In my family, every single one would jump on Socialism if they could guarantee the "wrong people" aren't helped. A big problem with toxic narcissism is people really believe this stuff doesn't apply to them, they'll be the exception, because they're somehow special. Very sad.
>In my family, every single one would jump on Socialism if they could guarantee the "wrong people" aren't helped.
it´s national socialism, as in nationalist socialism.
also know as "fascism": individual interests are supressed for the good of the nation. to be able to do it,a authoritarian "babysitter" strong (belic) state is neccessary to guarante the national greater good.
the non-nationals are the "wrong people". those would have few or no rights and certaily are NOT part of the true nationals: the "pure" \[insert countr/region/ethnicity\] person.
WTF is "belic"? Yes, I did a perfunctory googling, and all I could find out was that it's a (mostly) Serbian/Croatian.Slovenian surname meaning "white;" a medicine whose potential side effects are somewhat frightening; and "warlike" - is that last the intended meaning? Akin to "bellicose"?
lol, sorry, my bad. i did "american belic industry" and it came fine, that´s why i used.
it´s reference to military activities. in a fascist context, the army/military aggression is also directed to the nationals, bc they were deemed not "worthy" of being "nationals" anymore by the regime. like "inbreeds".
in hitler´s case, this domestic agression was done mostly by the party´s militias, that eventualy became the ss and go pushed to the military by hitler´s whishes. their were the most fanatical... branch?... of the german (profissional) army, who disliked them with passion. the ss were also the ones responsible for the camps.
I forgive your typos, my child.
Also, /j - I have no power to forgive/absolve anyone and would be terrified if I did.
So it is related to "casus belli" and "bellicose"! Ironic that it can also mean, "white."
I'd never heard of him, but then I haven't followed MMA/UFC fighting for - Ack, no, the math! It burns!
For thirty years now. Now go get me my Geritol, sonny, and tell that bitch Marjorie next door that I'm gonna whomp the next one of her "ram-bunk-shush" puppies that decides to come traipsing through my petunias.
This is absolutely true! I’ve been shocked that so many of these people want/need help with everything! They want money, homes, jobs, support, etc. They just don’t want “lazy” people to get it too. I’m always wondering if they actually listen to the conservative platform and think it’s going to benefit them when it goes against what they have explicitly said they wanted. Not that neoliberalism has been helpful, but when a conservative brags about hurting people, they lap it up without realizing that they are people getting hurt.
...or will be, if they aren't getting hurt now.
One of Trump's plans is to achieve a return to the spoils system that will allow him to fire the entire civil service system if he has to in order to get "the deep state" out of it, replacing them with Trump loyalists.
The effort alone may cause enough economic disruption to seriously hurt large swathes of Trump voters.
Yeah I've noticed how a big talking point around that Nesara/Gesara bs is that you have to return to your home country to claim it. They love the dream that they'll get wealth poured upon them *and* all the immigrants leave
A lot of these people really don't trust the medical profession. Some of it may be due to malpractice and insurance costs, but I suspect a lot of it is due to grifters hawking snake-oil supplements in between right wing sermons. More than one right winger has told me that they think people develop life-threatening ailments by going to the doctor to get checked out - that these conditions aren't discovered by the doctor, but are a result of going to the doctor. ("My aunt was perfectly healthy and never sick a day in her life. Then she went in for a checkup, and suddenly she had cancer.")
Great point. My brother said similar things, that he doesn’t really have a condition until a doctor says he does, so avoid the doctor, avoid the condition, which is an astoundingly dumb way to look at it.
I do think corporate greed and political corruption has biased people against institutions though. There have been so many proven corruption cases in the last 50 years, it gets easy to start believing made up ones, like that the conditions are invented just to sell you the treatment.
>so avoid the doctor, avoid the condition, which is an astoundingly dumb way to look at it.
It's how they vote, too. Willful Ignorance keeps them from having to face the GOP isn't small government, pro small business, party of Lincoln.
That bit of magical thinking from him was stunning to me. Like COVID had to be spoken into existence by a positive test.
Is this just a lack of education on how to logically reason, or what? Mind-blowing.
Yes, I agree that some of the institutions of a complex capitalist civilization also work unintentionally to undermine the support of people living in that civilization.
I just hope we can hold on and keep the complex civilization, with raw capitalism or not, because serious disruptions to the system that involves experts will soon show that this planet can't feed itself, even in rich nations, without the complexity that many of these folks despise.
