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Friday, July 21, 2017

My Friends' Devoted Conspiracism Is As Crazy As Trump's Birtherism. What To Do With Lunacy?

1984 and Brave New World. you should definitely read both :)

My Dad, Neil Postman, Predicted Trump In 1985. It's Not Orwell, He Warned, It's "Brave New World"


 Dear Fred,

I'm happy your eye surgery went well. 

I enjoyed your account in The Quotidian. Thanks.

Yesterday I noticed you weighed in on The Thinking Housewife's post about tatoos.

Then, ironically (or perhaps fittingly-synchronistically), I got an email from Laura in response to the following "prefaced post" I sent her:

Dear Laura,

This is a gripping tale exhibiting every hallmark of conspiratorial cover-up.

I encourage you to watch the first episode.

Alan
Image result for sister cathy cesnik
Dear C,

Thanks for your email.

The last two evenings I've watched the opening episodes of "The Keepers," a made-for-Netflix documentary-series about Sister Cathy Cesnik, a nun mysteriously murdered in 1969.  (Here is The Guardian's review with trailer: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2017/jul/15/keepers-church-response-netflix-baltimore-abuse)

Over the years, an expanding number of Sister Cathy's students -- and others who loved her -- have increased their efforts to discover what happened.

Since the psychological dimension of "The Keepers" may strike you as "too much like work," perhaps this entrancing "who dunnit" will not draw your attention.

By my lights this documentary is "in a league by itself," probing - with striking calm and remarkable non-judgmentalism - the pitch-black shadow cast by too bright a light.

Best Pax Posts On Psychological Projection And "The Shadow"

Compendium Of Best Pax Posts On "Too Pure Principles" And The Collapse Of Conservatism

If "conspiracists" were to dedicate themselves to probing "conspiracies-of-consequence" instead of vilifying aggrieved Sandy Hook parents for presumed collusion with Homeland Security "Crisis Actors," "The Keepers" would be a linchpin place to start.

"Crisis Acting": A Standard Conspiracist Hoax That Supposedly Reveals Hoaxes (Snopes)

Sandy Hook Hoax Exposed

Reviews 

The series has received positive reviews from critics and holds a 95% approval rating from review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. Pilot Viruet of Vice wrote of the series, "It's harrowing and upsetting, and it will haunt you for a long time, which is part of what it makes it necessary viewing."[6]
In Time magazine, Daniel D'Addario compared The Keepers with another Netflix true-crime series, Making a Murderer, stating that The Keepers does not lead its viewers to a definite conclusion about what happened. "While Sister Cathy Cesnik's death remains a mystery, its after-effects include both crushing heartbreak and, for the amateur sleuths who seek to crack her case, a sense of making a difference.... This isn't just more respectful to the victim than other true-crime stories, with their breathless delight at new clues. It's also more effective."[7]
According to Jack Seale in The Guardian, "Where other true crime hits have followed a linear chronology, The Keepers hops between 1969, the 1990s and today, striking a fine balance between narrative structure – a wow moment at the end of every episode – and respect for a subject that doesn’t need or deserve sensationalism.[8]

"The Keepers," Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Keepers
***
If you decide to watch the opening episodes of "Sister Cathy" and then wish to "carry on," I would be delighted to join you.
"Murder of "missing nun", Sister Cathy, baffles city, county police."
Pax tecum

Alan

Discussion With 9/11 Truther Friend About Epistemology, Belief, Certainty And Purpose

Conspiracy Thinking, The Death Of Shared Identity And The Collapse Of Common Purpose

The 9/11 Truth Movement: Where Does It Lead?

Laura's reply:

Alan,

Anyone taken in by Sandy Hook does not have good judgement about what constitutes a conspiracy worthy of concern.


Given my ringside seat at Ron F and Laura W's "conspiracy conclaves," I am struck by the ease with which these fellows draw absolutely certain conclusions from "evidence" that -- whatever its intrinsic value -- does not merit any certain conclusion. 

