I just heard Dan Bongino on Fox. I won’t keep you in suspense as to his viewpoint on “defund the police”. 🤔 But what triggered me is what he said about domestic situations being the most dangerous. “Who ya gonna call—a social worker?” he bellowed.
My father was the only doctor here in our little corner of Appalachia, for about a 35 mile radius. There was no police force. (My parents always said there was one guy; maybe he was a constable, whose main qualification for the job was:he had a car.) ”Doc” was the one everybody called at 2 AM when one of his patients Got outta control or became violent, even before any injuries had occurred.
The office phone rang in our house. He would dress, pick up the large leather fishing tackle case, his “bag”, which was like a portable medical clinic, and drive over to the tumultuous household. He fixed his gaze, bleary-eyed from sleep or lack thereof, upon the brawlers, intoning his most powerful condemnation: “ I’m asha-a-a-med of you!”
He could speak on occasion with an authority that could not be gainsaid. The foregoing phrase was one his children and his horses also heard, on mercifully few but eternally memorable occasions. It worked like a fire hose, leaving the miscreants abject and shivering.
He never feared for his own safety in these situations, any more than a Kindergarten teacher would (or would have then) been afraid to break up a playground scuffle. When he said he was ashamed of someone, it was suddenly manifestly clear to the raving maniacs that they ought to be ashamed of themselves.
He was a grownup.
We aren’t producing many of them these days, because we aren’t producing many people who function independently, and whose personalities thus project the kind of authority they’ve earned by their experience and success. In fact, to be that kind of person, now, if one is a white male, is to be labeled racist and sexist. I thought of that when Trump strode across the street to hold up his mother’s Bible in front of St John’s. Um, you’d think ecclesiastical professionals at all levels would be cheering. But no. The seminaries arent producing any grownups these days. Neither are the police academies. Neither are the law schools. Nor whatever institutions turn out teachers. And as for the medical profession, its universally-revered authority In America was destroyed once and for all in the Clinton era. Doctors now are no more than tradespeople, no “better “ ( Heaven forbid!) than the para-practitioners.
“The weak lay band on what the strong have done/Till that be tumbled which was lifted high/And discord follow upon unison/ AND ALL THINGS AT ONE COMMON LEVEL LIE…
America: grow up.
ST UnWoked & UnVaxxed! 
A man among men back when men were men. Whatever else this is it also shines bright as a loving daughter’s tribute to the man who both fathered and raised her.
Like so much!
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Amen! (The optics on that foray to St, John’s needed some work, but the message was unassailable.) This country was founded by and for people who recognized and responded to the imperatives of the Moral Law. The last thing I ever wanted to do – then and now – was let my parents or myself down. Oh, shared moral compass: Where art thou? How about making The Simon Tao available – like Islamic Centers and Confucius Institutes – everywhere?
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Thank you!
But Y’know, since I wrote this, I’ve kinda been thinking the problem may be, NOT Americans’ juvenescence, but our senescence.
We were born in 1776, we DID grow up, entering our glorious prime in the second half of the 20th Century—and now we’re entering our dotage.
It’s been a good long run: 244 years with the same form of government (assuming we don’t have a coup d’etat before July 4, 2020..) that has to be a world record, at least in “modern” times.
Nah, I’m afraid we’re past our sell date. That’s why Biden is the perfect candidate.
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Hang on, my Alexandrine friend, we’re still inculcating values and attitudes: self-control and self-sufficiency and interdependence are not extinct!
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Shall we defund Soros, et al. so that he/they can’t fund Antifa?
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So Marcus Welby, MD was a real person?
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Yes. We used to tease my dad about that!
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Oh for the good ole days! My aged mother pays $6k a year for a concierge physician who doesn’t even make house calls.
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Liz, I thought ‘concierge’ was synonymous with “house call”, non?
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Not anymore. It is now defined as immediate access to their offices within their working hours of course. Otherwise, you go to the ER which is a miserable option indeed.
I should write a post about what regulations and overuse of insurance do to the overall well-being of the public. I’ll be frank. The elderly in Naples overuse medicare; I’ll use my own 95 yr old mother who was encouraged to get a colonoscopy. Really?
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Awwww, drat! Back when we all hung out w/DocJay, I thought this was a great idea. Looking forward to your post!
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I would be interested to hear more about the boutique or concierge practices. I would think it would result in more testing of those patients, as you indicate. It’s like a special tribunal:They always find evidence of what they set out to find, Cuz otherwise, it makes them seem superfluous. For 6K/year/ the doc is gonna hafta do something to earn it.
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“For 6K/year/ the doc is gonna hafta do something to earn it.”
Exactly right and the elderly have been trained to do as they’re told. I have issues with my doctors because I’m an educated patient and they dislike being challenged.
Doctors are very unhappy with their jobs and I am somewhat empathetic. My ob/gyn who I have nicknamed “Opie” because he is such a good guy pays over $350K annually for malpractice insurance.
I continue to encourage him to deal with the menopausals. I even gave him a business plan showing him how he could make as much money with us and live a 40 hour a week existence.
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