Tag Archives: Trump

Discarding Medical Ethics

There really is no way to ignore the White supremacist and patriarchal roots of MAGA and the Trump administration. The behavior of ICE in conflating Brown skin with “illegal” status is one aspect; the bigoted nature of so many Trump’s insane Executive Orders is another. A recent federal court decision–handed down by a judge appointed by Ronald Reagan–expressed astonishment at the obvious discriminatory motive behind the administration’s NIH cuts. Etc.

Now, the administration is encouraging the VA to be “selective” in providing medical care to veterans. According to a recent report from The Guardian,

Doctors at Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) hospitals nationwide could refuse to treat unmarried veterans and Democrats under new hospital guidelines imposed following an executive order by Donald Trump.

The new rules, obtained by the Guardian, also apply to psychologists, dentists and a host of other occupations. They have already gone into effect in at least some VA medical centers.

Medical staff are still required to treat veterans regardless of race, color, religion and sex, and all veterans remain entitled to treatment. But individual workers are now free to decline to care for patients based on personal characteristics not explicitly prohibited by federal law.

Language requiring healthcare professionals to care for veterans regardless of their politics and marital status has been explicitly eliminated.

I sent this article to my cousin, a long-time cardiologist whose medical knowledge I sometime share on this site; he responded that this “goes against all the rules that guide the medical profession, not to mention against the guiding principles of this entire nation! It’s simply additional confirmation of Trump’s insanity, not that we needed it! “

According to the report, this permission of discrimination isn’t limited to patient care. “Doctors and other medical staff can also be barred from working at VA hospitals based on their marital status, political party affiliation or union activity.” The changes even apply to chiropractors, nurse practitioners, optometrists, podiatrists, licensed clinical social workers and speech therapists.

The administration claims that these changes were intended to support the president’s executive order titled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government”. That executive order purported to eliminate existing government protections from transgender people, and since it was issued, the VA has stopped  providing most gender-affirming care.

The administration has also forbidden a long list of words, including “gender affirming” and “transgender”, from clinical settings.

The article quoted a former VA administrator who said the changes would allow doctors to refuse to treat veterans based on the reason they were seeking care, including allegations of rape and sexual assault. Refusal could also be based upon current or past political party affiliation or political activity, and on personal behaviors like alcohol or marijuana use.

Most Americans fail to recognize just how extensive the VA is. The Department of Veterans Affairs operates the nation’s largest integrated hospital system; it has more than 170 hospitals and more than 1,000 clinics, employs 26,000 doctors and serves 9 million patients annually. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that rule changes of this sort are likely to have profound consequences.

In an emailed response to questions, the VA press secretary, Peter Kasperowicz, did not dispute that the new rules allowed doctors to refuse to treat veteran patients based on their beliefs or that physicians could be dismissed based on their marital status or political affiliation.

Dr. Arthur Caplan, a prominent medical ethics expert, called the new rules “extremely disturbing and unethical.”

The changes are part of a larger attack on the independence of medicine and science by the Trump administration, Caplan said, which has included restrictions and cuts at the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F Kennedy Jr, last week fired every member of a key panel that advises the government on vaccines. The Guardian has earlier reported on a VA edict forbidding agency researchers from publishing in scientific journals without clearance from the agency’s political appointees.

Just one more drop in the ocean of ignorance and “othering” that characterizes MAGA and Trumpism. From the “very fine” people Trump insisted were among the bigoted rioters at Charlottesville, to his description of (majority Black) “shithole countries,” to his efforts to bar entry into America from Muslim countries, to his constant manifestations of racism, misogyny, and anti-Semitism, Trump has represented and ingratiated himself with the White “Christian” supremacists who form the base of his support.

America’s divisions aren’t political. They’re moral and ethical. And MAGA is on the wrong side of that divide.

 
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Things That Make Me Crazy

Can those who read this blog indulge me for three very personal rants?

We face so many major problems in this country right now (can we spell LA?) that it seems terribly self-indulgent to focus on a few annoying aspects of civic debate. On the other hand, I think at least a couple of the behaviors I find so exasperating are symptoms of the inability of We the People to productively address the bigger issues. (Anyway, that’s my justification and I’m sticking to it!)

#1. I recently posted about an emerging argument over regulation. Proponents of taking a closer look at our regulatory processes aren’t the knee-jerk GOP scolds who define “free market” as “free” from any government rules; the concern (as I said in that post) is to guard against over-kill. But I immediately got an email from an acquaintance saying, essentially, “finally, people are realizing that we need to get government out of the way!”

Now, I’ve known this particular correspondent for a long time, and he’s not stupid. But he drank the Kool-Aid back when the GOP’s plutocrats were insisting that government just needed to get out of the way and let good-hearted business-people run their enterprises as they see fit.