 Laughably photoshopped evidence from Sandy Hook exhibits bizarre disproportionatlity between figures in the original photos and extraneous photos that have been inserted. Not always, but often. 

 In any event, photographic evidence that has not been shot by multiple photographers - from different angles - is intrinsically untrustworthy. 

 Make no mistake. 

 It is now possible to create convincing video of Mother Theresa and Pope John Paul II having "a roll in the hay."

For both Ron and Laura, it appears that the apparently "courageous act" of discarding "consensus reality" justifies subsequent adoption of ANY alternative reality, replete with as many alternative facts as one might need. 

 It's as if conspiracists start by creating an epistemological vacuum and -- since nature hates a vacuum -- weird miasmas and effluvia rush in to fill the gap. 

I do not know if I shared Ron's most recent email.

In it, he cites "evidence" from a Nazi death camp that one of its guards had been executed for mistreating "internees."

I gather from Ron's innuendo that this one presumed act of defending prisoners (... I wonder if Ron would object to my use of the word "prisoner"...) means that every concentration camp must have been managed by compassionate overseers. 

 Then there is this question: Who knows if the document to which Ron refers is any more trustworthy than the torrent of bilge pumped daily by SOBMF, America's premier conspiracist and Alex Jones devotee.

In his most recent email, Ron went on to say that the concentration camps were rather like "country-club-culture centers" -- complete with resident orchestras (which DID exist in some camps for the entertainment of Nazi staff).

 But alas and alack! The cumulative deprivation of prolonged war left the Nazis without sufficient resource to properly house and feed the internees, which, in Ron's telling, was The Third Reich's heartfelt desire. 

This laudatory white supremacism would warm Laura's heart.

Speaking of Laura... 

 She (and other Sandy Hook hoaxers), circulate photographic and video "evidence" of "inappropriate smiles and laughter" exhibited by the bereaved parents of slaughtered Sandy Hook kids, citing these images as "proof positive" that Sandy Hook parents are, in fact, Homeland Security "crisis actors" involved in a left-wing conspiracy to turn public opinion against The Second Amendment.

 No mention is made that in the wake of every recent American firearm massacre, public opinion has spiked in favor of The Second Amendment. 

What Happens After Calls for New Gun Restrictions? Sales Go Up ...

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/.../gun-sales-terrorism-obama-restrictions.htm...
"Fortunately," it is well known that CNN and The New York Times are proven purveyors of "fake news" and therefore would "obviously" mouthe these lies... even though it would make much more sense to capitalize on "The Bandwagon Effect" by asserting that post-massacre polls caused soaring opposition to The Second Amendment. That would be the way to build a "groundswell." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandwagon_effect 

 In any event, it is more difficult to explain away The Blaze's report that NRA membership went through the roof after Sandy Hook. Notably, Glenn Beck is The Blaze Broadcast Company's biggest star and frequent guests include the following lineup of conservative luminaries.

Frequent Guests


It also makes no sense that Sandy Hook "crisis actors" would give inappropriate emotional responses since the easiest of all theatrical roles to "play" are those in which actors are thrust into heartwrenching emotional upheaval. 

It is singularly easy to stay "in character" when one's character is "a heartbroken-bereaved parent" just as it was easy the professional mourners of ancient Greece to please their employers by "rending their garments" and "howling their heartbreak." 

 Just turn on them crocodile tears and leave the valve open.

If Homeland Security "crisis acting" is so cleverly devised that it can blind the world to its Deep State subterfuge, why aren't they clever enough to employ actors who could win bit parts in high school productions?

 Elsewhere...

Like you, I am aware that the Trump nightmare will come to an end. 

But unlike you, I am not at all sure that America's "democratic" institutions will survive His Satanic Majesty's wrecking ball. 

Whether or not Ron and Laura realize it, they have joined ranks with aggressively ignorant redneck dimwits trying to deconstruct America's institutions, certain that their fellow rebels will replace ubiquitous Deep State Evil with a new-and-improved system of governance based on Truth, Justice and The American Way.

Yes, a Deep State does exist. 