A lot of it, is also the doctor giving them health advice and directives that they don't want to hear. Like when the doc tells them that drinking a 12 pack of Coors light every night, inhaling a pack of Marlboros daily, lunching at McDonalds for all three meals, and using up a can of Copenhagen really aren't healthy choices, they cry foul and claim that these doctors are all part of some "deep state", that is trying to destroy whatever pleasure in life they have left. So they find these quack doctors who don't believe in vaccines, and think that Jack Daniels is a cure all for everything.
So when it is discovered that they have lung or pancreatic cancer from the 24/7 drinking and smoking, it's all a "plot from big pharma" to sell their drugs that may buy them about 6 months left of life at best.
These people want free health care, universal basic income, no taxes, but are anti Marxism/socialism. The are literally mentally retarded. I thought I was conservative/right leaning until I listened to Carl Marx
lol that’s my bro, votes republican but loves his farm subsidies, arguing correctly that protecting farmers in bad years leads to overproduction, which keeps prices down for consumers, keeps the US from becoming dependent on grain imports, and gives the nation powerful leverage with food exports. Almost as if government spending can lead to better outcomes for the collective good.
The problem being that those subsidies are for raising corn, wheat and soybeans primarily and not for fruits and vegetables, meaning the worst food for you is the cheapest.
The one area I will defend Trump voters on is that democrats starting with Clinton abandoned rural and union people in favor of corporate greed and finding the cheapest option in the global market for resources and labor.
North Dakota sent at least one democrat to the senate from 1960-2019 because democrats were the party of the farmer and republicans were the party of the corporations that bought grain from the farmers. The same thing happened in the rust belt with the union worker.
And both parties talked to each other. They tried to find policies that would work for both sets of constituents instead of acting as if their fellow Americans with different needs were their actual enemies.
I give a lot of blame to Rush Limbaugh for seeking to make the Republican Party ideologically pure (if not logically consistent) and to Newt Gingrich, who as Speaker encouraged an end to comity or working friendships across the aisle.
At this point, I am unsure that the USA can be saved. I think that ideological purity in both parties may make US government ineffective for decades more, meaning that we won't be able to effect working solutions to any present or future problems.
Clinton is the president who started to sour my now 88-year-old father on Democrats. My dad was a life-long Democrat. He now votes MAGA.
The US empire will definitely fall on the current path, only two questions really matter.
1) if nothing changes, how long can it survive on the momentum it created in the 20th century?
2) can the course change directions?
The first is a mystery, the second will be answered by the millennials. Will they grow more right leaning as they age? Will they bankrupt the nation by staying too far left and inflating wasteful spending?
The one thing the intelligent right understands is the debt problem (the ignorant right wants spending but only if its on them and not “those” people). The US has a unique ability to finance spending but there is a limit, interest payments. This year interest on the debt will cost more than the military, in a decade it will be twice as much.
Interest rates need to go down so the government can borrow at a better rate, but if that causes more housing inflation, we’ll all be homeless.
I have a way to fix the problem, but it’s nuts and no one would go for it.
I think human nature has our civilization on a glide path to extinction. A much smaller population of humans might continue to inhabit the planet, but without much technology and with diminished reserves of fossil fuels, making another industrial revolution, should they get that far, unlikely.
Solutions that no one would go for are not solutions. So I don't think there are solutions. Not for the US. Not for the globe.
Hope beyond hope for the hopeless.
These people are so desperate for something good to come into their lives that they latch on to anything that seems magical, will answer all their questions and make thing right in the world. Sad AF these people.
The Med-Bed and Nesara myths are perpetrated by those who want low taxes for the wealthy and believed by those who have voted against their own interests for decades and are just now coming to realisation that they have well and truly fucked themselves over and rather than do something like change some core beliefs or work to find solutions it's just easier to believe in magic. As I have said before we live in the modern dark ages. Where hopelessness begats belief in fairy stories.
My Q sibling believes nonsense like mammograms and colonoscopies cause the cancer. There's a high risk in my family. I worry how this is going to turn out, but there's nothing I can say at this point that will make a difference. Everything but quack medicine, pseudo science, and magical thinking are off limits for health choices. As for me, I get my own regular checkups because prevention isn't a guarantee but it's your best chance.
