A Population on Life Support

Chronically ill America 2.0

If you go out and about these days, you’ll notice how the American people have largely come to represent their crumbling society; bloated, ineffective, and corrupt. I’ve talked a lot about the obesity, which is everywhere. And the tattoos. And the stupendously casual clothing. But beyond that, Americans are physically sick.

My oldest sister is now 86. She has a son older than me. But she’s in fantastic shape, and is unusually bothered by the fact that so many other senior citizens, most younger than her, aren’t. She particularly hates the stooped posture that so many elderly adopt. Like her, I suspect that in most cases, the oldsters aren’t bent over from some particular medical condition. She thinks it’s learned behavior, and that laziness contributes to it. I don’t think that there is any question about Americans having grown lazier as their average weight increased. If you look at any drive-through line at a fast food place, you’ll find more people waiting in cars than there are customers ordering inside. Think of how lazy you have to be, to prefer to wait longer (for “fast” food) than engaging in that arduous fifty foot walk from your parked car.

And now driving to wait in a pickup line is too much, especially for our young adults. So Grub Hub and Uber Eats have become wildly successful. Have your fattening, non-nutritious food delivered to your door. Or even your work place. Gamers can’t be expected to stop when they’re in a groove. You ordered nachos and cheese? As for the oldsters, why cut your own lawn? As Homer Simpson once said, can’t someone else do it? Sure, we have an unlimited supply of illegal immigrants to mow the grass, clean the gutters, or do your landscaping. And they’re in shape, at least for now. Probably don’t participate in regular “wellness” screening, by the looks of it. Sure, they don’t speak English, but they understand the green, while cash is still legal.

The epidemic of chronic illness in this country is mind-boggling. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., to his credit, is the first presidential candidate I’ve ever seen talk about it. How many overweight people don’t have diabetes? Type 2. The kind you can “cure” by simply losing a lot of weight. That’s not a real “disease,” and yet our vaunted medical profession loves to diagnose it. So they can dole out insulin, which is a lucrative moneymaker for Big Pharma. My old friend, legendary Chinese gentleman Danny Lieu, used to advise me that one of many Chinese “secrets” was a simple cure for diabetes involving the consumption of boiled chicken with lemon. Most Americans would be loathe to try something that simple, rather than jabbing themselves.

How many times have you heard of someone, who thought he/she was perfectly healthy, having something horrific “discovered” by his/her good doctor during their annual physical? Kind of like how the car repair shop always “finds” something on seemingly smooth running vehicles. Many of us can accept that police officers look for any “moving violation” to meet their monthly quotas. Just as many assume that car mechanics generally do the same thing. They need to make a living, too. But few would entertain the idea that doctors fall into this category as well. They’ve already had a few doctors confess to giving out fake cancer diagnoses. Chemotherapy is very good for business. But the public would shrug and call them rare outliers, like Tim Donaghy confessing to rigging NBA games.

It seems that very few people come back from the doctor’s office having been told they’re actually healthier than they thought they were. One of the most underrated JFK assassination researchers, Doug Weldon, was a very active tennis player, and drove a cool sports car. Then he was hit with a tragic double whammy; cancer and an emergency need for open-heart surgery. Not surprisingly, the medical profession didn’t help him. He died in pretty short order. They harm far more often than heal, no matter what their publicists in the media say. I think of him often. How many others were like him, and only found out they were deathly sick because the doctors said they were? What part does the power of suggestive thinking play here?

The fact that the medical profession uses placebos, and that they often work as well as their “wonder drugs” in tests, should tell us something. I’ve been trying to contact the guy who wrote the book The Placebo Effect for a quite a while, without luck. Maybe he’s dead. After breaking down and going to the doctor. At any rate, when medical “science” fills in the gaps of their extensive lack of knowledge by declaring “we just don’t know,” most people just accept it. It’s actually cited as evidence of their all encompassing brilliance. Think Trump’s 4D chess. They are magical creatures. Like witch doctors and practitioners of voodoo, but with fancy white coats and stethoscopes. And an entire establishment promoting their special virtues.

I’m sure there are good doctors out there. I just haven’t met one. And I worked for the largest healthcare system on the east coast for 44 years. So I saw a lot of them in “action.” I may write a book about my experiences some day, like that book on sports that I keep threatening to write. If you saw the medical profession behind the scenes, like I did, you’d never let them touch you. It’s like going out to dinner at the restaurant where you used to work. And saw them pick the lettuce up off the floor and put it back on the salad bar. You’ve seen the sausage being made. When I was engaged to a nurse as a young man, I learned dark secrets. Like how many patients are found in a state of rigor mortis in the morning, after being “monitored” during the night.

I’ve heard from many people over the years, recounting their own awful experiences with the Medical Industrial Complex. These people have no legal recourse, because the corrupt system protects itself in all areas. They can’t complain to even local media, because the media is a cheerleader for our putrid “healthcare” system. Ask those who’ve tried to get financial compensation when some sterling “professional” left a scalpel inside them (and the nurses used to gossip about this quite a bit- it was very common), or even worse cut off the wrong limb. Few victims of medical incompetence or negligence have ever become rich. And yet the media will often portray doctors in a sympathetic light, forced to pay for medical malpractice insurance. Ridiculous television medical dramas depict them as kind and wise heroes.

