Saturday, January 03, 2009

What is Your Prediction for 2009?

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posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 8:58 AM   9 Comments

9 Comments:

At January 03, 2009 , Blogger Unknown said...

I've been getting asked about predictions in the course of my professional practice, which involves making them, for so long that the word "prediction" jumped out at me. I'm not sure that Obama will be inaugurated, and I am sure that if he is, it will be a term along the lines of FDR's last, Nixon's second, or Clinton's second, as it would have been for whoever was elected, but considering who was in fact elected and what issues are at stake, it's really scary for everybody, especially in terms of the issues SHS addresses; further, the nation is in for some radical changes of a nature and magnitude last seen, here and abroad, in the 1700s, reproductive and "life" issues will be prominent among them here, and that's only the tip of the iceberg as far as the United States is concerned. There may be some resonance with France, Italy, and Russia in those terms; for the same reasons, but in a different apparent category, political events in Illinois and New York already have come to the fore, and we can expect what happens in those states, and in Georgia and Colorado as well, to be significant when it comes to reproductive and "life" issues.

That's off the top of my head; there is much more to look at in these respects which would require further research and be of interest re what's coming here and abroad. We're coming into a couple of years, here, when so much of what we have considered stable, in terms of residences, families, our own traditions, etc. is going to tested that in the ensuing chaos that could occur, people could be swept up in things they have no chance to understand. I fear for the elderly population, here and everywhere, for one thing, unless there is serious consideration of their rights and concerns and a return to traditional, sensible values. In the U.S., ibssues concerning hospitals, health care, and the disabled are going to receive periodic spurts of attention that can be productive if everyone keeps their heads on straight, and what has been building in awareness concerning these issues over these issues over the last decade or two can have positive and productive results if, again, everyone kept their heads on straight.

Unfortunately, it's going to be very difficult for people to do that here, with what else is going to be going on that has to do with the presidential administration as well as the country in general, and meanwhile, every other country is going to be having more significant issues than usual including its own government, as well as its own path to follow, as the death culture marches on and must be fought in the atmosphere of profound change that's going to prevail (throw in some more earthquakes and natural disasters for good measure).

On the good side, what governments, corporations, "authority figures," etc. are doing that's wrong is going to be revealed day after day, and there is a chance for a resurgence of time-tested, common-sense, conservative values, including a renewed respect for the elderly and the wisdom they have to offer the rest of us. If everyone can keep their heads above water. What's coming for the U.S. is a traumatic reminder that life is a fundamental value, for this nation in particular, joining hands with France and Italy, where the death culture doesn't seem to be able to get a foothold as it has elsewhere, could be part of our salvation.

 
At January 03, 2009 , Blogger Unknown said...

There should have been a semicolon after "particular" in my last sentence above.

I think the U.S. is going to have in the next decade and a half, as well as profound war and diplomacy issues, if not confrontation with Russia, a situation in which we're, as it were, looking into a mirror and seeing Russia looking back at us, almost like a cold-war dynamic but within ourselves as well, and we may find ourselves under attack, as it were, by our own federal government, and we're going to have to fight the death culture while all this is going on. I haven't seen much mention in the news, or anywhere, about what is going on re the death culture in Russia, but it's something we need to be very aware of, because everything that goes on in Russia, as well as in Washington D.C., including re life issues and the death culture, these next years is going to have a profound effect on us, and it is going to get started before we're aware of it, and not show its hand until it has overpowered us.

In fact, just as when it was born in the 1700s, the U.S. is going to be confronting and having to deal with issues of power and control of the profoundest possible nature for the next decade and a half. Last time around, it was over the rights and independence of the nation and of its individual citizens; this time, that theme will recur, but with the issue of who has power over life and death added in, and at the forefront of the battle.

 
At January 03, 2009 , Blogger Unknown said...