But the real Deep State was correctly analyzed and described by political progressive Teddy Roosevelt, not by latter-day conspiracists so drunk on their "personal convictions" that they have neither time nor energy to see how fellow conspiracists are "strung out all over the map" and how glibly they use "deep state allegations" as a contrarian panacea to preempt doubt about anything, including their personal prejudices always in full bloom.


Teddy Roosevelt: "Malefactors Of Great Wealth... Are Curses To The Country"

Although I am willing to be proven wrong, my working hypothesis is that a decisive majority of American conspiracists would roundly condemn Teddy Roosevelt's opposition to "fat cats" like Trump.

 Furthermore, I see conspiracism's libertarian supporters infuriated by Teddy's bedrock assertion that, "Public Welfare subjects property to the General Right of the community." 

 And so, if for no other reason -- and there are many other reasons -- I champion the foundational progressivism advocated by Teddy Roosevelt who was also the first president to promote Universal Healthcare with government as "payer of last resort." 

I also oppose -- tooth and nail -- the espistemological and institutional chaos into which most conspiracists -- including Alex Jones, Trump, Laura (and perhaps Ron) -- would collapse governmental institutions built up over hundreds of years under aegis of The European Enlightenment.

Ideologically, epistemologically and politically, Ron can subscribe to the conspiracy du jour. 

 But by my lights his overarching conspiracism is an existential threat to the American institutions which I want to build upon, NOT deconstruct. 

 The situation is akin to McConnell's "Healthcare Deprivation Act," a cruel, even satanic savaging of 30 million Americans when the simple alternative - always deemed necessary by liberals themselves - is to reform Obamacare. 

 Current conservative passion for destruction is surpassingly strange and only came into focus for me when I read the following article: "Republicans For Revolution," A Study In Anarchic Apocalypticism
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/10/republicans-for-revolution-study-in.html

The poitical "master key" - now and always - is to "follow the money," not to indulge armchair psychoanalysis of people's smiles and laughter.
Always Follow The Money | made w/ Imgflip meme maker

Every meaningful political initiative will "follow the money" into the pockets of heartless American plutocrats like Trump and the billionaire members of his cabinet, not shift fiscal focus to 1.) Jewish bankers, 2.) Netanyahu (a world class sonofabitch who rivals Trump for political foulness) and 3.) Israeli Zionism (which, for conspiracists, is a phrase that opens the floodgates of Holocaust Denial and the political rehabilitation of Adolf Hitler (another sonofabitch to rival Trump).

Israel may be "The 51st State" (weilding more power than any of the other 50) but the core problem is not the distraction of Israel: the core problem is American plutocracy and plutocracy's lickspittle agents in The Republican Party and across "conservative" America.

Have you staid abreast of The Healthcare Deprivation Act?

I hear Laura applauding McConnell and I imagine Ron "blowing McConnell off" as a Deep State distraction from The Real Crux of 9/11's "gnostic" essence and the derivative ruses that proliferate like deadly viruses in an immune-compromised host. 

What connects Ron and Laura to Trump (and his plutocratic trumpery) is their conjoined eagerness to discard any counter-conspiratorial evidence as "Deep State cover-up" while "buying in" to fake news and epistemological trough-slop.

Recently, I created the following meme. 

 And I mean every word of it. 

 Without qualification.
Image result for pax on both houses, the hardest truth
Even if Laura and Ron reach the point where "all the data is in" and - finally! - all their conspiracies are proven beyond shadow of doubt, most people still won't give a shit, and a majority of those who do -- you and I among them -- will continue to accept the self-evident premise that "most often evil triumphs through stupidity and d___f___ ignorance" without ANY need to persuade people that God's Truth is embedded in conspiratorial ideation or that God's Truth arises from the Deep State whose occult machinations require elaborate analysis by The Conspiratorial Truth Priesthood.

"Most" people are eager to throw themselves into the arms of autocrats.

And these same lickspittle boneheads -- as hostile to thinking as Torquemada was to heresy -- prefer to surrender the irksome task of cogitation to any charismatic autocrat who will do their thinking for them. 