So this should all be considered in context when we look at the dismal state of many of the “customers” of the Medical Industrial Complex. In particular, the best “customers.” The ones that inexplicably love their general practitioner, who is so knowledgeable he will farm out “care” to some “specialist” in a given part of the human body. The best “customers” have a cardiologist, too. A gastroenterologist. An oncologist, after they receive their real or fake cancer diagnosis. A urologist. If you’re a woman, or an especially deluded transgender, a gynecologist. A fertility specialist. The list is endless. If you “have” it, we have you covered! And the poor proctologist. While it is assumed some gynecologists pick that field for prurient reasons, even the most loyal ass men would be reluctant to become proctologists.

Besides Asperger’s syndrome and other newly discovered disorders on the “autism spectrum,” we have an epidemic of depressed teenagers and adults. The mental health industry tells us this is from a chemical imbalance in the brain. Nothing to do with the sorry state of the world, and/or the explosion of dysfunction in families. I’m in this category; I feel “blue” all too often. I’ve tried every natural supplement I could, but none of them really work. The search goes on for a natural valium. The Big Pharma meds prescribed for depression all list “suicidal thoughts” as a potential side effect. Lovely. Isn’t that what these magical pills are supposed to prevent? So in addition to being overweight, sick, and unthinking, we have to contend with depression as well.

And then there is the whole “erectile dysfunction” thing. Even younger guys apparently are having trouble getting it up now. Take the magic blue pill! Maybe males are having difficulty in this area because they can’t get excited about obese, tattooed females? Just a chauvinist thought. I don’t get the sense that older men used to worry about this in the past, but we were hardly the sex-obsessed culture we are now, either. TV shows like Golden Girls helped create the notion that old women are sex-crazy. I don’t think I could have handled it if my mother even hinted at such a thing. Is that why oldsters are so often painted as sex maniacs in pop culture now? So that those who can’t make the equipment work will run for their Big Pharma prescription, so they can join the senior citizen orgy?

We are also consumed by stress. In the workplace, the boss will almost invariably be impatient and wield authority in an inconsistent, unfair manner. The company will likely hang the threat of layoffs and cutbacks over your head daily. A fear porn to rival rumors of World War III and the latest “variant” of the virus that has yet to be isolated. We are aware of just how many of our peers have passed away, even if we don’t check the daily obituaries. We fear being abandoned by our children, if we’re fortunate enough to have them. Modern life is full of stress. Yoga and meditation can only do so much. Where is the pill for this? If families remembered to follow the Golden Rule even among themselves, the chronic anxiety would diminish. Almost every physical symptom could potentially be caused by stress.

One would think, with this marvelous, technologically advanced medical system of ours, that those who use it regularly would look and feel a lot better. They wouldn’t be stooped over. They wouldn’t shuffle along without picking up their feet. They wouldn’t plop down anxiously in the nearest seat, and gasp for air. You wouldn’t see so many walking around with oxygen tubes in their noses. You wouldn’t see so many with walkers. And those motorized Walmart specials. Are all those who use them really incapable of walking through the store? If I didn’t listen to all those television commercials, I’d think that our “healthcare” system was doing an extremely poor job of keeping people healthy.

Speaking of those commercials, could Fox News or MeTV exist without them? Such ads weren’t legal until the 1990s. Every other commercial is “Ask your doctor.” “Tell your doctor.” And then the rapidly recited list of deadly side effects for every one of their “miracle” products. I know very few people even a decade younger than me that aren’t on a litany of meds. High blood pressure. High cholesterol. And yet, doctors now can’t “fat shame” their patients, especially the female ones. Think of a system that literally can’t tell someone the root of their problem. Well, I guess a system that boasts of “transgender” care, doles out puberty blockers, and amputates the breasts and penises of physically healthy children is capable of anything. “First, do no harm” is as antiquated as the First Amendment.

These are the people, and the criminal system they work for, with which we entrust our lives, and the lives of our loved ones. Real advocates of health, and not “sick care,” would prescribe natural supplements and vitamins. Fresh air and regular exercise. The first thing they’d lecture a patient about was their excessive weight. So many chronic “diseases” stem directly from obesity. The “disease” will disappear with the excess weight. They may be more dignified than your average salesperson, but they are selling something- make no mistake about that. Once they rope you into their system, it’s hard to get out. Kind of like the Mafia or the world of prostitution. And they aren’t much less vicious than the goodfellas and the pimps.

RFK, Jr. talks a lot about the links between vaccines and autism, which was practically unknown until after 1989, when the number of vaccines given to infants and toddlers was increased dramatically. One of those JFK assassination-types of coincidences. I never even saw kids with “ADD” back in the 1960s-1970s. There was no such thing as a “peanut allergy.” By the time my kids were in school in the late 1990s, almost every table in the cafeteria had a picture of a peanut on it. Where could these food allergies have been hiding for all those centuries? Most Boomers would have died from their mass consumption of peanut butter. Some might think that would have been a good thing. And all the kids with asthma; there was pretty much at least one on every team I coached. But I never saw one of those inhalers when I was a child.

