Outside the Beltway

A Morning Morality Play

Maybe you can figure out the point, although clearly some people can’t.

Steven L. Taylor
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We find ourselves in a doctor’s office, where the doctor is trying to tell the patient about a serious condition that needs immediate attention.

Doctor: I’m sorry, sir, but you have cancer. Its effects can perhaps be mitigated with treatment, but you need to take some immediate actions, or else the damage will just get worse.

Man: My nephew is a bum. He is dying of Hepatitis C, cirrhosis, and a bunch of other problems. He did too much partying! We tried to tell him, but he wouldn’t listen.

Doctor: There are some drugs and other therapies you need to start immediately. I have some other dietary recommendations. The sooner we start, the better.

Man: He is just so annoying! Sharing needles. Can you imagine?

Doctor: Sir, here is a list…

Man: Don’t you get it? People shouldn’t act like that! We told him 10 years ago!

Doctor: Sir, could you focus on what we are talking about?

And scene.

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7 responses to “A Morning Morality Play”

  1. Flat Earth Luddite Avatar
    Flat Earth Luddite

    Personally, I’m hearing the whine, “but her emails!!!!!”

    I don’t see the complacent or lunatic fringe changing their minds until the trucks come for them.

    ETA

    Although the cancer analogy is apt. I’ve had so many people (some family) flat out tell me that my diagnosis was directly caused by

    1. Religious heresy
    2. Evil thoughts (somehow different from #1
    3. Government conspiracy
    4. Big pharma
    5. Evil white sugar and Twinkies

    8
  2. Slugger Avatar
    Slugger

    I’m not good at abstract thinking. My concrete earthbound mind set sees this as a guy being told that he has incurable cancer and being overwhelmed by this. He doesn’t have the ability to confront the problem directly right away. His interlocutor wants him to take immediate action. The guy spins this tale about the nephew to get a little space, a moment to think. My sympathies are with the patient obviously. I think that the doctor’s training should have taught that people need time, some people a little time, some people longer, to take action. When the doctor says, “could you focus on what we were talking about”; maybe the doctor should think about what it means to be told that you have incurable cancer.
    I’m at the age where I and my circle of friends are being confronted by doctors who have a definite idea about what should be done and don’t want us to dawdle. I’m increasingly concerned by this.

    4
  3. Beth Avatar
    Beth

    @Flat Earth Luddite:

    Twinks rule!

    2
  4. Gustopher Avatar
    Gustopher

    I don’t think the metaphor works because there are so many truly horrible things that the cancer could represent.

    Is the cancer Climate Change, Authoritarianism, Pandemic Preparedness, or the White Genocide caused by low birth rates and interracial relations*?

    I can see reasonable people each placing one of the first three as their critical issue which everything else is a distraction from, and horrible racists calling that last one the critical issue. And there are lots of others.

    And a lot of them are intertwined — Authoritarianism doesn’t matter if we make the Earth uninhabitable, but we aren’t going to address Climate Change with this bunch of Authoritarians, but if we wipe out half the population because of bird flu, we might make a lot of progress towards Climate Change and create space for the inevitable Climate Change Refugees.

    (And, I guess those refugees will often be brown, and start marrying White People, if we want to tie in the fourth, so we really need to be mitigating the effects of Climate Change in the brown countries to avoid refugee problems)

    *: I miss Superdestroyer. I know that “saying the quiet part out loud” is pretty much a cliche at this point, and that frankly we would rather they just shut up half the time, but his earnestness and honesty really haven’t been seen on the right in ages. And he always wrote in good faith. Make no mistake, he was awful, but I think we’ve found other types of awful that are worse.

    There’s a phrase I’ve seen a lot online recently — “I’d rather you just call me a slur.” Superdestroyer would honor that request, and I appreciate that.

    3
  5. Flat Earth Luddite Avatar
    Flat Earth Luddite

    @Slugger:

    While I understand the need to stop and process the unthinkable, I view this one as more of a biblical- ish allegory.

    I read this as a commentary on the cancer infecting the body politic and/or the soul of our nation.

    I come from background in hard science, with 30 years spent in the legal arena, where logic and reasoning were necessary facets used daily.

    ETA

    I also sat in my hospital bed, listening to the doctor explaining that I had Stage IV colorectal cancer, and would likely be dead in a year, maybe two. Covering my ears and humming wasn’t an option. But I really really do understand that desire, believe me, I get it.

    3
  6. gVOR10 Avatar
    gVOR10

    I’ve been driving all day. I glanced at this earlier and thought it to be a reference to our current situation and the crap state of the discourse, meaning the all too common whataboutism and the stream of irrelevancies. On revisiting it I see it’s more specific to OTB, the whataboutism, irrelevancies, and refusal to state any positive argument of his own that flow from one of our recent “friends”.

    I really wish people would realize he has no intention, or ability, to seriously engage. Every time you respond, with no matter how compelling an argument, clever a bon mot, or cutting personal insult, he chalks up a point for himself in his little game. He got you to bite and disrupt the thread one more time.

    7
  7. Steven L. Taylor Avatar
    Steven L. Taylor

    @gVOR10: It was inspired by one of the commenters, yes.

    It was really about the propensity of several commenters (including a banned one) and a lot of people outside of OTB who want to talk exclusively about Biden’s age rather than, you know, what is going on in the WH right now.

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