If you’re reading this on Thursday morning, a surgeon is carving chunks out of my left knee. I’ll be home later today, with a big bottle of pills, so we’ll see what comes after that. I may babble incoherently in print, which means that my writing won’t change at all and you won’t notice any difference. “This man is clearly on drugs,” you’ll think, and for once I really will be.
Cliffhanger in the final sentence (goddamnit tell me how this ends!)
Sorry to hear about your knee. Hope it heals up quickly. Knee surgery is no joke. Isn't getting older grand? But I'm right there with you in your attitude to it. The purpose of life isn't staying safe and maximizing life years so you arrive at the end with the minimum number of injuries; it's doing cool shit like hiking the largest canyon this side of Mars.
About a year ago I talked to a guy hobbling around on a cane. He had no cartilage remaining in his knee, and had spent most of the last year in excruciating pain. He'd been scheduled for surgery in March 2020, which then got postponed because a bum knee wasn't the doom coof, so the medical system in its wisdom and mercy consigned him to an additional year of agony. Guy was less than thrilled about that situation, and expressed more a degree of skepticism towards the reigning narrative. Can't help but wonder if the endless months trapped at home with crippling agony as the hospital refused to treat him might have motivated him to look a little more critically at the situation than the mask cultists.
The Populists were successful enough to get their ideas adopted, in the short term. But then the Progressives, those elites who know more than the rest of us, took over. The Democrats played lip service to Populism through FDR, but then stopped even doing that.
Thomas Frank's "The People, No!" and "Lusten, Liberal!" are good works on this, from the perspective of a Democratic populist. Matt Stoller covers it in his book "Goliath" on the history of antitrust.
Professor Mark Blyth calls our current populist movement "global Trumpism". He sees this as push back against globalism and that it can be from the Left or the the Right. The elites oppose both types.
Wokeism is essentially an elite effort to defeat Populism, to stop the masses from uniting against the elites.
You might be interested in looking at a placebo study that was done regarding arthroscopic knee surgery. The gist of it was that the placebo surgery group had just as good of relief results as the real surgery group. I’m sure you could find it with a little internet searching. I think it was done at Baylor.
A total of 146 patients participated (70 received the real surgery and 76 were assigned to the sham surgery). During the fake surgery the patients were treated exactly the same as if they had the real thing without actually having their meniscus trimmed or having cartilage fragments removed. The results were astounding. The authors concluded...AND...Is Meniscus Surgery a Sham? | Lanier Law Group
Adults with severe knee pain are often told they have a meniscus tear and surgery is needed. In fact, with approximately 700,000 procedures per year, arthroscopic surgery to shave off worn or torn pieces of the meniscus is the most common orthopedic procedure performed in the United States..
BTW, 40+yrs ago, this ol'mechanic's knees,et entire body was trashed by lots of m/cycle 'mishaps' & today are in great shape due to Rolfing,osteopathic manipulation,alkaline diet,TCM,Ayuveda&supplements...the body is self healing if you make the Effort. cheers
I imagine the knee trouble is not anything like so painful as having to sit through 1:30 seconds of that 2 minute Twix commercial. I don't need to know how that one ends. I rarely eat candy anymore, Twix was one of my favs, but I will choke on it hereafter.
I could not even bring myself to watch that "trans 8year old drag queen" video you posted the other day, from the pedophiles at Elle. I can see red-pilling oneself about Covid but it is hard to imagine how one could do that after hyper-sexualizing children. Too far gone.
I once wrote a little piece about hiking into Havasupai and how we’re supposed to always be in awe of the beauty around us (Havasupai was absolutely stunning), but sometimes things are too painful to appreciate IN the moment, so we need to take pictures, notes - and other people - so we can go back in thought and appreciate the majesty of it all. I expect us to be doing that for the coming years. Just replace majesty with whatever descriptor you will.
Hope the surgery goes well. And that we get to read the ending of this at some point. Here’s to expedient and responsible healing!
I don't really know about the knee surgery part of this, but the part where you describe the earlier progressive positions on taxation and immigration are rather striking today.