 "Trump says exactly what I'm thinking!" is the dimwit battle cry.

Well... not exactly.

Image result for trump says what people who aren't thinking are thinking, pax on both houses

Maybe our current epistemological swamp has always been as reptile-infested as it is now.
Perhaps our only reason for focusing the full scope of "ongoing bullshit" now is that when you and I were young, educated people spearheaded a humane political consensus - without which we have nothing to hold us together as a people. 

Back in the day, FDR, Ike, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter -- and, to some significant extent even those who lacked education, saw themselves working on common goals (not least of which was sharing in the common wealth, the national patrimony, when "American workers" had finally put in place an Automated Engine of Production, thus eliminating their own jobs.

"Back in the day," those who were not formally educated realized that those who were actually knew things that they did not know. 

 And so "the uneducated" were -- and I saw them, with my own eyes, in the blue-collar "band" of the Archibald-Noll family spectrum -- deferential to knowledge and admiring of those with trained intellects. 

 At the same time, the formally educated wing of my family admired blue collar relatives because they knew how to build, to install glass, to clear plugged sewer lines, to cook lamb stew with London dumplings. 

 In our youth, society was -- from top to bottom, from stem to stern -- a "mutual admiration society" in which everyone recognized the need for everyone else and held everyone else in a place of honor.

 It was a society largely suffused with belief in The Common Good and The General Welfare, not the plutocratic rip-off club Republicans have created while "conservatives" cheer.
Image result for pax on both houses, the 1% smart enough to know

Now, not only have "the uneducated" decided that their opinions -- whatever the hell they may be -- are just as good as an educated person's knowledge. Now, they are also determined to denigrate the educated as "elitists" (as some of them are).
When Trump Bashes The United States Inteligence Community This Is His Audience | made w/ Imgflip meme maker

Yet even against this backdrop, dimwit denigration of "intellectual elitists" is less than half as horrifying as the macabre swamp that now bogs us, a swamp in which the uneducated "just make shit up," and -- unburdened by intellectual rigor or "peer-reviewed" research -- they believe their own lies. 

 And they believe those lies with such stonewall ferocity that any balanced view offered by studious, scrutinizing intellects is summarily dissed and dismissed as if "the dimwits" themselves are now "the cognoscenti" and people who actually know things (because they've developed epistemological tools and conducted probing, inclusive research) are suckers of The Academy whose "deception" - tracking all the way back to the Greek philosophers - has finally been revealed as intellectual stupefaction perped by The Ancient World's own "Deep State."
Image result for asimov opinion quote
Conspiracism Is The Apotheosis Of Opinion
"The Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich": Hitler And Goebbels' Replacement Of Truth With Falsehood

"The Great Unraveling" is now synergistically reiniforced by Bannon's "Great Deconstruction."

 Consider...

My lifelong chemist friend, KK, with 20 years' service at the EPA says the damage already done by "the barbarians" will take decades (if not generations) to reverse. 

And even before Trump's ravages, congressional austerity (manifesting as economic anorexia) led to a budgetary environment in which molecular biologist-physician friend DK, shut down his cancer research lab at Duke, telling me that America had lost at least one generation of scientists because there was no longer enough dependable money to finance ongoing research which, in turn, would employ teams of budding post-docs at American universities, the very place where most basic research (as opposed to "commercial application") gets done.

The barbarians are inside the gates and Ron and Laura - however lofty their stated goals - embrace the S-Trump-et-driven matrix which makes cultural and institutional vandalism possible. 

To them, of course, this all-encompassing milieu of cultural terrorism does not matter because they have embarked "The High Road" of toppling The Deep State and when they are finally validated, The Reign Of Truth WILL begin. 

My ass! 

"Prohibition, Noah, Ham And The Curse Of Canaan"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2011/11/daily-dose-111111-prohibition-and-curse.html

"Is Perfectionism A Curse? Paul Ryan Tells The Truth"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/09/paul-ryan-tells-truth.html

Laura may "talk" art, music, lovely ermine stoles and high-church ritual, but over the last two years she exercised herself to make clear the way for MoFo, a sufficiently spiteful, vengeful vulgarian that I can easily imagine him playing with end-time disaster either to prove himself a "hero," or to cover his tracks for being an abject failure.

