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Sep 13, 2021Liked by The Coop Scoop

Sleepwalking into the Abyss? I don't see a single Democrat "sleepwalking". All I know are as frustrated and vocal as you are at the ineffectuality of both Biden and Harris and the growing unrest in the country. I am a retired general surgeon who has lectured on infection prevention professionally. I am amazed as you are that so many Republican Trump supporters are so vehemently anti-vax and anti-mask. I think they will eventually learn the hard way that demanding the freedom to wear or not wear a mask or be vaccinated or not vaccinated is not a call to not be vaccinated or to not wear a mask when it is OBVIOUSLY a good ideal based on sound evidence to do so. Both the left and the right seem to be failing to get this nuanced message from Fox News and many Republican leaders. I think many of the "Stand up for freedom" anti-vax and anti-mask extremists will have to learn the hard way by getting the COVID delta variant and either dying or becoming significantly less well for many years. BUT how can you call the debacle in Afghanistan and the unchecked flood of immigrants through our southern border or defunding the police matters that lack substance or legitimacy? How can you call stacking the court and getting rid of the filibuster or the electoral college anti-democratic, when they have saved America from extremist movements and disastrous policies from both the right and the left throughout our history? Just because they are blocking some policies that are much loved by the Democratic party for the time-being, doesn't mean that a NAZI-like movement is going to sweep through our country. I have deep respect for CONSTITUTIONAL LAW and the enforcement of laws passed by representatives of the people--republicanism, not strict democracy. Encouraging entrepreneurship, enforcing commonsense laws, increasing police-presence in high crime areas where gangs rule the streets is not a call for NAZIism but for common sense that PROMOTES THE GENERAL WELFARE. Yes, mindless thugs ripping masks of children are scary, but what has happened in America and around the world since Biden took office, to me is far scarier. I voted for Obama and Hilary but for Trump in the last election, not because I liked his swearing and brash condemnation of those who opposed him, but because I observed that virtually everything he set out to do and accomplished promoted constitutional principles and what I believe was sound fiscal policy and sensible foreign and domestic policy. As a physician who graduated from medical school in California in 1975, I was much pleased with the promotion of "evidence-based medicine" and "outcome research". Since my retirement, I do medical research on the metabolic problems of severely obese women and was part of a team of physicians who successfully demonstrated that gastric bypass dramatically improved the health outcomes for the vast majority of those who met the criteria for undergoing the surgery. I also worked closely with physicians who were pioneering the implementation of continuous quality improvement in medicine through the application of methods of trend analysis pioneered by C. Edwards Deming. The rise in crime across the country, the failures in Afghanistan, the rising threat of a Chinese take over of Taiwan, the empowerment of Radical Islamic, anti-West, and anti-Israeli movements and states, the rise of uncontrolled immigration, the growing lack of respect for freedom of speech and civility fueled by political bias and intolerance, and many other problems is evidence from my point of view that the democratic party has lost its way and needs to lose it strangle hold on our federal government.

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