USA care for the elderly shamefully inadequate (yet again)

I've remarked a couple of times (or maybe two hundred times) that the help provided to the elderly in the USA is woefully inadequate.

Here's a story about a country where that's not true---the Netherlands.  What's wrong with the USA?  Why can't the USA manage to take care of its elderly?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle

Growing old is difficult.  However, it is possible for a country/society to help.  Where you live makes a .....and the universal problem can be ameliorated.  The difference between what my parents face and what is described in the linked article is simply enormous!

Offensive to religion?

Revised and corrected Thursday 30 August 2012.

I'm halfway through reading an article in Slovak about "Pussy-Riot"....

I am by no means perfectly competent as a reader of Slovak, however, my impression is that the author is mainly complaining that PR is vulgar.

Hmmmm.

What is vulgarity?  How about remote-controlled air gunships controlled by Obama--gunships which murder innocent people?

Anyway, that's not my main point just now.

Religion?

So, it seems this big (showy,  maybe vulgar?) cathedral in which PR recently put on a sort of show was dedicated to the defeat of Napoleon......

Well, that's what I want---just for a moment----to think about.  and I want to say that this showy cathedral is an insult to religion.  No, I'm not religious---I am an atheist---- but if you think religion shouldn't be a mere commercial transaction.....bartering....then you might wonder whether that cathedral represents the best of religion.

Let's back up.  People in Russia fought, and died, and suffered in order to keep out a foreign invasion.
The French were successfully driven out.---And, a cathedral was built to thank a non-existent being.--But, put the non-existence of god to one side:  How about the soldiers?  Did they get pensions or medical care?  What thanks did they get? And, I hasten to add, non-soldiers must have suffered too.

But, consider this:  Plato's "Euthyphro"............Socrates has a conversation with an expert in religion.

Socrates seems to think that offering sacrifices is not the essence of piety......In other words, religion is not about bartering with the gods, not a commercial relationship. ( --And, if not that, what might it be?)

So, I guess that the creators of the great flashy cathedral in Russia either never read Plato's "Euthyphro", or they disagreed with it.......

Socrates was, as you know, regarded as offensive in his day.....in fact, offensive to religion.

Incidentally, there's some evidence that Socrates himself thought that you cannot be pious without being just........And, I doubt whether building a showy cathedral has much to do with justice.......But justice would mean, let's say, providing adequate pensions, medical care....and not just for retired soldiers.......Justice would not mean a system in which some people lived with comforts and privileges unknown to the majority.  Justice would mean no separate ruling class......

(And, you may ask:  If I'm relying upon Platonic texts, how can I say that?  In brief, the superiority of the ruling class in Plato's "Republic" depended upon two claims which I reject:  first, that there is an irrational part of the soul, and secondly that only a small group of people could understand how things really work.  My view at present is that the notion of an irrational source of motivation won't do the work Plato wants it to do and that no one understands how things really work.  No one is qualified to be a "philosopher-king".)  As for the so-called "unity of virtue"  (justice=piety=courage=temperance),  I think it's pretty plausible.  (Have I given you an argument?  No!  But I'm impressed by work in the psychology of emotion which sees a tough interconnection between various emotions.  And how can emotions fit with so-called "Socratic intellectualism"?  Actually, I'm thinking about that and have no definite views of yet.)

bad,naive linguistics

I would like to know how much of the actual speech of citizens of the USA is derived from advertising, marketing, and all that bullshit.

Among the members of my family, there seems to be a stubborn adherence to marketing categories.
A certain food is "artisanal" ( )-:  )  because that's what it says on the package.  A car is "medium sized" (even if a monstrosity_)because that's what the manufacturer says.

The principle applies in the political realm as well.......

Hell Now Comes in Many Colors, 
and the Marketing Mercenaries of Capitalism Want You to Know It!

The project of taking my mother and father to visit a doctor is unpleasant.