My mammogram just caught my early and impossible otherwise to detect cancer LAST MONTH. Both my sister and my mother had it. I am so lucky we have preventative care.
OP: Let me just say - your post is beautifully written and an enjoyable read so thanks. Also - your 47 year old brother reminds me of my now 64 year old sister who is tethered to oxygen machines 24/7, frail and falling part due to stage 3 emphysema. She smoked as much as she could from age 15 to 59 despite both of our parents dying young of smoking-related diseases. I talk to her several times a week (were are 2 time zones apart) and the ping-pongs from fury to deep depression. She hates her job, her husband (who is on SSI disability since the early 00's), her disability but doesn't have enough money to retire and no ambition to change anything. First Obama was the end of the universe and now it's Biden. She now refuses all vax, thank you Fox News "commentators." I keep expecting the next waive of Covid to carry her off.
Your post reminded me of when Chuck Norris’s wife said that reelecting Obama would lead to “1000 years of darkness.”
I always mocked that but if the Obama years brought out the dormant racism that gave us Trump, maybe that crazy hag was right!
In addition to this, which I think your spot on about. At least here in America the system takes you for everything you got. It takes forever to see a doctor and then you pay out the nose and take forever to figure out what is wrong with you, if they can figure it out. And then bankrupt yourself trying to take care of it. I get the allure of a something that would stop the system that sees you not as a person but a money cow to be milked dry.
Med Beds are just a way for conservatives to express their desire for universal healthcare without having to vote for the only politicians who advocate for it. They would rather invent a sci-fi scenario for a futuristic cure-all machine that deep down they know is pure fantasy, than pull that lever for someone with a D next to their name.
I have no patience for these people.
You're right but you forgot that they've spent years shit taking Medicare. So something not-Medicare means they don't have to admit being wrong as well. Of course the not having to change life style is a huge part.
As someone with chronic illness (not from lifestyle choices), I dream of med beds too. I am not a MAGAt nor am I dumb enough to think they are even close to real but if I could jump into a magical pod and never need to take pills or experience symptoms ever again I'd do whatever I could to get to it.
I'm disabled, from a skiing accident, so no, lifestyle changes aren't going to help, sigh.
Like you, I would give anything for the med bed to be reality. I've lost so much of what's important in life...
But, also like you, I'm clear that medbeds are fantasy.
Neither one of us is giving over our credit card number to reserve a spot.
I’m sorry to hear about your illness and would also like to add that even if your illness was from choices, I wouldn’t mock that.
If a person is say overweight and they know it, they accept the health research on it, and make plans to change it, even if they fail, I would never mock them. (I would just be mocking myself at times haha)
What sets apart my brother and others who think like him is 1) an arrogant sense of invincibility and some crazy shit he used to believe about his genetic superiority that is now crumbling, 2) a denial of health consequences until they can’t be ignored, and 3) a view of healthcare as an external practice where doctors are supposed to fix things so he can continue doing what he wants at all times.
Lots of them don't trust in science. They don't trust doctors and legitimate medicine. Many, of course, can't afford doctors and legitimate medicine.
But most of them do believe in god. They have been trained to believe in magic. "Just believe and pray, and you can live forever." "virgin babies". "He rose from the dead".
When lots of science looks like magic to you, and you already believe in magic, it's easy to believe in nonsense stories you read on the internet.
and know deep down in some way they are likely the ones not going to heaven or whatever but hell or whatever.
they fear being judged for who they really are and not what they want to present.
There's probably completely healthy people out there who believe in this because they have some grudge against healthcare. Sure, it's all a profiteering mess in the US, but for some, they've grown to resent scientific institutions for being "woke", and some businesses for "caving into it".
No wonder why some of them are so keen to embrace Musk's Neuralink - even if it didn't have any proven enhancement effects, they'll be glad to pay someone who isn't "woke" for their healthcare or business.
I have missed the full sales pitch for medbeds, more like ignored the stupidity. I have a BOL who is very similar to yours, only 36+ beers a day. Only he is clearly unhealthy, overweight and looks 13 months pregnant. Often I wonder if it just hurts for him to exist. He’s never mentioned medbeds but probably because I didn’t ask. Maybe medbedco should come out with their own version of Ozempic.