Laura's readers would benefit from nothing more than to ponder this multifacted dialogue.

But as the editor of "Pravda," she will not link to this post because her existential absolutism obliges her to be absolutely right.

I admit that a raft of evidence makes it rather clear that The Official Story of 9/11 is dubious in many ways. 

I can even admit the possibility that one Nazi camp commander executed an underling because he breached a humane protocol.

In fact, I sometimes wonder if "gassing" camp internees was as widespread as generally assumed.

But the over-arching horror of the camps was real. 

One way or another 6 million people were snuffed by Hitler and his thugs.

No 1940s team of "crisis actors" could have feigned the post-liberation footage taken by movie director George Stevens.

"Nazi Concentration And Prison Camps"
A Movie Edited From Director George Stevens' Raw Footage Of Concentration Camp Liberation

Having gone mad -- having epistemologically "snapped" -- it's as if the propagation and validation of madness is now necessary to uphold the lunatic identity of conspiracists.

It all distills to "identity politics" and Laura and Ron need validation of their madness in order to normalize it: then they project their "madness" onto people who, in fact, know a lot and are psycho-spiritually integrated enough to entertain doubts.

Nota Bene:

Hitler was not running "country club culture camps."

And Putin is a bad actor.

And the Catholic Church -- long before "the heresy" of Vatican II -- had become a pedophilic (and otherwise abusive) cesspool in which many (if not most) dioceses schemed to cover up the wholesale rape and bum-fucking of faithful children in order to avoid scandalizing the church. 

 "There is a special place in hell..."

Despite denial, church hierarchs routinely moved abusers from one parish to another so that every new assignment became a new psycho-spiritual killing ground - a slaughter of innocents. 

Growing up in the 1950s Father Winterkorn at my home parish of St. Thomas the Apostle church in Irondequoit, New York, (a man to whom I would make Saturday afternoon confession) was sexually abusing the girl who lived across the street from me. http://www.bishop-accountability.org/news3/1993_09_30_PostStandart_Robert_Winterkorn_1.htm (I encourage you poke around this registry of American priest sex-offenders. Keep in mind that these are only the ones we know about and that fewer than 10% of sexually-violated women ever report the crime. http://www.bishop-accountability.org/)

 Will Laura link to this post?

 Don't hold your breath!

She is paralyzed by the prospect of compromising her carefully-crafted religious, economic and political positions and can let no plausible alternative "into" the discussion, no matter how well-researched and eloquently formulated.

 It would not surprise me if her deadset opposition to conducting a real discussion is in direct relationship to her self-doubt.

 I welcome open discussion.

 Indeed, the more opposed I am to an opponent's view, the more eagerly I publicize it.

 The truth "is what it is."

 And, if enough light is shed, the truth will out.

 Ultimately, it is not about me and whether my ego-armored position wins.

 It is about Truth coming to light. 

"There is no fear in love. 
But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. 
The one who fears is not made perfect in love."
1 John 4:18

It Is Important To Know These Things So Religion Doesn't Do You More Harm Than Good

What Too Many Christians Get Wrong

Jesus: Festive Tippler And Friend Of Whores, Publicans, Tax Collectors And Sundry Sinners

How "the plank" got there.
(An inside job!)

Here is a Wikipedia page where you can bone up on the sprawling fractiousness among 9/11 conspiracy theorists.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9/11_conspiracy_theories

 "We Used To Fear Big Brother. Now..." | We Used To Fear Big Brother Now We Invite Him Into Our Homes | image tagged in big brother,lies,falsehood,mendacity,deception,deviousness | made w/ Imgflip meme maker

On Wed, Jul 19, 2017 at 7:47 PM, Fred Owens <froghospital911@gmail.com> wrote:
FROG HOSPITAL -- July 19, 2017 -- By Fred Owens
Being Useful. Online I read the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. That's the legacy media or what we call the mainstream press. I also read Politico, Slate and the Daily Beast. I used to read the Huffington Post, but it has gotten too fluffy. For conservative balance I read the National Review.