It follows, then, that Patton was right. Things didn't get straightened out after WWII; we just thought that they did, and there's the Nuremberg Code, etc. (which I've been saying, and I know SHS doesn't agree with me, has made things worse). Something else has been building out of the unresolved issues of that war. The fronts, in the west, have been unsurprising. I'd like to think that Russia will be our ally against the death culture, but I what it's been up to, and in terms of the framework in which I've just been considering all this, it's its nature not to tell anyone what it's up to. I have had a sense that much more goes on there re eugenics than is obvious to us from day to day, and that Germany, the low countries, Scandanavia, and Russia are on the same team regarding various aspects of the death culture, but haven't seen enough evidence to draw a conclusion about it.

Where the radical Muslim terrorist death culture dynamic fits into all this, I don't know, but it does, and then there is China and the rest of the world. There certainly is a lot of work to do if we are going to survive. As humans (and all the other animals with us; they have rights too), and not as clones, eugenic products, half-other-primates (interesting theoretical research, but a lot of things are that are just nauseatingly unnecessary and wrong). Again, "science" is driving this, and the "right" to experiment on animals is part of science being in the driver's seat, and look what it's done to us, not just in health care, but in terms of war, including the one that involves the death culture, which is war on humanity, and has to be fought, as we didn't have enough to do now worrying about another terrorist attack. It's all coming at us from the same time because it all, whether it hits the twin towers or the disabled, is coming from the same place. I say, leave the animals alone and go bother some terrorists and death culturists, but that's not "nice," and "civilized," is it. Well, we've had enough "nice" since Nuremberg, and look where we are.

What we've got now is civilized? While animal experimentation continues, and no one is willing to "experiment" by stopping that and seeing what happens to the culture overall. We've already got experimentation on humans; pharmaceutical products being released with nine thousand side-effect warnings and people following suggestions to "ask your doctor" about it anyway is part of it; what goes on in hospitals is part of it; out of the same mad science that passes for science "helpful to humans" as a result of which people get put to death against their will now, we've now got suggestions that we degrade other primates by interbreeding with them, too.

As soon as the lives of individuals are not safe and their rights are violated, whole nations are not. It starts in the laboratory, with other species deemed to provide results applicable to us, but when it comes to returning the favor, we conveniently leave the table to make a phone call when the waiter approaches with the bill, leaving the victims of the death culture to pay it along with the victims of the laboratory, which they don't get to leave alive, and now we don't get to leave the hospital alive whether we are able to and want to or not. We sometimes think of it in the opposite terms, of saving nations in order to save the individuals within them, but it's really also the other way around, especially now.

 
At January 03, 2009 , Blogger Unknown said...

Why would Texss rescind that law? If Texss of all places passed it, what hope is there for the rest of the country? When did it pass it? What is the basis of the statute? If I read in comments elsewhere here correctly, it recently banned first-cousin marriage. Any connection? Re the above (I'm done for a while, by the way), Texas and Connecticut are both in for big changes. But I never would have expected Texas to have passed such a law in the first place.

 
At January 03, 2009 , Blogger Unknown said...

When, and with what stated (and unstated?) rationale, was the European Court of Human Rights founded, and what connection, if any, does it have with the European council that could not be seated because the representative from Italy was Catholic and therefore might not be objective?

It could solve its self-created problem by seating chimps, as they are not blinded by religion. As a matter of fact, chimps could do a better job of running things that what we've got now. I for one would prefer that if an "ethics committee" is going to determine whether I live or die, it be made up of three chimps chattering, swinging from the ceiling, investigating the accoutrements of the meeting room, eating bananas and throwing chairs and bananas at one another than of three utilitarian "ethicists" whose job is to ratify the pre-determined futile-care prolicy of the hospital that pays their salaries and ignores its own chaplaincy as well as my own wishes and those of my family and designated representative; one would have a much better shot that way. In fact, if the ethicists were paid in bananas instead of dollars, I do believe that things might start to turn around and straighten out right quick. If the hospitals won't listen to good sense and are concerned about costs, they can save money by taking three chimps, cats, dogs, or laboratory rats from its own lab building and seating them as its ethics committee every time it wants to free up a hospital bed and "expensive resources" more valuable than a human life; it's not going to listen to anyone anyway; why pretend, and yet they can still say that all the proper protocols were followed. Since the medical establishment has turned to "bioethics" to make decisions no one wants to make, why not follow the model we've already got now with illegal immigrants who come here to do "the work nobody wants to do"? They don't have citizen status; well, we don't have to give the non-human animals human status; just replace the utilitarians, futile-care people, proponents of assisted suicide, euthanasia, "living wills," etc., ethicists, et al. with non-human animals and let THEM make the decisions "nobody wants to make." Don't have to pay them as much, either. Plus, we can trust them to understand the value of life. Just put one next to the person in question and see what they do. They'll know if the person wants to live, and indicate it to their bosses by respond to the person accordingly, and they won't have it in them to be "utilitarian." But of course that won't work; the job is to sanction murder, and thus only humans qualify.