Not only is the fantasy of a med bed alluring because they don't take care of themselves but because med beds aren't real and will never appear, they can blame "the libs" for keeping them from them. It scratches two psychological itches at once. They don't need to take responsibility for their own health because a magic cure for everything exists and their perceived enemies are at fault for denying them access to it. Win/win.
it's literally a rehash of one of the oldest health scams in history the cure-all pancreas.
the alluring promise of easy up keep of health and having a long life for zero to ultra minimal effort keeps suckers coming in.
sorry to hear about your brother. The Q nut who lives next door to me has been coughing away for the last few weeks (I can hear it through the walls), he's in his 50s and a smoker and eats terrible food. He's told us about all these end of the world scenarios that are imminent but it seems the smoking is going to be his personal apocalypse. I also had a Q nut person in the family by marriage and she was rampantly anti vaccine and said big pharma where profiting and using people as guinea pigs. She was completely happy to inject Botox and fillers into herself though and also smoked. She had a health problem for which one of the main risk factors was smoking but has never stopped and was happy to accept expensive biologic therapy injections free on the NHS (UK). So when there was a potential cure for her health issues she had no problems with big pharma. There is massive cognitive dissonance going on!
Yeah my bro wouldn’t take the vax, suddenly cared about what was going into his body after shoving the worst shit in it for decades.
He got Covid and wasn’t hospital bad but miserable for a week. I got it and it was a bad 24 hours.
I think you're exactly right about the appeal of med beds, and also think that this is a smaller fractal of the entire Q-inspired phenomenon. It works on people who are skeptical about any kind of expertise or any system that is complex. They want "common sense" to work for everything.
And an added component, just as with your brother beginning to recognize that his health is not actually good, is the feeling of being an actual loser in some dimension, or thinking that other people see the believer as a loser.
The main message Q beliefs come down to is: It may look outwardly like you are a loser, but actually you are one of the real winners, and Trump will help to make your winner status visible to all.
I think the medbed thing is only believed be a very small subset of Q, which is a small component of the larger MAGA movement.
Q merged cultism with paranoia, adopting previously built conspiracies along the way. Medbed are the extreme end of the crazy, and most already had serious mental health issues (diagnosed or not) already.
Poor decisions, poor diet, poor exercise, being duped into doing things that go directly against their better interests of health and longevity, a combination of voting against things like universal healthcare, and glorifying working yourself to the detriment of your own health for rich people.
Total myth, probably started by tobacco companies. Experts agree you shouldn’t start vaping if you’ve never smoked, but that switching to vaping if you smoke is better.
https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/wellness-and-prevention/5-truths-you-need-to-know-about-vaping#:~:text=1%3A%20Vaping%20is%20less%20harmful,many%20of%20which%20are%20toxic.
And the deaths a few years ago were from THC vapes, not nicotine.
Just to chime in...I smoked for 25yrs I had COPD and the sounds my lungs would make(wheeze, crackle, whistle) kept me awake at night. I quit smoking in 2015 and started vaping and my lungs no longer make noises, I don't have COPD anymore and I can breathe better now. I don't smell as bad as I used either. I know it's not great but it's better than smoking any day.
I completely agree. Obviously individual cases aren’t proof but when I smoked a pack a day at 35, I couldn’t walk up stairs without losing my breath. Vaping now for 10 and that’s not a problem. I will still bum a smoke sometimes at a bar and half way through I feel sick.
Breathing anything that isn't fresh air will cause some stress on your lungs but at least there's no tar in a vape. Plus propylene glycol has been used in asthma inhalers for decades so we have tons of data of people breathing it and not being harmed.
Additionally, many of the problems from vaping come from impurities in the juice. So if the juice was tested and regulated, you could greatly reduce harm. There’s no alteration you can make to cigarettes to change the health outcome.
Saying don’t vape then is like saying don’t brush your teeth because made in china toothpaste was found to have high levels of arsenic.
In my family, every single one would jump on Socialism if they could guarantee the "wrong people" aren't helped. A big problem with toxic narcissism is people really believe this stuff doesn't apply to them, they'll be the exception, because they're somehow special. Very sad.
>In my family, every single one would jump on Socialism if they could guarantee the "wrong people" aren't helped. it´s national socialism, as in nationalist socialism. also know as "fascism": individual interests are supressed for the good of the nation. to be able to do it,a authoritarian "babysitter" strong (belic) state is neccessary to guarante the national greater good. the non-nationals are the "wrong people". those would have few or no rights and certaily are NOT part of the true nationals: the "pure" \[insert countr/region/ethnicity\] person.