Here's an interesting observation: When the New York Times AND the National Review agree on the same opinion, we have something worth noticing. The Times thinks that Trump, Jr. is a fruitcake with a bad haircut -- not surprising. But the National Review seems to share that view.
The National Review hates to agree with the Times, but they have agreed with the Times on the matter of Trump, Jr.'s character -- he is one bad actor.

Forty Percent. Trump is supported by forty percent of the people, according to the latest polls, 36 percent actually, but let's round it up and say 40 percent. At that level Trump can govern and govern badly, but he can't be impeached. He holds the high ground and occupies the White House. Those forty percenters love him and no amount of Russian chicanery will change their minds. The mainstream press howls and screams against Trump. He doesn't care. The Democrats in Congress are old and weak. Obama is playing golf. ........ Nothing ever happens in late July or August anyway. Everyone is at the beach or in the hammock....
Trump is having his day, but the tide will change -- it always does.

Sharks and Wildfires in Santa BarbaraWhat we have going on in Santa Barbara is sharks and wildfires. The Whittier fire has been going for more than a week and more than 18,000 acres. We had two evacuees staying at our house this week. There home was right in the path of the blaze, close enough to force the evacuation, but thankfully never got any closer and they went back to their home yesterday.

The Whittier fire is a good five miles from our house. We have seen towering clouds of smoke from the fire and some ash has fallen on the garden and on the cars in the driveway, and the air has gotten a bit smoky.
Out in the ocean, we keep hearing shark reports, some within ten feet of the shore. That doesn't seem to keep me or anybody else out of the water, but those big munchers are out there cruising for snacks. The great whites prefer sea mammals but people will do.
I think we need to call the guy from Jaws. We can have shark for dinner or they can have us.
The Quotidian -- Eye Surgery

