A Scary Parallel....

“Earlier in his career the world had watched him with amusement, that people refused to take him seriously, and as one action after another met with amazing success, this amusement was transformed into incredulousness. It was inconceivable that such a thing could actually happen in our modern civilization. A madman had become the leader. Having classified him in this way you might think that all we need to do is to eliminate the madman from the scene of activities, replace him with a sane individual, and the world will again return to a normal and peaceful state of affairs. ….......

Focusing on the individual’s madness begs the question as to the sanity of society that created him as its spokesman and leader, that a reciprocal relationship exists between the leader and the people who spawned him. Removing such a leader is simply removing the overt manifestation of the disease. Focusing on the madman does not take us very far in understanding those who support him. “

The above is not a Psychological Analysis of Donald Trump but from a World War II report, “A Psychological Analysis of Adolf Hitler,” for the Office of Strategic Services of the United States Government as brought to my attention by a long dissection of the American mindset by blogger Canadian Dimension

I will not pretend to be a great scholar or for that matter consumed with our southern neighbors current cluster fk but one cannot help but be concerned with where the country just south of us is headed given our close proximity both physical and economically. I can only say that from what news reports that highlight Trumps past and present unrestrained verbiage the above clip from an article about a former dictator who started in an elected official and in a short time took over government and eliminated any who opposed him that the parallels are scary..

Given the constant removal of qualified individuals from influential government positions to be replaced with Trump supporters the parallels are so obvious and troubling that the American electorate had best be praying that this smooth talking self promoting liar is removed from power in short order. I wish the American people the best of luck getting him to actually hand over the reigns of power and not further destroy what little democracy left in their country by fighting the results in the courts for months and possibly years to come.

Enough said......

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Political Polarization “damaging for democracy.”

 

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, fresh off her landslide reelection victory, warned on Sunday that rigid political polarization could be “damaging for democracy.”

Ardern, asked what the takeaway for Americans should be from her victory, said people throughout the world should work to move beyond partisan infighting.

“That can be damaging for democracy, regardless of the side of the House that you sit on,” Ardern said, according to The Associated Press.

As can be clearly seen the above is very true as can be seen in a number of so called democracy's including not only the USA but Great Britain and a number of other European countries. We here in Canada are not free of such damaging 'partisan infighting' initiated purely for political purposes which is encouraged by our 'winner take all' electoral system. 

Enough said! 

 

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Something to think about.....

 

James Hamblin kicks off “Clean: The New Science of Skin” with a confession: He virtually stopped showering years ago. Hamblin, a physician and staff writer for The Atlantic, still sprinkles water on his head from time to time, but shuns shampoos, conditioners, and the cavalcade of other products that march across American shower shelves.

In polite company, Hamblin’s confession tends to land like the Hindenburg, which reveals just how obsessed we’ve become with surface notions of cleanliness — and how reluctant we are to disavow them. But Hamblin thinks the sensible-sounding idea that we should scrub up regularly is both simplistic and wrongheaded. When you take a soap-slathered loofah to your greasy pelt, he says, you’re actually destroying an interdependent microbial universe, or microbiome, on the surface of your skin........

But what soap hoarders and hawkers overlook is that wiping out our symbiotic microbes may make us more vulnerable to other, unexpected maladies. First-line eczema treatments, for instance, include topical antibiotics, cleansers, and drugs that dampen immune response, but some researchers say these approaches can make the condition worse in the long run. “Perturbing the skin barrier by washing or scratching can change the microbial population,” Hamblin notes. “That can rev up the immune system, which tells the skin cells to proliferate rapidly and fill with inflammatory proteins.”

By scrubbing up regularly, the author argues, we stymie one of evolution’s best strategies to shield us from disease and keep out invaders. This observation lines up with an older one that kids raised in highly sanitized environments are more prone to allergies than farm kids like the Amish. Wipe the body’s microbial slate clean too aggressively, the theory goes, and the un-seasoned immune system roars back with a vengeance.

I will admit to embracing this regime, perhaps first learned in my youth from living in a cottage with no running water were the weekly bath was a major operation involving carrying buckets of water from the water supply to the house and heating it on the stove top before filling the metal tub brought in from the shed and placed on the kitchen floor. In my 70 plus years I have never been particularly fanatic about regular baths or showers and have rarely had any sickness beyond a few sniffles once in a while and cuts and scrapes heal quickly with little attention, so perhaps there is something to be said for this once common practice which continues to this day in some small rural communities!

The ever increasing prevalence of children with severe allergies may well be a result of society's insistence upon it being necessary to shower every morning, maintain a spotless house, keep kids out of the dirt and generally avoid being 'contaminated' by anything by some folks. Something to think about in the current pandemic situation.

In no way is the forgoing intended to encourage or condone those that do not take precautions against spreading the most recent and dangerous virus that is killing thousands of individuals world wide. 

 

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