Oh The Irony!

This post has been simmering for awhile. I needed the exact right push to finish it. And not a small measure of courage.

Recently we watched Chicago Med, which I can take it or leave it - so much agenda pushed - but that’s pervasive in TV and movies now so you deal with it or choose to not turn on the TV at all. Which, I’m considering to be a viable option.

On this episode of CM there’s one character I just despise for all she represents, though. She’s a pediatric specialist in the ER. Self-righteous, obnoxious and she literally yells at patients who don’t live like she believes everyone should - you know, like her, so perfect in all ways, her passion for all things ‘right’ spilling out in dramatic rants. Pretty much a rep for liberalism.

And, as is so typical, they have made fun of Christians by representing them as fundamentalist nut jobs and that sort of thing, but in this episode a 2 yr old baby came in with whooping cough. So, it starts out as the mom saying that she had the first phase of her shots and the lib ped doc, offered that she probably wasn’t completely immune then. After a few breaks from the sponsors, it comes out that the mom’s sister doesn’t vaccinate her kid and he had had a ‘mild cold’ recently. So, the immediate assumption was that the boy had probably had whooping cough (really?) and then exposed the baby cousin, logic being an unnecessary brain function when agenda is called on to prevail. 

Here’s the subtle part though - the old argument has been that kids who are not vaccinated should not be around other kids - even if they are vaccinated, but the logic is blown because if the vaccine works exposure shouldn’t matter. To counter that, (action/reaction, measure/counter-measure, we’ve talked about this...) now the narrative is that SOME kids are vulnerable to being unprotected, even if vaccinated, so the kids that aren’t are basically carriers and toxic threats to the population at large. 

Two scenes really raised my blood pressure - the one where lib ped doc yells at the parents, in front of their son, in the ER, basically accusing them of being practically criminals and demanding they take their son out immediately. IMMEDIATELY! Like that would happen in real life, but in LaLa Land real is not what they are going for.

But then, later, she and another doctor, her current love interest, were discussing it all over coffee and she declared with rising zealousness that the science is proven [!] and the naysayer vaccine objector was ‘discredited’ [!] and what is the matter with people who just believe what they want to believe and put poor babies like the patient at risk! [!!!]

Agenda so thick you could cut it with a knife. 

But it dawned on me that the drug companies seem to own the narrative of evening MS TV so, given that the ones paying the bills are entitled to pushed whatever furthers their purpose, it makes sense to simply follow the money. Every other ad during prime time is for yet another drug that has a litany of contradictory side effects that often sound ten times worse than the disease it is supposed to treat “and in some rare cases death”.

And yet, the uplifting visual of happy beautiful people, going about their lives, even as the sound track of a list of horrific side effects drones on, successfully neutralizes logic and reason. How clever. 

Am I the only person who questions the absurdity of drug companies being allowed to advertise their products to the general public? It’s not unlike a manufacturer of a line of goods that can only be purchased by another business spending millions of dollars to advertise to end users who cannot buy the goods themselves. 

If a drug can only be purchased via a prescription from a licensed physician, what is the point of pushing the drug on prime time TV to those who can’t buy it off the shelf?  Well, I guess Big Pharma needs all the help it can get to spread the word that the products they make are out there. 

“Ask your doctor if [fill in the blank] is right for you.” 

Frankly, were I a doctor, who spent years and a fortune to earn my right to diagnose a patient, the last thing I’d appreciate is my patient asking if I would prescribe a drug because it was advertised. But that’s just me.

I’ve been interested in this topic for awhile now and so every time I see a new drug announced via a sparkling energized representation of how great life can be if you just asked your doctor to put you on this miracle in a pill, I note the name. It’s become something of a joke for me because, crazy imagination that I have, I visualized the way they come up with the names. 

I see a group of corporates sitting around a conference table. They draw numbers from a hat.  A die is cast and the winning numbers get to pick letters - perhaps from their names or names from their kids. The resulting combinations form the new name for the latest, greatest drug. Here’s the list so far:

Keytruda

Latuda

Trulicity

Harvoni

Movantik

Rexulti

Taltz

Linzess

Viberzi

Crizal

Trintellix

Xelzanz

Jardiance

Repatha

Lyrica

Farxiga

Neulasta

Cosentyx

Entyvio

Brilinta

Zostavax

Invokana

Entresto

Namzaric

Contrave

Toujeo

Opdivo

I rest my case. 

Well, except for one more thing - How ironic is it when a drug ad comes on and is often followed by an attorney’s plea for you to contact him if you have been injured (or killed) by a drug that has been pulled off the market? 

So much irony you could build a battleship. 

For Him,

Meema

ps - If you happen to read a news item about a grandmother in Georgia who committed suicide by shooting herself in the head - twice - ask your doctor if that's possible. :-)

To Be Or Not To Be

Within The Matrix, the most frequently used successful operating system is hypocrisy. It is actually the foundational support beneath well-crafted illusion. 

The Matrix cannot exist without it.

Hypocrisy, as defined, sounds ugly and distasteful, a thing to be scorned and avoided. But sheltered within The Matrix, hypocrisy gets a mask to wear, something that then makes it much more acceptable to ever changing human sensibilities.