We’re beginning to see what that would look like, as planes fall from the sky.  Do we really want to get rid of FDA inspections to ensure that supermarket chickens are safe to eat?  Do we want to turn a blind eye to that factory discharging toxic waste into the local river? Stop requiring clinical trials before approving the sale of medications and vaccines?

Bottom line:  We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto! We don’t grow our own fruits and vegetables and go into the backyard to kill one of our own chickens for dinner. In a modern society, government regulations are essential.  As I said in my post, it isn’t an “either/or” proposition; policymakers need to determine what regulations are needed, and how much is too much. That’s a lot harder, of course, than spouting ideological idiocies.

#2. This platform, like so many others, is a place where people with different perspectives but generally similar civic goals come to argue about THE question: what should we do? What actions can citizens take in the face of an existential threat to the America we thought we inhabited? 

Those discussions may or may not be experienced as valuable, but one (probably inevitable) response drives me up the wall. It is the comment–in a lecturing tone–to the effect that such-and-such will clearly be ineffective, that it is simply “virtue-signaling” and unlikely to make any difference. It would be one thing if the person pouring cold water on a proposed activity ever followed up with a helpful, do-able suggestion–if the put-down was ever followed by a thoughtful “here’s what we should be doing instead,” but it never is.

One of the defects of Internet conversations is the absence of tone and body-language. Perhaps if we could see and hear the individuals who post these put-downs, they wouldn’t seem so sneering and self-important–but that is certainly what these “I know better than you and what you propose is stupid” comments convey.

#3.  I am OVER the Democrats who keep wallowing in “what went wrong” and “who was to blame” and “why the approach of those of you on the (insert ideological position) is dooming our chances in the future.” I am especially over the focus on Joe Biden, and the utterly stupid accusations of a “cover up”–as Robert Hubbell has pointed out, a “cover up” of the cognitive state of a man who was appearing daily at campaign events, delivering addresses to Congress where he outwitted the entire Republican caucus, providing interviews to major media outlets, and guiding America through a period of stable foreign relations and successful domestic policy. Biden aged in office –and we all saw that–but he was a transformational and incredibly effective President. Should he have withdrawn sooner? Probably. But for goodness sake, GIVE IT A REST. 

Meanwhile, we have a President whose election was at least partially due to the refusal of the mainstream press to give anything close to equal time to his embarrassing stupidity, his obvious mental illness (not to mention his age-related decline from what wasn’t a high bar to begin with). Even the aspects of his “character” (note quotation marks) that do receive coverage–his racism, his felonies, his rapes, his constant lies (are his lips moving?), his “out and proud” corruption –are still being normalized and sane-washed. WHY?

Okay. I’m done. Thanks for indulging me. I think I feel better.

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The Would-Be King

Phil Gulley is a Quaker pastor in Indiana and a clear-eyed observer of the human condition. Quakers value peace, integrity, community, and stewardship of the Earth–values that our mad would-be king disdains and desecrates. Phil recently shared an essay in which he described the multiple ways in which Trump and his MAGA base offend Quaker, American and human values, and he graciously allowed me to share it. It’s below. (He also has a Substack, for those of us who follow him.)

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A Criminal Syndicate

         Have you ever met someone who reminded you of someone else? When I first heard Pete Buttigieg, I was reminded of Richard Lugar, another well-spoken, intelligent Hoosier. When I met my wife, she reminded me of Katharine Hepburn, with whom she shared a classy, no-nonsense manner. I’m sure my rugged good looks reminded her of Spencer Tracy. When Donald Trump emerged on the political scene, I felt a spark of recognition. I know that man from somewhere else, I told myself. Then I remembered. Donald Trump reminds me of Tony Soprano. Both are swaggering bullies. Both are vicious, violent, and rapacious criminals, heading up criminal syndicates. Except one is fictional and one is not.

         There is no such thing as a Trump Administration. There is a Trump Syndicate, a crime family, a consortium of thugs, underlings, felons, and grifters, purporting to be public servants while carrying out a global campaign of theft, pilfering America’s treasury, peddling access to the Mobster-in-Chief, Donald Trump, while gutting the very agencies that would hold them accountable to the rule of law.

         Theirs is a master class in fraud, unparalleled in American history. The foxes are guarding the henhouse, which by the end of his term will be gutted. A democracy almost 250 years in the making has been stripped bare in one bleak and wintry season. The collective effort of twelve generations of Americans has been decimated by Hair Hitler and his Brownshirts. This is what I grieve the most, that tens of millions of Americans voted for a man who’d made no secret of his disdain for decency and duty. All his life, he has been the poster child of decadence—greedy, grasping, uncaring, and corrupt. He has never had a friend, only servile bootlickers collecting the crumbs that slip through his tiny hands, selling their souls for thirty pieces of silver. They, like he, merit a Judas death—abandoned and ashamed—their names a curse on the lips of history.

