions:

Wokeness is winning because our institutions have become cowardly and complicit; businesses are afraid they will fall behind if they don’t score well on the Corporate Equality Index, which is a Maoist extortion racket that demands prescribed behavior from companies; and the average American is scared of being ostracized and canceled for not just uttering but even holding opinions the mob doesn’t like.

Unless and until we overcome our fears, the malicious and depraved will continue their booted march through our culture and our economy. No one should be frightened to say that a system based on race, ethnicity, or gender over competence, intellect, and ability is dangerous. It is in fact mortally dangerous. 

The full editorial is here.

# # #

Do you trust your physician?

 

At American Mind, Steven Goldsmith laments the decline of the medical profession:

The Profession Formerly Known As Medicine

. . . To estrange themselves further from their calling, doctors bow as never before to the state and the corporation. They grovel before the altar of the “electronic health record,” or EHR, a corporate creation that widgetizes and dehumanizes doctor and patient. In 2016, MDs spent almost 40% of their patient care time (now surely higher) pecking on computers. No wonder they retire or leap from ledges.

With the advent of EHRs, weekly meetings of the clinical staff where I once worked no longer included discussions of actual patients. Instead we war-gamed how to enter EHR data so as to satisfy insurers, the government, and our corporate overseers. Such trends are as congenial to good medicine as spike proteins are to coronary arteries. . . .

. . . Events of the past three years highlighted an even more ominous problem. Physicians jettisoned their souls and became felons as they shilled for their new gods. They hacked off body parts of confused minors. They foisted dangerous drugs—remdesivir and gene shots—upon us without informed consent, that is, the transmission of truthful information about risks, benefits, and alternatives. Some practitioners even refused treatment to those unwilling to acquiesce.

. . .

The profession to which I have devoted five decades is sinking fast. I hesitate these days to seek a medical appointment for myself, so dissolute has medicine become. Doctors, in order to save yourselves, you must decentralize your work away from large groups with their soul-sucking cultures and toward small, intimate groups and solo practices. True, you will earn less—perhaps a lot less—and in the process you will need to decide your purpose in life, why you are here. Stop being Big Pharma’s bitches, and learn about natural treatments. Be healers, not ideologues. Develop parallel systems of medical training and care that emphasize prevention and the treatment of the whole person.  . . .

The complete article is here.

# # #

Hanson: The Decline of American Citizenship

 

In yesterday’s blog, I linked to historian Victor Davis Hanson’s essay on Cracked Icons of the Left.  Today I am posting on his message from Hillsdale College on his new course on The Decline of American Citizenship:

I wish to invite you to enroll in a seven-lecture course that I prepared with the help and under the auspices of Hillsdale College. It is called “American Citizenship and Its Decline,” and the online course is based on my latest book, the recently released The Dying Citizen.

Like the book, the course describes the current crises in America as symptoms of a far larger problem: the steady decline of the autonomy and political influence of the citizen.

The class describes the origins and history of citizenship in the West, reminding us that it is a rare phenomenon both in the past and the present—given the enormous responsibility placed on citizens to create and control their own government.

Citizenship then requires a large and self-reliant middle class—currently shrinking under enormous economic strains. Clearly defined and enforced borders are also essential to ensure a civic space in which citizens can nurture common customs, sustain traditions, and honor their own shared past.

Yet borders are now increasingly fluid as mere residence and citizenship seem often indistinguishable. Pre-civilizational tribalism—identifying by superficial appearance rather than through shared culture and values—is returning to America as so often the salad bowl replaces the melting pot.

These organic, bottom-up challenges are often matched by top-down stresses such as the growth of a huge permanent, but unelected, government of bureaucrats and administrators who combine judicial, executive, and legislative powers that overwhelm the citizen.

In addition, revisionists in law, the media, and politics seek to change the Constitution, long-held customs of governance, and political traditions for short-term partisan agendas, on the theory that a new changing and fluid Constitution must match an always evolving human nature.

Globalism is an ancient challenge to the sovereignty of the nation-state. But in the age of instant communications and unprecedented concentrations of globalized wealth, so often elites seek to supplant American laws and independence with international organizations and often without the consent of the legislative branch or the assent of the governed.

The course ends, however, on an optimistic note that citizens still have it within their power to restore our traditions of empowered citizenship and return government to the control of citizens.

“American Citizenship and Its Decline” is free to enroll in, and you can begin the course today by clicking on the secure link below.

https://online.hillsdale.edu/landing/american-citizenship-and-its-decline

Like most of Dr. Hanson’s messages, his summary is helpful on its own.

# # #

 

COVID-19 stats and moving goal posts

 

Katie Adams reports at Hospital Review:

The Atlantic's COVID tracking project compiles data directly from the websites of local or state public health authorities. When data is missing from the websites, it supplements available numbers with information from official news conferences. Data was last updated Oct. 18 or 19, depending on the state.

Hospital bed capacity counts are based on 2018 data from the American Hospital Association.

And here are the stats for COVID-19 patients now hospitalized in Ohio:

Ohio: 1,154
State's hospital bed capacity: 33,157

And here’s Matt Walsh at Instapundit on the moving goal posts:

We need to stay locked down for 15 days

Actually a month

Actually two months

Actually three months

Actually until there's a vaccine
Never mind actually we can't trust the vaccine

All political power games.

# # #

 

Democratic Party has gone rogue

A.F. Branco cartoon credit: Communities Digital News and Legal Insurrection

Karin McQuillan at American Greatness considers the lurch to the far left in the Democrat party. She concludes:

. . .All the Democrats have pledged to destroy America’s energy industry. Many have pledged to outlaw private health insurance. All have pledged to open our borders to all. None of them respect the Bill of Rights. 

