Mindset of mediocrity

Isn't it disturbing that it doesn't seem important how intelligent our Presidential candidates are. McCain is not ashamed to state that he graduated fifth from the bottom in his class. The Governor of Alaska Sarah Palin changed schools several times and is mostly noted for her ability to shoot something from a helicopter--she is not noted for her IQ--but instead for how well she knows how to read a speech from a tele-prompter?

The attributes McCain stresses in his campaign are not those of mental prowess but of having learned much from defeat.

Let's see, our current President was not noted for his good grades. He was also not noted for his business sense when he was running for President. I remember that he lost money and was then rescued by parental connections. His money came from daddy who got rich through his daddy who got rich, I wonder how.

Barack Obama does have the mettle to be President, and yet he does not stress that he knows more than your average Joe Blow. He doesn't want to be called elitist, I hear. Now, what's wrong with being an elitist. Doesn't that mean that he is thought to be from the elite? Has anyone asked that question? Those people making Obama into an elitist apparently are themselves not from the elite. Where does it come from that it is better for a Presidential candidate to be slightly daft, and not from the elite. Do you really have to appear lacking in your faculties and otherwise not as principled in your thought processes to qualify?

I recently read in E-Week that the German Chancellor Angela Merkel is listed among the top 100 IT personalities. Among all world leaders she is thought to be the most internet savvy in the world. She is a physicist by training.

Why can't we elect someone like that and know that we are doing it because that person has a superior intellect. Where did we get this wish for mediocrity? Or are we all mercury impaired? In 1926 Alfred Stock said "Quem Mercurius perdere vult, dementat prius". That means "Whom (the God) Mercury wants to destroy, he afflicts with dementia." Are we all toxically impaired? Are we that far gone? Have we already gone down the road of old Rome? Or are we just pretending.

When doctors lie to you

My doctor didn't lie to me. Erik's did. Erik is completely helpless. He sits in a wheelchair, and now he is tied to it by a tube that emanates from his abdomen. He has a catheter that comes from his bladder. Eleven years ago he still walked. He was helpless then, but he walked, and he ran. He has never talked, and he has never been able to take care of himself.

That's why it hurts even more to know that one of his doctors lied to him. Since I am Erik's conservator, I take this lie personally. So this doctor lied to me. He told me in 1997 that Erik did not have rickets when Erik in fact did. I know that now after Erik suffered thirty broken bones and kidney failure that should have been discovered then. We have the lab values to prove it.

When a doctor lies to you, the notion of a physician's care is lost; it becomes a questionable entity. It leaves you bare of the security that once was bestowed upon the sick, it leaves you questioning that there once was a trustworthy learned person behind that white coat. The Staff of Aesculapius was like the scepter of aid for the weak and helpless. There was a powerful iconic meaning behind the hospital facade. Should I take the snake winding around the scepter as icon of betrayal? I once was naive. I once trusted all that. I know more now, and I find myself helpless, even more so because there are so few healthy people who can understand why I might want to try to tell them about all this. I am alone in my knowledge. I wished I were naive again.

How does it feel when a doctor lies to you. It feels like Adam and Eve losing their innocence.