         He ventures from the White House only long enough to plunder, gathering jet planes and sweetheart deals from the sponsors of global terrorism, peddling his cryptocoins, favoring those who purchase them, tyrannizing those who don’t. Like all crime bosses, it is himself he is serving and no one else, so he will leave the presidency far richer than he entered it. His is a transactional presidency, our shared public treasure rummaged at fire-sale prices to his cronies.

         Anyone who dares protest is called out on middle-of-the-night tweets—Bruce Springsteen, Taylor Swift, colleges, professors, foreign presidents with the audacity to stand against tyranny, Mexico, Canada, and liberals. What an honor it would be to be singled out for attack by Donald Trump, to be labeled an enemy of his brutish ignorance. If we are known by the company we keep, we are also known by the company we find so repulsive we would dedicate our lives to resisting it. If he is naming his enemies, number me among them. I detest everything about him and all he represents−fascism, meanness, ignorance, and cruelty.

         Like all mob bosses, to remain in his good favor requires an envelope of cash slipped into his silken pocket. His goons rise each morning and go forth, strong-arming America, threatening, intimidating, collecting the daily take, promising safety to those who comply and ruination to those who refuse.  Now we are separating the men from the boys, and shame on the boys, shame on those who buckle under, the law firms and tech bros, whose donations fund this Thief-of-State. With billions of dollars at their disposal, with teams of lawyers at their beck and call, they tremble in fear of this strutting bully and what he might tweet about them. Their spinelessness is not only appalling, but traitorous. A pox upon them all.

         Washington and Lincoln have their memorials, but there will be no such marker for Trump. Should one be erected, it will be torn down by those who cannot bear to see such a man saluted. There won’t be enough tomatoes in the world to register history’s disgust, nor enough guards to safekeep his marker. He should enjoy the braying accolades he is receiving now, since his future will lack the faintest note of praise.

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The Victim Card

Along with the dread I feel with every Trumpian assault on the Constitution and rule of law is a constant, nagging question: how can the MAGA base ignore the threats to their own liberties and livelihoods? How can they look at this pathetic, corrupt,  mentally-ill man and his bizarre collection of incompetents and conspiracy theorists and say “Yes! Those are the people I want in charge of the economy and country?”

I’m not the only person who has mulled over that question, and–while there is never one simple answer to a complicated reality–I’m pretty sure that grievance (along with a healthy dose of ignorance) is a major factor. By “grievance,” of course, I mean the extensive racism encouraged by the Christian Nationalists who constantly play the victim card.

White Christian Nationalists are constantly told by their leaders and pastors that this country was supposed to be theirs by right–that America was supposed to be a Christian nation. Not just any Christians, of course–White male fundamentalist Christians. MAGA’s devotion to Trump is rooted in his permission to hate those “others” who have infringed upon their rights, upon his obvious agreement that equal treatment for Brown and Black folks, Jews, Muslims  and “uppity” women constitutes discrimination against White Christian males and simply cannot be tolerated.

What the MAGA base supports is the administration’s frantic efforts to stamp out DEI and purge official websites of evidence that non-Christian, non-White, non-male individuals have served the country with distinction. MAGA applauds the replacement of competent minority folks with embarrassing and grossly unfit Whites. It cheers the assaults on education, and especially Trump’s attacks on the universities that turn out those hated and increasingly diverse “elites.”

The irony is visible to anyone not in the cult. The aggrieved Whites who used to complain that women and minorities were “playing the victim card” are the ones now playing victim. 

A recent article in The New Republic gives the game away, reporting on the first meeting of Trump’s “Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias in the Federal Government.” As the article noted,

Those attending didn’t seem to be bothered by the fact that no evidence of such widespread bias exists. That’s because they weren’t there to solve a problem but to create one. The Task Force claimed to be standing up for “religious liberty,” but its real goal is to amplify the persecution complex of the Trump administration’s Christian nationalist allies and base—and then to use groundless claims of religious discrimination as the basis for the suppression of dissent.

Lest we miss the real purpose of this charade, an incident the following week illuminated the fact that–as the article put it–“the Trump administration has zero interest in promoting “religious liberty.”

As the Reverend William Barber and other faith leaders opposed to Republican budget cuts gathered to pray at the Capitol Rotunda, they were swiftly surrounded by Capitol Police officers, one wearing a “crime scene” vest. The press was expelled from the building, and the pastors were arrested.