Both mother and father need walkers.  A walker does not go easily into my parents’ car.  It must be first dis-assembled---which is itself a slightly awkward task.  The buttons on either side of the walker’s small grab bar do not move smoothly, and one has got to simultaneously depress both. Then, once I have placed one walker with its two removable parts in the trunk, I have to squeeze the other into the back seat of my parents/ car.  The car is parked within a structure which my parents refer to as their “car port”.  (Not a garage, but still a help in protecting the car from local weather.) ((Note about local weather.  The brutality of the local weather is easily proved.  The sun and wind are not friendly.  A sign I placed outside the fence to guide the mail carriers to the mail box (not visible from the street) quickly became battered and torn from wind and sun.  The stiff blue index card no longer had its stiffness undamaged and its color had faded to a much less lively shade.  So, too, after three years the stiff plastic sign warning away solicitors now appears to have been chewed by a predator.))

At any rate, I must maneuver between the car and the protective fence in an area of perhaps one and a half feet in width, while holding the collapsed walker.  The wires for the brakes can now get trapped on anything that protrudes, necessitating further maneuvers upwards.  On a bad day, I drop the damn thing and bad words issue from my mouth.
Once fitted inside the car, the walker must again be persuaded to fit neatly, or if not neatly, so as to allow me to close the door.

Once we arrive at the parking lot for the “medical building”, there may or may not be parking in the handicapped region.    The building may or may not have a door friendly to handicapped.  Curiously, I seem to remember that in Slovakia, handicapped doors were common.  That might have been a flawed memory.  I didn’t travel the land with two aged relatives.  However, handicapped doors in that country featured a very large button, which, if pressed, opened the door.   I have seen only one similarly friendly button in El Paso, Texas----and between the two of them my parents visit eight or nine doctors on a regular basis.
Inside the buildings, the elevators pose a special danger.  The doors are operated by a powerful mechanism and the threat of being trapped between them is a real enough danger for the frail elderly.  Having summoned an elevator, I’ve got to rush inside and find the “doors open” button, depress it, and encourage my parents to enter the elevator.

The entire process is complicated by a bizarre hurriedness that seems to infect my father’s brain.  I’ve got to coach him, and persuade him not to race against my mother.  It is as if having a walker were a sort of license to ignore the rules of the road and to depress the accelerator.

Once inside the doctors’ office, further pleasures await us.

Of course, once we arrive at the doctor’s office, there is the obligatory obnoxious television.  CNN and Fox News are bad enough, but I am horrified to notice that channels purporting to provide history or science information are cluttered with garbage.  I pray that I should never again read or meet or hear one of those science populizers whose every other word is “fascinating”, “surprising”, or any other of that dozen words which tell us that the speaker deserves our attention, even when the subject matter is not really explained or illustrated, but only trumpeted.

It is not unusual to wait for two hours.  It can happen that we wait longer.  It can also happen that our wait is brief, but that is relatively uncommon.  Doctors don’t apologize for making us wait; that is, of course, one sign of the entrenched nature of hierarchy and submission in this land of the unfree.

As it happens, last Friday the doctor was relatively pleasant and cheerful----very different from another man recently described.  Yet, the framing of our brief meeting with him was a variety of unpleasant incidents.

Worst of all, once we arrived home, we were met by a Nurse requiring a signature.  Negotiations followed.  The company which is paid by Medicare to supply help for my father is greedy.  Of course, the nurse blames Medicare.  Sorry, I don't believe her.  I know all about these companies.  I experienced their ruthless mercenary nature when I was a language teacher.  Those who do the actual work get a small share of the plunder.  That's the way it is with Language Schools (or, as they say in Austria, "Institutes"....(sorry while I turn aside to barf....)).  Those who do the actual work get a pittance.

What's that I hear?  You say it's the same with the CEO of any company in the English-speaking world?  Let's not get in to that now.  Let's just say that the devil never sleeps.