Of course, this was the "Omaha Platform," as in Nebraska, which means its writers were white supremacist nativist Nazis -- and not the MSM-approved, freedom-fighter, Ukrainian kind of Nazis -- but the bad kind. And because of that, modern progressives are free to disavow these Nebraskan fascists of America's white supremacist past, people who probably never once paid Robin DiAngelo to speak at one of their hoe downs.
Yes. And the risk is this: You get a staph infection in that knee, the doctor ignores it for 5 months, despite pulling some really nasty looking fluids out of the knee several times, and despite the physical therapist writing him a letter warning him of possible infection. When you finally tell him to refer you to another surgeon, the 2nd surgeon meets you, puts his hand on the knee and says, “Yep. You’ve got an infection.” So you go back into surgery, have the knee joint removed, a spacer put in, and go on IV Vancomycin for 3 months, at which point, the 2nd surgeon repeats the surgery to remove the spacer and then again to put in a new knee joint, which, sadly, ultimately fails because the staph infection has so scarred your tissue that it turns into bone—literally. Leaving you, in the end, with a leg without a knee joint that bends, so you are disabled and lose your license to fly (did I mention you were a licensed commercial pilot?) forcing you into early retirement. When you contact an attorney, they say you can’t sue the initial surgeon because you can’t prove medical malpractice. It’s a small risk, yes. But it can happen. Because it did. Good luck.
Karl Rove's THE TRIUMPH OF WILLIAM MCKINLEY is a masterpiece in political biography. He nails the populists to Bryan's metaphorical cross of gold. Sound money is a fundamental duty of rulers - let them beware.
There is a reason the latest poll puts President Biden's Hispanic support in the toilet bowl @ 26%. Inflation destroys the poor. And the poor aren't so thick they don't know it
Having experienced a few surgeries (albeit not yet on my knees), I know the recovery phase can be pretty hard--hard enough to raise questions of why you agreed to do it. I hope that's not the case for you, but take heart. It will get better.
I admire the content and the frequency of your writings, and wish you the best.
Substack did strange things to the end of this one -- fixed now. And now I really have to go.
I'm assuming the general anaesthetic kicked in as you typed 'the'. Hope it goes well.
Cliffhanger in the final sentence (goddamnit tell me how this ends!)
Sorry to hear about your knee. Hope it heals up quickly. Knee surgery is no joke. Isn't getting older grand? But I'm right there with you in your attitude to it. The purpose of life isn't staying safe and maximizing life years so you arrive at the end with the minimum number of injuries; it's doing cool shit like hiking the largest canyon this side of Mars.
About a year ago I talked to a guy hobbling around on a cane. He had no cartilage remaining in his knee, and had spent most of the last year in excruciating pain. He'd been scheduled for surgery in March 2020, which then got postponed because a bum knee wasn't the doom coof, so the medical system in its wisdom and mercy consigned him to an additional year of agony. Guy was less than thrilled about that situation, and expressed more a degree of skepticism towards the reigning narrative. Can't help but wonder if the endless months trapped at home with crippling agony as the hospital refused to treat him might have motivated him to look a little more critically at the situation than the mask cultists.
The Populists were successful enough to get their ideas adopted, in the short term. But then the Progressives, those elites who know more than the rest of us, took over. The Democrats played lip service to Populism through FDR, but then stopped even doing that.
Thomas Frank's "The People, No!" and "Lusten, Liberal!" are good works on this, from the perspective of a Democratic populist. Matt Stoller covers it in his book "Goliath" on the history of antitrust.
Professor Mark Blyth calls our current populist movement "global Trumpism". He sees this as push back against globalism and that it can be from the Left or the the Right. The elites oppose both types.
Wokeism is essentially an elite effort to defeat Populism, to stop the masses from uniting against the elites.
Best of luck on the surgery.
