Thoughts of a retired physician

  A young man was murdered in Memphis, TN in early January by members of the Memphis Police Department. Officers stopped Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man, for an apparent traffic violation. Pulled from his car, he was violently pushed to the ground by several officers; broke free and sprinted away; was caught and beaten severely by officers; waited for 22 minutes for an ambulance to arrive; and died three days later in a Memphis hospital. As CNN reports, there is much we know and much we don’t know at this time – but we do know a young man was beaten to death. The five police officers were also all Black men. They belonged to a special unit of the force named SCORPION (Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhoods), in retrospect an awful acronym. The unit was created with 40 officers in 2021 as a response to the spike in violent crime in the city. The five officers were rapidly fired , then indicted, jailed, and released on bond pending prosecution.  As expected

  There are too many effing guns!!! Monterey Park - 10 dead, 10 wounded. Why? Why?

  True confession: I am woke. Further true confession: I am proud that I am woke. The evolution of the word woke is a fascinating one and indicative of how language is borrowed, interchanged, and used over time. So how did woke come to be a pejorative for the political right? Although Wikipedia is frowned upon as a definitive reference, it is a useful place to start a search. The article Woke notes African-Americans first used this term to indicate a necessity to remain alert to the world around them, a world which frequently was hostile. By the mid-20th century , woke came to mean “well-informed” or “aware”, especially in a political or cultural sense. The police shooting and death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014 led the founders of the Black Lives Matter group to apply woke to the need to be aware of police abuses.  BLM, along with Antifa (a whole other phenomenon to be explored), became the bête noirs of the political right in the United States, blamed for any of

  This week saw a spectacle in the House of Representatives not seen for over 100 years – multiple votes to select a Speaker. After 15 ballots and multiple concessions to the extreme fringe of the GOP Trumpist cult, Kevin McCarthy was elected at 0100 (that’s 1 AM for those of you not used to military time) on 7 January, just after the two-year anniversary of the attempted coup led by some members who voted to install him. What do we have to look forward to? As has been noted multiple times, McCarthy had to give away the farm to the far-right denizens of the House to be elected Speaker. He has already agreed to install many of them to important committee assignments, such as Margerie Taylor Greene and Jim Jordan. He has agreed to rules changes that include more committees with higher numbers of these fire-eaters as well as the ability of a single member of the majority being able to call for a snap vote to oust him from the Speakership. He is fully onboard with an agenda that looks lik

  Despite all the baggage, here is to a Happy New Year 2023. Lots of books to read, conversations to have, and ideas to think about. May there be peace this year in Ukraine and elsewhere. May justice prevail and democracy get stronger. Happy New Year to all!