the doctor is inutile

Post #406,855 by rcareaga 12/9/15 9:16:22 PM 12/10/15 12:01:24 AM Reply	the doctor is inutile If I may have recourse to yet another analogy, and keeping in mind that metaphors are by their nature inexact, you and I are like two clinicians who, having arrived at approximately the same diagnosis (that the Republic is afflicted with a wasting disease—let's call it late stage metastatic capitalism), have very different ideas about how treatment should proceed. You believe that changes in diet and lifestyle, coupled with a regimen of Sanderselectin®, which has shown early promise in clinical trials in New England, will arrest or even reverse the progress of the disease. For my own part, while I'm willing to consider Sanderselectin®, and would be tickled if it worked, the drug may not be available, or the patient might prove unresponsive, and in that case I am inclined to recommend recourse to conventional chemotherapy, which you regard as poison. Thus far, these are questions on which reasonable men may reasonably disagree. When, however, you insist that rather than chemotherapy and/or palliative care, you want to go straight for assisted suicide, we must irrevocably part company. cordially, Edit: Better pharma Edited by rcareaga Dec. 10, 2015, 12:01:24 AM EST Expand All History
Post #406,858 by Another Scott 12/9/15 11:04:15 PM Reply	+1
Post #406,868 by mmoffitt 12/10/15 8:19:28 AM Reply	That is a fair, accurate, objective assessment of our situation. Thank you.
Post #406,872 by malraux 12/10/15 10:24:52 AM Reply	+1 metoo Nicely put. Bag of nitrogen over the head seem premature, to say the least, when we haven't exhausted all other means, particularly when no one can be sure of the afterlife situation. Meeting you all in the bardo might be fun and interesting, but there's a significant chance that we'd be hobnobbing with Faust instead. Regards, -scott Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson.
Post #406,974 by TB D 12/14/15 5:17:16 PM Reply	Watched a doc on netflix on WF Buckley/Gore Vidal debates on abc in 1968 last night More evidence that nothing really changes. Both men were utterly convinced that adoption of the other's ideas would be the end of the republic. The most striking thing, however, was the level of discourse - stratospheric in sophistication compared to our low brow sound bites and FUD. Buckley was fun - despite being a worrisome stick in the mud in viewpoint. Vidal somewhat less cutting but I tended to much prefer his points. And in the end...left was left and right was right and nothing much was settled although a good time was had by all.
Post #406,980 by rcareaga 12/14/15 10:01:27 PM Reply	Indeed Who among us—those of us old enough to remember—could forget that elevated debate, the civilized thrust and parry, the witty banter? “Now listen, you queer, stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I’ll sock you in the goddam face and you’ll stay plastered.” I tell you, it was like Athens under Pericles. nostalgically,
Post #407,005 by Ashton 12/16/15 2:21:29 AM Reply	Quite so, more like "God and (a) Man with Ale" than that other title Were they not both a tad squiffy?
Post #407,008 by mmoffitt 12/16/15 1:28:50 PM Reply	It was the beginning of the end. ABC’s grand experiment with Buckley and Vidal didn’t so much result in worse discussion as it resulted in more discussion, because it revealed discussion to be something greater than its content. First, their debates revealed televised discussion to be, first and foremost, a form of television, and thereby induced executives to expand the formal boundaries of news broadcasting. Second, their debates revealed televised discussion to be a media event in a very peculiar and particular sense: an event that existed more for the benefit of other media people, for journalists and commentators, than for the general public. The clashes come off as an event that entered the echo chamber of the punditocracy, that piqued the interest and won the acclaim of journalists and commentators, who themselves defined its import and impact by the very fact of their noticing. It was mass media for an insider audience, intended to create not first-order popularity but buzz. That’s its distinctive post-modernity, and its enduring claim on attention. http://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/buckley-vidal-and-the-birth-of-buzz

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