 
At January 03, 2009 , Blogger Unknown said...

SHS: I can't agree with human exceptionalism re every human life being of equal value. My conclusion is that the life of every human who respects and values life and is not utilitarian is of equal and paramount value. We cannot have a free and safe society that includes the other kind. It's not being physically human that makes us special; it's being humane beings. The theory of redemption and the potential of everyone to reform and be enlightened is very nice and very Christian and all of that, but we can't afford it and it doesn't work. Some people ARE better than others, and we're in too great danger to be hesitant about protecting the decent from the indecent.

 
At January 04, 2009 , Blogger Rlfive said...

My prayer for 2009 is that the opposition to FOCA grows and becomes more vocal making the law impossible to pass.
My prediction for the coming year is that the financial challenges in this country and throughout the world will increase the notion that providing healthcare to the elderly, disabled and disadvantaged is an unnecessary expense.

 
At January 04, 2009 , Blogger Unknown said...

I'm with Rlfive.. It's been going on forever but my Heart feels it will become evident even to the media this coming year.. The story of the man who was offered assisted suicide instead of (?) cancer treatment brings it on home.......

Cyber hugs from Talking Rock..

 
At January 04, 2009 , Blogger Unknown said...

Abnegating responsibility by assigning "ethics" to "ethicists" and "bioethicists" leaves science and medicine free to be irresponsible, with the bio/ethicists supporting them in that direction.

I agree with Rlfive and Cindy Sue. I hope it DOES become evident even to the media this year, and I think it very well may, if the media do their job. It's happening too much and too often (and even once is too much and too often to start with) not to, if we have even the skeleton of a free press left.

The only way I got my mother into the i.c.u. where she belonged was by telling the doctor who was already consoling me on her death wait a minute, I'm not the patient, she is what matters, not my feelings, don't worry about them, worry about the fuss I'll raise if anything happens to her; there followed "You do know there is such a thing as 'comfort care,'" my saying yes and what she needs is actual medical care, and her being moved to the i.c.u. where any fuss I raised would be blamed on the i.c.u. instead. Months later, after her survival through daily unsolicited prognoses that "she may not make it through the night," the hospital decided that she should die, and almost 10 months after she had been admitted to the hospital, cancer was "discovered"; the day before her court-sanctioned murder, I asked a doctor (who happens to be an "ethicist") who had been furious when I refused to allow the plug to be pulled on her two months into the hospitalization how she could have been there all that time and they didn't know she had cancer, and he replied, "Oh, I saw the nodule back in November...I didn't think I had to tell you, I didn't think it was important to tell you, I knew she was going to die anyway." Well, I don't know what kind of doctor wouldn't know someone is going to die eventually, but this is the kind of arrogance, negligence, and incompetence that's out there running around loose in hospitals and medicine. There wasn't even an issue of cost of treatment; the hospital assured me repeatedly that her insurance covered everything. She wanted to live; they wanted her to die; week one, the patient relations guy asked me didn't I think that my mother had come there wanting to die; they don't even remember what their job is. If everyone with a story like mine called up a newspaper tomorrow morning, all at the same time, I don't see how it couldn't become evident in the media. How objective the coverage would be is another matter.

 

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