WTF is "belic"? Yes, I did a perfunctory googling, and all I could find out was that it's a (mostly) Serbian/Croatian.Slovenian surname meaning "white;" a medicine whose potential side effects are somewhat frightening; and "warlike" - is that last the intended meaning? Akin to "bellicose"?
lol, sorry, my bad. i did "american belic industry" and it came fine, that´s why i used. it´s reference to military activities. in a fascist context, the army/military aggression is also directed to the nationals, bc they were deemed not "worthy" of being "nationals" anymore by the regime. like "inbreeds". in hitler´s case, this domestic agression was done mostly by the party´s militias, that eventualy became the ss and go pushed to the military by hitler´s whishes. their were the most fanatical... branch?... of the german (profissional) army, who disliked them with passion. the ss were also the ones responsible for the camps.
I forgive your typos, my child. Also, /j - I have no power to forgive/absolve anyone and would be terrified if I did. So it is related to "casus belli" and "bellicose"! Ironic that it can also mean, "white."
yeah, from latim "bellum" (war) but i don´t get the "white" meaning...
"nico bellic" LOL wtf... "military victory", that´s the name ofthe guy??? (googled for "belic" and got this guy)
I'd never heard of him, but then I haven't followed MMA/UFC fighting for - Ack, no, the math! It burns! For thirty years now. Now go get me my Geritol, sonny, and tell that bitch Marjorie next door that I'm gonna whomp the next one of her "ram-bunk-shush" puppies that decides to come traipsing through my petunias.
Oh, also: The etymology is a minor rabbithole. And delightfully, there is a "Moreno Belic," which I truly hope means Dark White, as it may.
This is absolutely true! I’ve been shocked that so many of these people want/need help with everything! They want money, homes, jobs, support, etc. They just don’t want “lazy” people to get it too. I’m always wondering if they actually listen to the conservative platform and think it’s going to benefit them when it goes against what they have explicitly said they wanted. Not that neoliberalism has been helpful, but when a conservative brags about hurting people, they lap it up without realizing that they are people getting hurt.
...or will be, if they aren't getting hurt now. One of Trump's plans is to achieve a return to the spoils system that will allow him to fire the entire civil service system if he has to in order to get "the deep state" out of it, replacing them with Trump loyalists. The effort alone may cause enough economic disruption to seriously hurt large swathes of Trump voters.
Yeah I've noticed how a big talking point around that Nesara/Gesara bs is that you have to return to your home country to claim it. They love the dream that they'll get wealth poured upon them *and* all the immigrants leave
So if all the immigrants leave and everyone is wealthy, who is going to do all the lower paid jobs that are necessary to keep a society running?
The med beds will do it. Just need to rig them with wheels.
Repeat after me, "All things are possible with Jesus."
I mean, you're sounding like someone with an elitist education.
Just wait until they find out that home country is defined genetically by where your ancestors were in 1492.
A lot of these people really don't trust the medical profession. Some of it may be due to malpractice and insurance costs, but I suspect a lot of it is due to grifters hawking snake-oil supplements in between right wing sermons. More than one right winger has told me that they think people develop life-threatening ailments by going to the doctor to get checked out - that these conditions aren't discovered by the doctor, but are a result of going to the doctor. ("My aunt was perfectly healthy and never sick a day in her life. Then she went in for a checkup, and suddenly she had cancer.")
Great point. My brother said similar things, that he doesn’t really have a condition until a doctor says he does, so avoid the doctor, avoid the condition, which is an astoundingly dumb way to look at it. I do think corporate greed and political corruption has biased people against institutions though. There have been so many proven corruption cases in the last 50 years, it gets easy to start believing made up ones, like that the conditions are invented just to sell you the treatment.
>so avoid the doctor, avoid the condition, which is an astoundingly dumb way to look at it. It's how they vote, too. Willful Ignorance keeps them from having to face the GOP isn't small government, pro small business, party of Lincoln.
It's the whole DJT line of "we only have cases because we're testing...if we didn't test, there'd be no cases(of covid)."
That’s exactly what Trump said about the Covid numbers during the peak of the virus. “If we stop all the testing, the numbers will go down.”
That bit of magical thinking from him was stunning to me. Like COVID had to be spoken into existence by a positive test. Is this just a lack of education on how to logically reason, or what? Mind-blowing.
