Billionaires Falling From Tall Buildings, 66
“We are an intelligent species because we define ourselves that way.”
Neil DeGrasse Tyson on Dumbness
DON’T TRAVEL TO 3RD WORLD BACKWATERS LIKE THE U.S. ONE COUNTRY ADVISES.!
Canada this week updated its travel advisory to U.S. for the LGBTQ+ community because a number of American states may be, well, unfriendly and harmful to your well being.
Which Country In North America Are You Going To
The geography of U.S. life expectancy—and the policy environments that determine it—is the result of differences that are regional, cultural and political, with roots going back centuries to the people who arrived on the continent with totally different ideas about equality, the proper role of government, and the correct balance point between individual liberty and the common good. (“America’s Surprising Partisan Divide on Life Expectancy,” Colin Woodard, Politico, 9/1/23)
The quote above comes from one of the more interesting and thought provoking articles I’ve read recently. As someone who trains medical students in basic exam skills as well as interpersonal skills, learning how to take a medical history and understanding how to converse with patients, I find that the general concept of “life expectancy” tends to silently accompany me, whether I’m dealing with a student just beginning their medical training or about to start their “real doctor” residency.
But there’s also another reason, far more interesting to me. It’s called magical realism. It begins when we Americans—still a significant majority—ask the question, Who are those people? They believe what!
The literary term magical realism we once associated (almost exclusively) with some of South America’s great writers like Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Isabel Allende and Mario Vargas Llosa but has now slipped through the barb wire of our southern border and established residency in this increasingly bizarre, Alice in Wonderland world we call the United States, where magical realism, a world grounded in the real world, the actual world but fantastical elements are considered normal where, for example, the likes of a naked Marjorie Taylor Green can float into a pink living room holding a Bud Lite and utter some nonsense to a room full of people and then disappear onto the veranda and vanish with no one paying the slightest attention.
Colin Woodard outlines 11 distinct regions of the U.S., originally settled by quite distinct groups of mostly Europeans but with very different views about virtually everything. These regions for me are almost different countries, but they do say so much about our views on health care and possibly everything else.
While I, for example, currently live in Kansas City, part of Greater Appalachia, I was born and raised in the East Coast in the country of Yankeedom. We are not as homogenized as the “world of Coca-Cola” might have us believe—then and now.
An article most definitely worth reading: America's Surprising Partisan Divide
An Ending Temporary As It Might Be
The very lengthy list of deadbeats, the morally and mentally challenged, rich, white reactionaries, future American concentration camp guards, those that can’t think for themselves and probably 50 percent of the congressional members of congress that once belonged to an actual political party called Republicans. See: The Key Players