The hypocrisy behind the mask sounds even better than it looks. It’s smooth talking, cordial, diplomatic, intellectual, and appeals in rich pleasant tones to the internal desires of humans to be flattered, uplifted and encouraged, even if the words are empty and have no end game other than to persuade and herd to its dark agenda.

The success of hypocrisy’s purpose depends on that which is delivered, with emotion and gentility, those words that only resonate with the perception of goodness and virtue, and as such will be embraced to be the truth with no questions asked. Therefore, hypocrisy, with the help of illusion, presents itself, first and foremost, as righteous, charitable, all embracing, egalitarian, accepting, fair, and moral. Above all else, hypocrisy declares itself to be the standard and thus the ultimate champion of high morality.

But unfortunately, within The Matrix everything is illusion, so there is no substantive truth allowed. The marks, aka citizens, are the masses who have been gently conditioned to prefer the good-sounding words, the charming lies, the eloquently delivered self-righteous demand that those who dare to speak truth with rough and raw words must be silenced!

Truth, in any form, is not welcome in The Matrix and must be challenged.

The irony, of course, is that those who pump fists in the air and complain about distasteful rough truth allowed to escape into the perfectly ordered Matrix, are, at the same time, those who openly embrace and give golden awards to every level of immoral behavior expressed in writing, music and film spewed out daily onto the populace, young and old, like projectile vomit.

The question is therefore begged: who can claim to be the Morality Police when there is no genuine morality - anywhere? How can any standard be enforced if all standards have been decimated?

In The Matrix where we are not only allowed but encouraged to cherry pick our sensibilities, where words and meanings are often redesigned and retrofitted to the concepts du jour, where silk illusions are expertly woven and preferred over utilitarian burlap truth, is a world knee-deep in hypocrisy so debilitating that there is no remedy that humankind could ever muster of and by itself.

While I may not be able to fully understand why this has to be, I do fear that this condition cannot ever right itself at this far-gone point. A day of reckoning is over-due. And while I might have to live here, I do not have to buy in. So, though I might stand alone in outing this, I admit to preferring a rough textured, raw truth over a good sounding smooth lie - any day.

Unfortunately, those who wear the mask that fronts hypocrisy are too blinded by their own goodness to know that they are not real.

And there’s the rub.

For Him,

Meema

The Art of Homeschooling

The old, and persistent, view of homeschool is that of fundamental Christians sequestering their kids from the world - honing them with backward conspiracy theories. While there will always be an exception to every rule and condition, modern homeschooling is quietly, without awards or media coverage, teaching kids how to learn, how to be curious, how to zero in on their own learning strengths. How to excel beyond established state mandated educational standards.

Regardless how it used to be, modern homeschoolers opt out of traditional schooling for a plethora of reasons, including everything from bullying, lack of discipline in the school, overcrowding, to toxic teachers who are allowed to pour their personal philosophies into fertile minds. But for the most part, the primary reason for homeschooling comes down to the specific and individual needs of the child. Some kids cannot learn the way a subject is mandated to be taught. The rule of thumb is and actually must always be based on the commonality of learning ability. But not everyone learns the same way though. 

It is a specious argument that traditional school provides better education than homeschool - the truth of which depends on all the facts you can’t see - like the bulk of an iceberg. To tout that children cannot be taught by someone who is not ‘credentialed’ is also a smoke screen of disinformation. 

I took piano as a child for a year. My mother did not demand that my teacher show her diploma from Juilliard. And yet I learned in that one year so much about the structure and art of music. She knew music and she taught me. That my family moved and I did not take up playing an instrument again for 13 years did not erase that musical knowledge base. 

Credentials are a good start, for sure. You want certain professionals to at least provide the evidence that they did the work to get the credential. But, have you ever had a bad doctor, dentist, lawyer? Did you ever have a really really bad teacher? Or more than one?  Have you ever had an ordinary mentor teach you a valuable life lesson or skill that stayed with you into adulthood?

The point to be made is that knowledge is a fluid thing, it moves and changes with all that is constantly being discovered. In this age, given the access to unprecedented volumes of facts and information readily available in digital format, the task of teaching is not about instructing as much as it is about keeping up with the speed of what is available to learn.

Homeschooling in North Georgia, for the strength of all the community shared opportunities for kids to be exposed to unlimited educational experience, is producing highly credentialed adults. Scientists, engineers, teachers, medical professionals and, yes, even lawyers. Individuals who have learned how to learn and are imbued with the lifelong desire to continue learning.

Cling to the old ways, the fixed concepts, if you like - but homeschooling has more than proved itself and no longer must answer to the argument that traditional school is better. Homeschooling may be a different approach to how a child is educated, but it is in no way inferior. If the goal is the same - smart, thinking, life conscious individuals prepared to launch into the real world - if homeschooled children, according to statistics, fair better in their first year of college and go on to earn degrees - something good is happening. 

Just as traditional school is not the best option for some, homeschooling is not possible for most - if we’re just talking numbers here. But isn’t it wonderful to know there are options available? Isn’t it grand that the common goal of well-rounded, knowledge loaded kids is possible? 

Isn’t that ultimately what we all want? 

For Him,

Meema