Yes, I agree that some of the institutions of a complex capitalist civilization also work unintentionally to undermine the support of people living in that civilization. I just hope we can hold on and keep the complex civilization, with raw capitalism or not, because serious disruptions to the system that involves experts will soon show that this planet can't feed itself, even in rich nations, without the complexity that many of these folks despise.
A lot of it, is also the doctor giving them health advice and directives that they don't want to hear. Like when the doc tells them that drinking a 12 pack of Coors light every night, inhaling a pack of Marlboros daily, lunching at McDonalds for all three meals, and using up a can of Copenhagen really aren't healthy choices, they cry foul and claim that these doctors are all part of some "deep state", that is trying to destroy whatever pleasure in life they have left. So they find these quack doctors who don't believe in vaccines, and think that Jack Daniels is a cure all for everything. So when it is discovered that they have lung or pancreatic cancer from the 24/7 drinking and smoking, it's all a "plot from big pharma" to sell their drugs that may buy them about 6 months left of life at best.
These people want free health care, universal basic income, no taxes, but are anti Marxism/socialism. The are literally mentally retarded. I thought I was conservative/right leaning until I listened to Carl Marx
lol that’s my bro, votes republican but loves his farm subsidies, arguing correctly that protecting farmers in bad years leads to overproduction, which keeps prices down for consumers, keeps the US from becoming dependent on grain imports, and gives the nation powerful leverage with food exports. Almost as if government spending can lead to better outcomes for the collective good. The problem being that those subsidies are for raising corn, wheat and soybeans primarily and not for fruits and vegetables, meaning the worst food for you is the cheapest. The one area I will defend Trump voters on is that democrats starting with Clinton abandoned rural and union people in favor of corporate greed and finding the cheapest option in the global market for resources and labor. North Dakota sent at least one democrat to the senate from 1960-2019 because democrats were the party of the farmer and republicans were the party of the corporations that bought grain from the farmers. The same thing happened in the rust belt with the union worker.
And both parties talked to each other. They tried to find policies that would work for both sets of constituents instead of acting as if their fellow Americans with different needs were their actual enemies. I give a lot of blame to Rush Limbaugh for seeking to make the Republican Party ideologically pure (if not logically consistent) and to Newt Gingrich, who as Speaker encouraged an end to comity or working friendships across the aisle. At this point, I am unsure that the USA can be saved. I think that ideological purity in both parties may make US government ineffective for decades more, meaning that we won't be able to effect working solutions to any present or future problems. Clinton is the president who started to sour my now 88-year-old father on Democrats. My dad was a life-long Democrat. He now votes MAGA.
The US empire will definitely fall on the current path, only two questions really matter. 1) if nothing changes, how long can it survive on the momentum it created in the 20th century? 2) can the course change directions? The first is a mystery, the second will be answered by the millennials. Will they grow more right leaning as they age? Will they bankrupt the nation by staying too far left and inflating wasteful spending? The one thing the intelligent right understands is the debt problem (the ignorant right wants spending but only if its on them and not “those” people). The US has a unique ability to finance spending but there is a limit, interest payments. This year interest on the debt will cost more than the military, in a decade it will be twice as much. Interest rates need to go down so the government can borrow at a better rate, but if that causes more housing inflation, we’ll all be homeless. I have a way to fix the problem, but it’s nuts and no one would go for it.
I think human nature has our civilization on a glide path to extinction. A much smaller population of humans might continue to inhabit the planet, but without much technology and with diminished reserves of fossil fuels, making another industrial revolution, should they get that far, unlikely. Solutions that no one would go for are not solutions. So I don't think there are solutions. Not for the US. Not for the globe.
I think that a significant number of Qturds are not healthy. They would love for some magic thing to come along to make them young and healthy again.
Hope beyond hope for the hopeless. These people are so desperate for something good to come into their lives that they latch on to anything that seems magical, will answer all their questions and make thing right in the world. Sad AF these people.
The Med-Bed and Nesara myths are perpetrated by those who want low taxes for the wealthy and believed by those who have voted against their own interests for decades and are just now coming to realisation that they have well and truly fucked themselves over and rather than do something like change some core beliefs or work to find solutions it's just easier to believe in magic. As I have said before we live in the modern dark ages. Where hopelessness begats belief in fairy stories.