I knew of one child who contracted leukemia when I was a youngster. Childhood cancer rates have skyrocketed, and St. Jude’s Hospital commercials now vie with Big Pharma commercials for viewer attention. Again, what kind of industry fails so miserably? Where were all the childhood cancer victims in the 1960s and 1970s? Why is no one else besides RFK, Jr. asking these questions? The Medical Industrial Complex, despite trillions of dollars in expenditures, has overseen a clear drop in life expectancy rates in America over the past decade. And they were inexcusably embarrassing before that, along with our terrible infant mortality rate. How can this happen in a society that spends more money on “healthcare” than anyone else? So we paid for more childhood cancer, new “allergies,” and a shorter life span?

Our water supply has been poisoned for over sixty years. Yes, fluoride is a poison. Who knows what else is in there? Well, it’s only water. Which is absolutely necessary for human survival. We could either build giant filtration treatment systems, to make the water safe for human consumption, or start industries of bottled spring water, and expensive personal filtration systems. And don’t get ice cubes from restaurants. Some little girl in Florida discovered they are full of human feces in a school experiment. If only the scientists knew. They found traces of feces on most store shopping carts, too. You know you’ve reached the height of laziness when people aren’t capable or willing to wash their hands after wiping their ass. Maybe parents don’t stress the things they used to. But dirty hands fit in well with the overall state of our collapsing society.

The proof is in the pudding. And the supersized fries. High fructose corn syrup and GMO ingredients which don’t have to be labeled. Just look around you. America 2.0- land of bigger asses and smaller brains. If you’re having trouble getting out of your recliner twice a day, and feel unsteady when you grasp your walker, just make an appointment. Sure, it will take a while. If it gets that bad, call an ambulance. They’re an exceptional deal- maybe $1,000 or so. One way trip. To a hospital where you’ll be lucky to survive the “treatment.” Remember, the medical profession itself is admitted by all to be the third leading cause of death in this country. I think they’re just being modest; what with all the COVID “protocol” and “warp speed” vaccine deaths, I think they are the leading cause now. Take ownership of it. We’re number one!

Despite all the evidence that the Medical Industrial Complex is rarely helpful, and too often deadly, our institutions still boast about it. You don’t like it, buddy- go to Canada and see how long you have to wait for an operation. Sure, it’s probably just another surgery that a halfway principled medical system wouldn’t perform, but that’s beside the point. Our crack system will check you out thoroughly, with a series of expensive, unnecessary tests, especially the lovely MRI, where you’ll be placed in a nightmarish device so claustrophobic that it would make Edgar Allan Poe blush. We can’t find a way to do it better. “Open air” MRIs aren’t practical. Just shut up and put on that patient gown, which for some reason is open in the back so everyone can see your butt. Unless you’re a hot chick- we have special, modest models for you.

Diseases come and diseases go. Cancer was virtually unheard of before 1900. Where did it come from? Was Frank Zappa right, when he joked about “imaginary diseases?” It’s funny how, just as former killers like consumption, diphtheria, scarlet fever, and the slew of maladies that used to kill almost half of all children, disappeared from the scene, suddenly cancer and heart disease rose to prominence. To take their place. Maybe there’s a secret conspiratorial headquarters somewhere, where these diseases are created. And die, when their usefulness has been exhausted. Then again, I tend to be paranoid. And I have quite an imagination. But at least I attempt an explanation. What exactly is their explanation?

Because of peer pressure from fellow “responsible” adults, almost everyone becomes a part of the hopelessly bad “healthcare” system. Your elbow is hurting? You oughta see a doctor about that! Your employer will thoughtfully provide you with insurance coverage- because no one outside the top levels of the One Percent could possibly afford this magnificent product. It will cost you probably $300 or more a month. And it only covers maybe 80 percent of the medical costs. Which means you’ll still be paying a hefty amount if you get anything serious. The oldsters get Medicare, which charges you about $175 a month now (it always goes up), and still only covers 80 percent. Don’t worry- just buy a “supplemental” insurance policy. And forget that you paid into the system your entire working life. All hail crony capitalism.

So here we are, with a significantly dumbed down population, sometimes violently divided over race, religion, and culture. Those still walking, stopping to catch their breath. Walkers, wheelchairs, and motorized carts carrying the increasingly obese to their next destination. I don’t think I saw anyone using a walker when I was a kid. The only motorized carts were on golf courses. Suicide rates through the roof, fractured relationships and stress everywhere. The inhabitants of America 2.0 are only a severe power outage and cell phone tower collapse away from the Walking Dead. While that makes for entertaining viewing, it is frightening to contemplate as reality. Thinking optimistically, even at my age, I should be able to outrun the obese and the chronically ill. Come to the new ‘Murrica- land of the sick and home of the slave.