This is all so bizarre in American terms it seems impossible. It is not only possible—it’s here. 

Campus culture, after eight long years of Obama’s interference, has come of voting age. They live in a hive-mind social media society, policed by mobbing, with censored sources of information. Through blacklisting, they have monopolistic control of our schools, colleges, media, and the high-tech corporate giants. They have won hearts and minds. It’s easy to do when those who don’t go along are destroyed. They enforce the diktats of their ideology ruthlessly. That’s their American dream.

Politics is very emotional for Democrats. They don’t care about jobs and national security, the two basic duties of the president. According to the Democrat primary, the fate of the world is at stake with the climate change crisis. Minorities’ existence is under threat by Republican “white supremacism.” They don’t want prosperity if it means some people—the hardest working, smartest, luckiest, most entrepreneurial, most self-sacrificing—can earn fabulous wealth. They see differences between people as unfair. They want sameness. They want to be given things, not to earn them.

There is no returning the hard Left to a harmless fringe. Their voters do not test their ideas or their policies by debate. They demonize Republican ideas instead of engaging with them. Far worse, they totally ignore real-world results. America’s success under President Trump, based on freedom for individuals, property rights, and free enterprise, only makes them angrier. 

These voters live in a subculture that tolerates no differing opinions. They are righteously determined to impose their values on the rest of us. 

This Democratic Party has gone rogue.

The entire article is here. Recommended.

# # #

Dr. Thomas Sowell retires

art credit: Benjamin T Brixey

One of my favorite columnists, Dr. Thomas Sowell, is retiring. His farewell column is here. And here are a few take-aways from it:

Most people living in officially defined poverty in the 21st century have things like cable television, microwave ovens and air-conditioning. Most Americans did not have such things, as late as the 1980s. People whom the intelligentsia continue to call the “have-nots” today have things that the “haves” did not have, just a generation ago.

In some other ways, however, there have been some serious retrogressions over the years. Politics, and especially citizens’ trust in their government, has gone way downhill.

. . .

Years of lying presidents – Democrat Lyndon Johnson and Republican Richard Nixon, especially – destroyed not only their own credibility, but the credibility which the office itself once conferred. The loss of that credibility was a loss to the country, not just to the people holding that office in later years.

With all the advances of blacks over the years, nothing so brought home to me the social degeneration in black ghettos like a visit to a Harlem high school some years ago.

When I looked out the window at the park across the street, I mentioned that, as a child, I used to walk my dog in that park. Looks of horror came over the students’ faces, at the thought of a kid going into the hell hole that park had become in their time.

When I have mentioned sleeping out on a fire escape in Harlem during hot summer nights, before most people could afford air-conditioning, young people have looked at me like I was a man from Mars. But blacks and whites alike had been sleeping out on fire escapes in New York since the 19th century. They did not have to contend with gunshots flying around during the night.

We cannot return to the past, even if we wanted to, but let us hope that we can learn something from the past to make for a better present and future.

Dr. Sowell is also a prolific author of books; he has made esoteric or downright boring subjects (such as economics) accessible and interesting. Check out some of them here. Most will be available at your local library. But his regular columns will be much missed.

# # #

Politics, free speech, and rent-a-mobs

art credit: www.blazingcatfur.ca

After the Trump rally was cancelled in Chicago a few weeks ago, Tiffany Gabbay reported at Truth Revolt: 

. . . The greater issue here is the psychosis currently gripping media, celebrity, and even fellow conservatives when it comes to the topic of Donald Trump.

This is dangerous ground on which to tread and reminds me of the knee-jerk reactions leftists had in crying "Racist!" anytime a person opposed Barack Obama on the basis of substance. So now Trump can be smeared as Hitler in much the same way, and anyone who supports him can be shamed as a person who "would have helped Hitler carry out the Holocaust." 

And this is part of what led to the riotous protests at the Trump rally in Chicago.

Does Donald Trump bear responsibility for the way he carries himself? Yes. But the media, along with the #NeverTrump crowd, conveniently leave out context and incite even more animus than was there to begin with. 

During several Trump rallies, aggressive -- not peaceful -- protesters have showed up to heckle Trump, his supporters, and attempted to disrupt these gatherings. Trump was reacting not to peaceful protesters, but to rabble rousers. Were some of the things he said in response to these agitators presidential? Perhaps not. But context in reporting and refraining from comparing Trump to Hitler on every news broadcast and print article would have been essential to quelling the rising tensions.

The truth is that those who protested Trump in Chicago are the same kind of people who needed no provocation at all to riot in Ferguson and in Baltimore and just about every other time and place in which they've tried to shut down free speech with aggression and militancy. This is the real fascism on display, not Trump. 

Conservatives, including other GOP candidates, who dislike Trump and wish to distance themselves from his rhetoric should think twice before embarking on the slippery slope of blaming Trump for the thuggery that occurred in Chicago on Friday. They should also look to their role in fanning the flames with every Trump-Hitler reference they make. This is not a road we want to go down. And if we do, there might not be a way of turning back. 

Think again about the violent protesting that resulted in Trump cancelling his March 11 rally in Chicago. One Twitter message reads:

Protesters celebrate chanting "We stopped Trump."

These protesters are not protesting just Trump, they are protesting free speech. And some of them, who knows how many, are bought and paid for.  Here is one of the ads in Craig’s List, posted on March 8 showing the hiring of the rent-a-mob protesters. Other reports on rent-a-mobs are here and here. 

Notice that one of the states listed at the end of the ad is Ohio. Hmm. Mid-July. Cleveland. Republican National Convention.

Fasten your safety belts. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.

# # #

Christmas preparations

This one is making the rounds on FB: 

Just another way to gear up for the Christmas season....

# # #