You might be interested in looking at a placebo study that was done regarding arthroscopic knee surgery. The gist of it was that the placebo surgery group had just as good of relief results as the real surgery group. I’m sure you could find it with a little internet searching. I think it was done at Baylor.
soo, you got conned by the Medmafia ...Sham Knee Surgery Just As Good As The Real Thing
peoplespharmacy.com/articles/sham-knee-surgery-just-as-good-as-the-real-thing
A total of 146 patients participated (70 received the real surgery and 76 were assigned to the sham surgery). During the fake surgery the patients were treated exactly the same as if they had the real thing without actually having their meniscus trimmed or having cartilage fragments removed. The results were astounding. The authors concluded...AND...Is Meniscus Surgery a Sham? | Lanier Law Group
lanierlawgroup.com/blog/2014/april/is-meniscus-surgery-a-sham-/
Adults with severe knee pain are often told they have a meniscus tear and surgery is needed. In fact, with approximately 700,000 procedures per year, arthroscopic surgery to shave off worn or torn pieces of the meniscus is the most common orthopedic procedure performed in the United States..
BTW, 40+yrs ago, this ol'mechanic's knees,et entire body was trashed by lots of m/cycle 'mishaps' & today are in great shape due to Rolfing,osteopathic manipulation,alkaline diet,TCM,Ayuveda&supplements...the body is self healing if you make the Effort. cheers
Wishing you a speedy recovery! And can’t wait to read the end...
I imagine the knee trouble is not anything like so painful as having to sit through 1:30 seconds of that 2 minute Twix commercial. I don't need to know how that one ends. I rarely eat candy anymore, Twix was one of my favs, but I will choke on it hereafter.
I could not even bring myself to watch that "trans 8year old drag queen" video you posted the other day, from the pedophiles at Elle. I can see red-pilling oneself about Covid but it is hard to imagine how one could do that after hyper-sexualizing children. Too far gone.
I once wrote a little piece about hiking into Havasupai and how we’re supposed to always be in awe of the beauty around us (Havasupai was absolutely stunning), but sometimes things are too painful to appreciate IN the moment, so we need to take pictures, notes - and other people - so we can go back in thought and appreciate the majesty of it all. I expect us to be doing that for the coming years. Just replace majesty with whatever descriptor you will.
Hope the surgery goes well. And that we get to read the ending of this at some point. Here’s to expedient and responsible healing!
I don't really know about the knee surgery part of this, but the part where you describe the earlier progressive positions on taxation and immigration are rather striking today.
Of course, this was the "Omaha Platform," as in Nebraska, which means its writers were white supremacist nativist Nazis -- and not the MSM-approved, freedom-fighter, Ukrainian kind of Nazis -- but the bad kind. And because of that, modern progressives are free to disavow these Nebraskan fascists of America's white supremacist past, people who probably never once paid Robin DiAngelo to speak at one of their hoe downs.
Yes. And the risk is this: You get a staph infection in that knee, the doctor ignores it for 5 months, despite pulling some really nasty looking fluids out of the knee several times, and despite the physical therapist writing him a letter warning him of possible infection. When you finally tell him to refer you to another surgeon, the 2nd surgeon meets you, puts his hand on the knee and says, “Yep. You’ve got an infection.” So you go back into surgery, have the knee joint removed, a spacer put in, and go on IV Vancomycin for 3 months, at which point, the 2nd surgeon repeats the surgery to remove the spacer and then again to put in a new knee joint, which, sadly, ultimately fails because the staph infection has so scarred your tissue that it turns into bone—literally. Leaving you, in the end, with a leg without a knee joint that bends, so you are disabled and lose your license to fly (did I mention you were a licensed commercial pilot?) forcing you into early retirement. When you contact an attorney, they say you can’t sue the initial surgeon because you can’t prove medical malpractice. It’s a small risk, yes. But it can happen. Because it did. Good luck.
Karl Rove's THE TRIUMPH OF WILLIAM MCKINLEY is a masterpiece in political biography. He nails the populists to Bryan's metaphorical cross of gold. Sound money is a fundamental duty of rulers - let them beware.
There is a reason the latest poll puts President Biden's Hispanic support in the toilet bowl @ 26%. Inflation destroys the poor. And the poor aren't so thick they don't know it
Hurts don't it? Wash those percs down with bourbon if you want to be a real Gonzo.
Having experienced a few surgeries (albeit not yet on my knees), I know the recovery phase can be pretty hard--hard enough to raise questions of why you agreed to do it. I hope that's not the case for you, but take heart. It will get better.
I admire the content and the frequency of your writings, and wish you the best.