A very unpleasant day

(Typos due to late night use of IPad have now been corrected.) Infelicities or awkwardness of layout due to the primitive nature of IPads have not been corrected. Nor have I yet gained such enlightenment as to guarantee that I 've made no mistakes---substantial or incidental.... //////////// After waiting for nearly two hours, we were shown in to the doctor's office. The man is peculiarly arrogant in a sort of show- off way. He doen't mind telling you how great he is. But, as I think of it, one characteristic of good explainers is that they can operate on several levels at once. Knowing the technical details, they are able to move out of technical vocabulary and work with images or analogies----at the same time they recognize the extent to which their images or anologies are not wholly accurate. ( I complained recently on this blog about a nurse who had a bad anaology to explain memory phenomenon without seeming to realize the weaknesses of her image.) This guy has no such ability to explain, nor I think does any doctor I have ever met. (But,it's also true that I've not had excessive commerce with these businessmen in the health business.....((Apology to my Slovak GP; I don't recall that he was so bad as most of what I've seen here.....)//////////// But what I want to write about is the subtle way in which this arrogant fellow manages to disrespect his patients, at the same time promoting an image/ persona of the knowing professional. //////////////////////// Now I do credit the fellow with, on some level, good intentions, and I am sure that between he and me there is a tremendous cultural gulf. I believe that the pragmatic conventions of his native Spanish must be very different from those of my East- coast accented English. I know no other way to explain how it is that on occasions when I have tried to communicate clearly, his response was silence or the equivalent of a trolley missing a turn. He must maintain a certain superiority which seems to rule out too careful explanation or re- examination of anything he has said. He is rather like a machine which can express some general principles--- good ones, too---- but if you try to understand how a particular judgment was reached, then you get only silence and a blank stare.///////////////////////// Which is all bizarre because the lavish expenditure of time on individual patients is not having the desired effect--- it is not clarifying, but only obfuscating and tiring. /////////////////// But the man had a rather disturbing conversation with my mother about Vitamin C. His language was subtley condescending, or even disrespectful, and my attempt to help my mother out met with silence--- as if I had not spoken at all. /////////////// What I did not say, but evidently would have liked to: "Well look, you asshole, if you are giving us extra time to speak, it is only good manners to repond to what we are saying,,,,,"]/////////////////////////// My cynical side says the guy wants to allow patients generous time so as to say something Herr Doktor deems stupid....and that will give him the satisfaction of knowing his patients are idiots.....to be continued...../////////////////// Why, he asked my mother, have you refused to follow my recommendation that you take so much Vitamin C? My mother explained that when she drinks water before bedtime---which she would have to do if she were to take the recommended dosage---she wakes up wet....//////////////////////// to which his response was to assert, blandly, that Vitamin C is not a diuretic.////// Well, my friend, no one ever said it was! But,note well, as he said that fact, he managed to convey the suggestion that my mother was uninformed, confused....////// thus do the arrogant insult us without using "bad" or taboo words....... ///////Post-script: Friday we visited a rather more cheerful, less overbearing doctor. However, he also kept us waiting two hours before we could see him. It seems to be the local version of a tax.......((Dare I say it? I am going to: When I lived in Slovakia----not the richest country in the EU-----I never had to wait two hours to see a doctor........) ----Well, no, maybe once I did wait--- but I did not have a definite appointment....so, still unlike the USA.......

Hard work?

Any man who tells me, "I 've worked hard in my life...there were ten and twelve hour days....times when I worked weekends..,,". does not impress or convince me. Nor does he gain my sympathy or respect until I get an answer to a further question, " And did you buy the groceries, do the cooking and washing up? And, when you were working so 'hard' did you do your own laundry? And did you ever care for children or aged relatives while you were working so 'hard'? And, if the answer is: "I did none of those things.", then I say to this "hard- working" man that he has never worked hard, and doesn't know what hard work is until he works long hours and does his own shopping, and cooking, etc.

a fallacy of misplaced trust in what one remembers

"Oh, I don't need to read about events during those days. I lived them..."

You did? ---Or is most of what you remember what you saw on TV or read in newspapers?

And if you live in the USA, in all probability your TV and newspapers were full of propaganda...

Recommended Reading:

Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman;  After the Cataclysm; Postwar Indochina and The Reconstruction of Imperial Ideology, South End Press:  Boston, 1979