Sunday June 26, 2022
The kid is in Providence, Rhode Island overseeing my grandson stacking coffee cups. And us waiting for the famous Providence WaterFire celebration.
I don’t have a lot of time to worry and complain.
When I was a young man Roe was decided.
The year before that the anti-abortionists had reported how many illegal abortions they thought were done in the state of Virginia.
I knew an old German doctor who performed abortions illegally in that state. His wife said that if the anti-abortionists’ figure was correct, her husband had performed them all.
At that time, if you were rich and got pregnant and wanted an abortion you went to Denmark.
But if you were poor?
Eighteen years after Roe there was a drop in the crime rate in many urban cities.
The mayors and police chiefs all took credit for the drop.
Malcolm Gladwell wrote that perhaps the biggest reason was the drop in unwanted children that would have come of age at that time due to Roe 18 years before.
Back in the 1700s Thomas Malthus proposed his theory that population growth will outrun food supply and that improvement in humankind is impossible without limits on population growth. This led to the zero population growth movement, which was pretty successful until Reagan killed it off in a deal with the Pope. This was the beginning of religion, once again, interfering in politics. Reagan went on to kill unions and destroy the middle class. This is where the modern decline of the middle class in America began. After World War II the USA had spectacular economic growth. There were several reasons for this growth. One was that most of the industrial world except for the U.S. was destroyed. The other reason was that The GI Bill, allowed returning service people to go to college. Of course women, blacks and native Americans were not allowed to participate in these benefits.
Then we as a nation turned our back on what made us great. Jack Hird, one of the world’s leading statistical quality control engineers who did systems work at Ford and later Western Electric said to me that the difference between Japan and the U.S. after the war was that the Japanese listened to the other world’s leading statistical quality engineer, Edward Demming, and the U.S. ignored Hird’s advice. And guess what? The Japanese surpassed us in automobile quality. Meanwhile the rest of the world passed us in health care.
We built the Interstate Highway System under Eisenhower then refused to fund the maintenance of it. We decided under Truman to not have Universal Health Care like Britain and instead went for a company sponsored system. Lose your job – lose your health care.
Doctors in Britain are rewarded for making patients healthy. Those doctors are very good at diagnosing people with just a stethoscope. Our doctors, afraid of being sued, order expensive tests and have low skills with a stethoscope.
When I was a kid, people in Europe had the image of us as cowboys. Now? We are regarded with disbelief as we can’t seem to stop the slaughter of our children and citizens. I was in Cambodia recently. Everyone there knows someone the Khmer Rouge killed. During the days of the Killing Fields some 2-4 million people were killed. We in the U.S. have reached that number between the people shot and those that died from Covid. Now in Cambodia guns are not allowed except for police and military and even then you need a permit for a specific time to take those weapons out on the street. No permit? Jail. Simple.
Yet, we can’t figure out how to stay healthy, avoid a virus or a gunshot, and our students and poor are left destitute.
Why worry?
Well, we are being controlled by a minority. They have extreme dangerous ideas, which they wish to inflict on all of us. Democracy, independence and thinking are an anathema to them. Guns, hate, religion – only theirs, inflicted hurt and poverty, violence are the norm. Why worry? Who cares?
You know, I’ve heard some of this hateful racist religious gun toting crap my whole life. Well, from five on. None of it is true and if you confront one of them with facts they say, “I don’t believe it.” It’s not a matter of belief.It’s a matter of fact. Truth. However, these people have been courted with lies, half truths, and stupidity.
Why? To be controlled and robbed. Robbed of their money, their independence, their dignity. But they’ll go to their deaths saying the opposite. Herman Cane? Meatloaf? Dead. Why? They believed! They believed a lie. They stood up for the lie. They died because of it. So have millions of others. Willing to die to a virus or a gunshot to support the lie. Willing to give up their riches and live in poverty and have zero chance of success, Why? Because they see other people on yachts, while their boat languishes on the shore, waiting for the rising tide.
Will we rise up? Will we confront the dangers? Will we work together to improve our lot?
How many more need to die?
How many more need to be told what they can do with their bodies?
Time to commit to voting, to standing up to stupidity and to lies.
We are experience Over population here in Seattle. People who cannot afford an apartment or shelter are buying old camper vans that don’t run and living in them. On one street the camper vans are so plenty full their garbage is all on the sidewalk. Stores are being robbed every day by desperate people and all the works just stand by. Those of us that complain are call “nimby’s” as if we are causing the problem. That is the ultra left wing nuts. Nothing is being done except new building permits that wipe out single family homes to build “affordable housing units.” No one can afford the rents on these places. Just a maddening state of affairs
Good screed, Rick. Every day I struggle with the willful ignorance of educated people here. It boggles my mind how anyone, particularly women, can vote for any candidate from this bastardized abomination called the Republican party. It just makes me sick.