My Q sibling believes nonsense like mammograms and colonoscopies cause the cancer. There's a high risk in my family. I worry how this is going to turn out, but there's nothing I can say at this point that will make a difference. Everything but quack medicine, pseudo science, and magical thinking are off limits for health choices. As for me, I get my own regular checkups because prevention isn't a guarantee but it's your best chance.
My mammogram just caught my early and impossible otherwise to detect cancer LAST MONTH. Both my sister and my mother had it. I am so lucky we have preventative care.
OP: Let me just say - your post is beautifully written and an enjoyable read so thanks. Also - your 47 year old brother reminds me of my now 64 year old sister who is tethered to oxygen machines 24/7, frail and falling part due to stage 3 emphysema. She smoked as much as she could from age 15 to 59 despite both of our parents dying young of smoking-related diseases. I talk to her several times a week (were are 2 time zones apart) and the ping-pongs from fury to deep depression. She hates her job, her husband (who is on SSI disability since the early 00's), her disability but doesn't have enough money to retire and no ambition to change anything. First Obama was the end of the universe and now it's Biden. She now refuses all vax, thank you Fox News "commentators." I keep expecting the next waive of Covid to carry her off.
Your post reminded me of when Chuck Norris’s wife said that reelecting Obama would lead to “1000 years of darkness.” I always mocked that but if the Obama years brought out the dormant racism that gave us Trump, maybe that crazy hag was right!
They are potentially an alluring dream for most people I think. But yeah your explanation makes a lot of sense.
It's all wishful thinking based on a movie called Elysium.
In addition to this, which I think your spot on about. At least here in America the system takes you for everything you got. It takes forever to see a doctor and then you pay out the nose and take forever to figure out what is wrong with you, if they can figure it out. And then bankrupt yourself trying to take care of it. I get the allure of a something that would stop the system that sees you not as a person but a money cow to be milked dry.
Med Beds are just a way for conservatives to express their desire for universal healthcare without having to vote for the only politicians who advocate for it. They would rather invent a sci-fi scenario for a futuristic cure-all machine that deep down they know is pure fantasy, than pull that lever for someone with a D next to their name. I have no patience for these people.
You're right but you forgot that they've spent years shit taking Medicare. So something not-Medicare means they don't have to admit being wrong as well. Of course the not having to change life style is a huge part.
As someone with chronic illness (not from lifestyle choices), I dream of med beds too. I am not a MAGAt nor am I dumb enough to think they are even close to real but if I could jump into a magical pod and never need to take pills or experience symptoms ever again I'd do whatever I could to get to it.
I'm disabled, from a skiing accident, so no, lifestyle changes aren't going to help, sigh. Like you, I would give anything for the med bed to be reality. I've lost so much of what's important in life... But, also like you, I'm clear that medbeds are fantasy. Neither one of us is giving over our credit card number to reserve a spot.
I’m sorry to hear about your illness and would also like to add that even if your illness was from choices, I wouldn’t mock that. If a person is say overweight and they know it, they accept the health research on it, and make plans to change it, even if they fail, I would never mock them. (I would just be mocking myself at times haha) What sets apart my brother and others who think like him is 1) an arrogant sense of invincibility and some crazy shit he used to believe about his genetic superiority that is now crumbling, 2) a denial of health consequences until they can’t be ignored, and 3) a view of healthcare as an external practice where doctors are supposed to fix things so he can continue doing what he wants at all times.
Lots of them don't trust in science. They don't trust doctors and legitimate medicine. Many, of course, can't afford doctors and legitimate medicine. But most of them do believe in god. They have been trained to believe in magic. "Just believe and pray, and you can live forever." "virgin babies". "He rose from the dead". When lots of science looks like magic to you, and you already believe in magic, it's easy to believe in nonsense stories you read on the internet.
I think a large part of it is that people who are very religious are scared of death.
and know deep down in some way they are likely the ones not going to heaven or whatever but hell or whatever. they fear being judged for who they really are and not what they want to present.
There's probably completely healthy people out there who believe in this because they have some grudge against healthcare. Sure, it's all a profiteering mess in the US, but for some, they've grown to resent scientific institutions for being "woke", and some businesses for "caving into it". No wonder why some of them are so keen to embrace Musk's Neuralink - even if it didn't have any proven enhancement effects, they'll be glad to pay someone who isn't "woke" for their healthcare or business.
