Making America Sick Again
Throughout the anti-health tenure of the seriously disturbed Secretary of Escalating Failure, Robert Kennedy Jr, we have seen America begin to increasingly suffer from diseases long thought to have been conquered: measles, whooping cough, polio, tetanus. This is occurring, not only because of unsupported and reckless anti-vaccine advice, but also because of severe cuts to medical research and testing.
There are, however, an additional number of factors exacerbating the worsening health of the American people. The first is an historic failure but one that may foreshadow additional problems likely to be caused by this regime.
During the first term of the current white house buffoon, we suffered through our most serious pandemic since 1918, and we were virtually abandoned by the federal government. Stocks of needed protective equipment had been depleted and not restocked: N95 masks, protective gowns, ventilators. Test kits were flawed. Testing was severely restricted. There was virtually no inter-governmental coordination. There were endless posts containing conflicting messaging and wildly shifting mandates. It fell to counties like ours to assume the burden of inventing responses from scratch, and we did the best we could.
Second, in the current disastrous term of this president, an additional sort of health threat has spread and continues to grow. Every day, it seems, the outrageous and dangerous behavior of the deranged man teetering at the top generates new waves of anxiety, stress and fear, disturbing our peace, creating an imbalance in our daily lives, and taking a toll on our health, both mental and physical. Sometimes these health threats are the most difficult to recognize.
Third, severely diminishing environmental protections are causing more pollution-related lung diseases, especially in poorer neighborhoods near freeways and major arteries, refineries, uncapped oil wells, and unmeasured chemical pollutants from nearby warehouses. Fourth, there have been severe cutbacks on services for women’s and maternal health.
All of these losses add to a burden on our basic mental health, as well. We worry. Our heartrate increases. We are stressed with the anxiety of possible war, medicaid cuts, economic uncertainty, lack of health insurance.
We suffer increasing problems with our cardio vascular system, our blood pressure. We clench our jaws and suffer from tension that puts a strain on our entire skeletal system, as well as experiencing depression, brain fog and sleep problems.
It’s an all-out attack on our health.
Of course it’s hard to cope. I can only suggest that we realize that he is on his way out and that is the answer. He will not succeed against the electorate, our democracy and our constitution. He is a blip in history. It is important to learn from our own past that things we fear have been permanently undone will be restored. FDR did it after Hoover. We will do it after the orange menace. Believe.
Homebound
In the newly published novel, Homebound, by award winning author, Portia Elan, four disparate stories, spanning multiple centuries, are woven together in a technique similar to that utilized in the 2012 Tom Hanks movie, Cloud Atlas, where communications from characters in prior storylines are found in future chapters.
The uniting themes demonstrate the ways in which memory, art and love connect us across time. Most of all, however, the book is about the location of home and how we search to find it, keep it, and nurture it, how we navigate dilemmas like chosen vs biological family, how early, simplistic technology holds our memories and aids human connection, and how human care and concern can help us deal with larger disasters.
I think of these themes today in the face of a regime that works to erase and alter our memories, elevates self-dealing, corruption and selfishness over care and concern, and wants to separate rather than to unite. Where is our home?
Honestly, I don’t recognize the America the president and his servants are trying to create. A US citizen getting his arm broken by ICE in a violent takedown that should never have begun. A year old child killed by a federal officer firing wildly into a car. Suppression of the free press. Our states fighting an attempt to scrub hundreds of thousands from voting rolls. Detention camps. I want to get back to my home.
I propose a renewed commitment to the best America we knew and the America we want. A country of laws, constitution, neighborliness, protest against injustice, striving, ever striving, to be a free, fair, and welcoming home for all. We can do this.
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My autobiography And Then What Happened? My Life From Zelda to Politics is now available wherever you buy books. I hope you will enjoy it! If any of you want to gather a group for a reading and book signing, please let me know at Kuehl.website@gmail.com. Thanks!