You would think that a Task Force concerned with anti-Christian bias would take an interest. But the administration appears to have nothing to say. The problem for the Reverend Barber and his fellow pastors is that they would seem to be the wrong kind of Christians. Right-wing pastor Sean Feucht has “filled the US Capitol Rotunda with worship time and time again for the last 4 years,” in his own words, and yet he has never been arrested or detained. He, apparently, is the right kind of Christian.

As most sentient Americans know–and as the article pointed out– attacks on Christians in the U.S. are infrequent– unlike attacks on other religious groups. Assaults on Jews, Muslims, and Sikhs have always been far more numerous, and their incidence has climbed dramatically during the Trump years. “The Task Force’s exclusive focus on Christian victims exposes its rhetoric about defending “religious liberty” as transparently insincere.”

As the essay points out, for members of the MAGA cult, “anti-Christian bias” is indistinguishable from efforts to protect individual rights against discrimination by people who identify as Christian. In other words, efforts to prevent these particular “Christians” from discriminating against people of whom they disapprove is labeled anti-Christian bias. To MAGA, “religious freedom” now means “privilege for conservative Christians alone, including the freedom to harass or discriminate.”

Equality before the law is seen as anti-Christian.

When Christian Nationalists are prevented from dictating the terms of the civic culture, they consider themselves victims. And so long as Trump feeds their perceptions of victimhood, so long as he supports their theocratic aspirations, nothing will shake their loyalty.

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Memorial Day

Monday was Memorial Day. In my city of Indianapolis, Memorial Day concludes a “big deal” weekend that features the City’s famous 500 Mile Race and numerous attendant festivities. The original meaning of the holiday tends to get buried in the weekend’s hustle and bustle, as thousands of visitors descend on the city to drink, eat and watch the race.

I hope that–in the midst of the festivities–at least some of us stop to remember that Memorial Day is intended to honor those who have lost their lives serving in the U.S. Military.

In The Contrarian, Jennifer Rubin recently issued that reminder. Memorial Day was intended to “memorialize” the sacrifices of the American soldiers who fought to preserve democracy around the globe. Writing from Spain, where she is traveling, she noted that but for America’s military and financial sacrifices, the world we inhabit today would look very different. If not for the young men and women who were ready to lay down their lives for others, Europe today would not be free.

It’s an appropriate time, as Donald Trump and his MAGA know-nothings throw aside American values (e.g., empathy, selflessness, ingenuity, inclusion), to appreciate the sacrifice of all those who have served. In the midst of debates about Medicaid cuts, debt, and tax cuts for billionaires, we should not lose track of honoring our veterans, whom Trump has nonchalantly kicked to the curb…

While he cuts billions from the Veterans Affairs Department and lays off tens of thousands of vets, Trump wants to throw away tens of millions on a cringeworthy military parade on his birthday, which also happens to be the US Army’s 250th birthday and Flag Day. Rather than honor others’ service by keeping our commitments, he preens amid military pomp like every two-bit dictator on the planet.

Trump cares not one wit about those who, unlike him, risked their lives. Quite the opposite: he has made life notably challenging for vets. Thanks to some masterful Washington Post reporting on the trauma he intentionally inflicted on tens of thousands of government workers, we have learned about the inexcusable toll on veterans in particular, who disproportionately serve in the federal government. Sadly, “Phone operators for the Veterans Crisis Line said they’d seen a rise in calls from federal employees and others worried about cuts to the VA.”

Given that Trump considers those who serve to be “losers and suckers,” it’s hardly surprising that concern for veterans is nowhere on his “to do” list. And the damage isn’t limited to the reckless and illegal DOGE cuts. As Rubin notes, almost every part of the horrific MAGA budget will hit vets especially hard. From the federal personnel firings (vets make up 30% of the federal workforce) to the draconian cuts to Medicaid and VA spending, to the layoffs at the Department of Veterans Affairs, to the petty purge of the Pentagon archives that documented diversity in the military, veterans have been disproportionate targets of Trump’s cruelest actions. 

That cruelty has prompted the emergence of veterans’ organizations challenging the administration and the MAGA Republicans who are complicit–even enthusiastic–in the Trumpian assault. Vote Vets has proved to be a particularly effective voice for the nation’s veterans, but there are many others.

One wonders how those lawmakers who actually served–Senator Todd Young comes to mind–rationalize their support for the constant assault on veterans’ well-being. During the Memorial Day recess (ending June 2), constituents should ask them.

As Rubin concludes,

Veterans and their families have remained undaunted in military service and in the face of grotesque betrayal by the MAGA ingrates. They deserve better than this president, his cronies, and MAGA flunkies have offered. During their Memorial Day recess, Republican lawmakers who have enabled Trump’s cruelty should take a moment to reflect on what it truly means to put country above self.

Unfortunately, putting country above self is a concept absolutely foreign to MAGA and to the racist madman who occupies–and routinely desecrates–the Oval Office.

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