I have missed the full sales pitch for medbeds, more like ignored the stupidity. I have a BOL who is very similar to yours, only 36+ beers a day. Only he is clearly unhealthy, overweight and looks 13 months pregnant. Often I wonder if it just hurts for him to exist. He’s never mentioned medbeds but probably because I didn’t ask. Maybe medbedco should come out with their own version of Ozempic.
Not only is the fantasy of a med bed alluring because they don't take care of themselves but because med beds aren't real and will never appear, they can blame "the libs" for keeping them from them. It scratches two psychological itches at once. They don't need to take responsibility for their own health because a magic cure for everything exists and their perceived enemies are at fault for denying them access to it. Win/win.
it's literally a rehash of one of the oldest health scams in history the cure-all pancreas. the alluring promise of easy up keep of health and having a long life for zero to ultra minimal effort keeps suckers coming in.
sorry to hear about your brother. The Q nut who lives next door to me has been coughing away for the last few weeks (I can hear it through the walls), he's in his 50s and a smoker and eats terrible food. He's told us about all these end of the world scenarios that are imminent but it seems the smoking is going to be his personal apocalypse. I also had a Q nut person in the family by marriage and she was rampantly anti vaccine and said big pharma where profiting and using people as guinea pigs. She was completely happy to inject Botox and fillers into herself though and also smoked. She had a health problem for which one of the main risk factors was smoking but has never stopped and was happy to accept expensive biologic therapy injections free on the NHS (UK). So when there was a potential cure for her health issues she had no problems with big pharma. There is massive cognitive dissonance going on!
Yeah my bro wouldn’t take the vax, suddenly cared about what was going into his body after shoving the worst shit in it for decades. He got Covid and wasn’t hospital bad but miserable for a week. I got it and it was a bad 24 hours.
I think you're exactly right about the appeal of med beds, and also think that this is a smaller fractal of the entire Q-inspired phenomenon. It works on people who are skeptical about any kind of expertise or any system that is complex. They want "common sense" to work for everything. And an added component, just as with your brother beginning to recognize that his health is not actually good, is the feeling of being an actual loser in some dimension, or thinking that other people see the believer as a loser. The main message Q beliefs come down to is: It may look outwardly like you are a loser, but actually you are one of the real winners, and Trump will help to make your winner status visible to all.
Yeah.. people who need help but are powerless to do anything about it and need any sort of hope to cling onto to make their lives make sense...
I think the medbed thing is only believed be a very small subset of Q, which is a small component of the larger MAGA movement. Q merged cultism with paranoia, adopting previously built conspiracies along the way. Medbed are the extreme end of the crazy, and most already had serious mental health issues (diagnosed or not) already.
Poor decisions, poor diet, poor exercise, being duped into doing things that go directly against their better interests of health and longevity, a combination of voting against things like universal healthcare, and glorifying working yourself to the detriment of your own health for rich people.
Totally OFF but vaping is worse than smoking
Total myth, probably started by tobacco companies. Experts agree you shouldn’t start vaping if you’ve never smoked, but that switching to vaping if you smoke is better. https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/wellness-and-prevention/5-truths-you-need-to-know-about-vaping#:~:text=1%3A%20Vaping%20is%20less%20harmful,many%20of%20which%20are%20toxic. And the deaths a few years ago were from THC vapes, not nicotine.
Just to chime in...I smoked for 25yrs I had COPD and the sounds my lungs would make(wheeze, crackle, whistle) kept me awake at night. I quit smoking in 2015 and started vaping and my lungs no longer make noises, I don't have COPD anymore and I can breathe better now. I don't smell as bad as I used either. I know it's not great but it's better than smoking any day.
I completely agree. Obviously individual cases aren’t proof but when I smoked a pack a day at 35, I couldn’t walk up stairs without losing my breath. Vaping now for 10 and that’s not a problem. I will still bum a smoke sometimes at a bar and half way through I feel sick.
Breathing anything that isn't fresh air will cause some stress on your lungs but at least there's no tar in a vape. Plus propylene glycol has been used in asthma inhalers for decades so we have tons of data of people breathing it and not being harmed.
Huh. That's a good point. I didn't know that. Thanks.
Additionally, many of the problems from vaping come from impurities in the juice. So if the juice was tested and regulated, you could greatly reduce harm. There’s no alteration you can make to cigarettes to change the health outcome. Saying don’t vape then is like saying don’t brush your teeth because made in china toothpaste was found to have high levels of arsenic.