“Take off your shirt and put on this gown with the back side open.”
“Okay, but I’m going to be cold.”
“I’ll be bringing you a heated blanket in just a minute.”
Sharon brought in the heated blanket after she got me settled in the bed.
“Which arm do you prefer for the IV?”
I had to think about that.
“Which arm did they use the last time they drew blood?”
“I don’t remember which arm, but they said I had good veins, so you pick the arm that works best for you.” I thought I was being gracious to the nurse, to make it easy for her to find the best vein. I had no preference. It’s an art to install the IV needle with the smallest poke and some people have devilish tough and a hard-to-find veins, but I am one of the easy ones. She  got me stuck and connected to the drip in no time.
Meanwhile she was wondering out loud what happened to the nice Hawaiian music on the radio overhead. She called out past the curtain to the hall and said, “I liked that Hawaiian music. Who turned it off?”
Then she told me about the time she was a single mom with four kids living out in the country and one of her kids got a fish hook in his nose, so she used a wire cutters to cut off the barb and then pushed the hook on through. That had to hurt. “But that’s what you do when you’re out in the country on your own,” she said.
I really didn’t want to hear that little story. She had light-blonde hair cut across evenly around the back of her neck and straight cut bangs in the front. Her complexion made her look experienced. I noticed her feet, in clean white sneakers and guessed her feet didn’t hurt, not yet. It was 8 a.m. figuring Sharon got there at 6 a.m. and her feet didn’t start to hurt until after lunch, if at all.
That’s why she was still working, and ten years older than any other nurse on the staff. Good bones and good posture will save the day if you’re on your feet all day at the day surgery center.
She got the heated blanket and put it over me. Then for good measure brought in another blanket on top of  that. I was going into zen mode, into the pre-anaesthetic meditation state of mind. They were going to hook me up with the happy juice for the procedure, but I figured I would start going there already.
The way you do that is close your eyes and leave your body. I can do that easily because I have such an active imagination and powerful memory. Retreating into my own head is like entering into one of  world’s great libraries – places I have been, people I have met, recordings of long discussions and arguments that I have never actually had, but imagine having. Like what Harry Truman and I were talking about one day when we were out for a walk together.
That was in Kansas City, Missouri, in the late summer of 1954. President Truman was two years retired from the White House at that point, and he continued his habit of an early morning walk in the neighborhood. One day I waited on the sidewalk in front of his house and asked to join him.
He came out striding briskly, well suited, clean-shaven, undaunted, “Mr. President can I join you?”
“Certainly,” he said without breaking stride. I had to jump to keep up with him. We discussed Dean Acheson, and the United Nations and the Soviet menace. Truman was an outspoken man in every respect, but he took his retirement seriously. It was no longer up to him to call the shots. Let Ike do it, he said in so many words.
I was remembering this conversation with Harry Truman as they wheeled me into the operating room. I was about to bring up the career of John Foster Dulles, but I was interrupted by the smiling face of Dr. Hussein, the anesthesiologist.  “I am Dr. Hussein, your anesthesiologist.” He was less than forty years old, slight build, of a South Asian complexion, strong teeth, heavy beard, friendly smile. “I want to be sure you are comfortable. I will put some medication in the IV and it will feel like one or two margaritas. You will be awake, but you won’t care.”
Fine with me. That’s the power of trust. They draped me around the right eye to prepare removing the cataract. They call it routine surgery. I see nothing routine about it. Just because everybody in the room has done this same procedure a thousand times  doesn’t make it routine to me.
This is the most important medical event in the year 2017. This is my life. The entire surgical center, the entire worldwide medical establishment, all depend on the successful completion of this “minor” operation on me, That’s how I see it.
The happy juice takes effect. Dr. Ketchup, the ophthalmologist, arrives. I don’t know how he spells his name. I don’t care how he spells it. He doesn’t care either. Dr. Ketchup doesn’t do the bedside manner. He is not the voice of re-assurance. He is the voice of how are the Dodgers doing today and the pros and cons of investing in real estate in the small town of Lompoc where he owns some investment property…. All the while doing stuff to my eyeball. I don’t care what he talks about because I can feel his hands working and his hands feel good. He’s having a good day, and that is to my benefit. Let the man work, I say. In five minutes he was done.
They pushed me into the recovery room. Waited a while. Gave me post-operative instructions and then called Laurie to come pick me up.
Meanwhile I took off the hospital gown and put my shirt back on. I was done.

Notes. His real name is Douglas Katzev, M.D., chairman of ophthalmology at Sansum Clinic in Santa Barbara…… The Santa Barbara Surgery Center is located on DeLaVina Street right next to Trader Joe’s. They ask you to sign a release to resuscitate, to transfuse blood, to transport you to the big hospital, to allow assistants to help the doctor, and to allow observation.
The basic procedure was covered by Medicare and my supplemental insurance from Blue Cross/Anthem. I chose a slight upgrade on lenses at a cost of $800. They gave me prescriptions for three kinds of eye drops that would cost $600. I balked at that expense.
It was Aurora, the surgery coordinator, who told me about the cost of eye drops. I said “I can’t pay that. My insurance doesn’t cover prescriptions. We’ll have to postpone the procedure.”
“Not to worry,” Aurora said. “I have a solution.”
She opened her desk drawer and took out a handful of samples. “Here’s what you need.”
So, Fred wins and big Pharma loses.

thank you,

Fred

Subscription Drive.
A $25 or $50 subscription to Frog Hospital comes with the promise that I will try my best. I have been writing this journal since1998. I have written some hundreds of issues of this journal, and some of it has been very good indeed and I would like to continue writing this, and I would like you to send me a check for $25 or $50 or punch the PayPal button.
You can find the PayPal button on the blog. Go to Frog Hospital.Or make out a check to Fred Owens and mail it to:
Fred Owens, 1105 Veronica Springs RD, Santa Barbara, CA 93105


--
Fred Owens
cell: 360-739-0214

 My gardening blog is  Fred Owens
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