Denial, Anger and Trump

Anyone taking notice of the state of our world sees that it is dying. For illustration visit the daily summary of Climate and economy, the Arctic News-Blog or Eliot-Jacobson's Climate Casino – Watching the World Go Bye.

In a similar way the undisputed American hegemony since 1945 seems to go the way of all empires as described by Sir John Glubb Pascha in his short and brilliant essay The Fate of Empires (1976): This way leads from pioneers and conquests to power and safety which then facilitates production and commerce and leads to affluence, luxury, influx of foreigners, dissent, defensiveness, walls, decadence and frivolity. Sir John predicted an US decay already in 1976. 

Sir John Glubb Pascha with soldiers of the Arab legion in Ramallah 1946

Its true that the US meanwhile succeeded to squeeze out some ephemeral energy independence by fracking, but this will not last. And China with its long term view and the help of his many autocratic allies builds now a competing empire, gobbling up all the resources it can reach. The involvement of North Korean troops in the Ukraine war would not have happende without the explicit consent of China. In Ukraine we have a war by proxy between the West and the Eastern powers. For Europe without Trump this war will not be sustainable.  

To summarise we have a dying US-empire in a dying world. 

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross landmark work "On death and dying" described the reactions of patients with fatal disease. I know all these reactions from my work as a physician, their order may be changed or they may be combined, but basically the description holds true:  

• The first reaction is often denial.
• If denial does not work anymore it is followed by anger and aggression against fate and against the people wo bring the bad message. As a physician its important not to take this personally. 
• Then comes the phase of bargaining, of attempted flight into miraculous solutions, may it be herbal medicine or the consultation of charlatans.
• If unsuccessful this is followed by depression.
• In the best case the process ends in peaceful acceptance.

A dying world and a dying empire will probably induce similar reactions. We had a lot of the two first phases: 40 years of denial of the climate catastrophe and a lot of anger against Greta Thunberg and other messengers.

Comes the phase of bargaining where patients will believe anyone pretending to have solutions, even charlatans: In case this is Donald Trump while California is burning.

From this we can predict, that depression will follow. What form could it take? The world economy is a dead man keeping walking under the weight of a 300 trillion debt by creating even more debt in the optimistic belief that all this will finally work out. Depression will put an end to optimism and this will lead to a global economic crisis. This will be a crisis of belief, which even Trump, the orange Jesus will be unable to solve.    

 

 

 

Not his Death

(Translation of the story "Nicht sein Tod" from "Begegnungen mit dem Leibhaftigen", Tredition 2016)

The bell rang at the door of the former medical practice. Two younger people were outside, a man and a woman. Somebody had collapsed on the street, they asked for the doctor. The doctor was retired, but he was still living here.

What follows in the next section took place within 30 seconds: The old doctor went out through the front yard onto the sidewalk. There was a small group of people standing around someone who was lying on the ground, face down, a small figure in a shabby suit. A trail of fluid ran from his trousers against the gutter. He had probably lost urine, perhaps in an epileptic seizure. Or he was in cardiac arrest. The doctor knelt down, turned the face of the person towards him, it was a little bluish. Then a grip in his trouser pockets, he found a purse with an identity card, born in 1923. It was 2010, so the man was 87 years old. At this age, street-resuscitation does not make sense in the event of cardiac arrest. Even if successful, people are almost always permanently impaired and require long term care. One should leave them alone.  Still, the doctor wanted to know what was going on, looked for the pulse on the wrists, on the neck, it had no pulse anywhere. Cardiac arrest. He got up again, turned to the bystanders and explained – as a kind old Uncle Doctor - that this was cardiac arrest. That the man was 87 years old. And that at this age resuscitation made no sense because the results were practically always catastrophic.

The siren of an ambulance sounded very softly through the air, someone had already called with the handy. The doctor still wanted to say that it would be better to give the old man his rest, so it would be a beautiful and painless death. But the siren was loud now and the ambulance was already turning into the side street, bright yellow, highly polished and flashing blue, approaching quickly and then coming to a sharp stop next to our group of people.

Two paramedics, a middle-aged man and a younger blonde woman with an emergency kit jumped out, both athletic and in top form, both in sparkling yellow luminous vests. They quickly made sure that the phone was made from here, rushed to the man lying on the floor, grabbed the pulses that they couldn't find either. The young woman began pumping his chest to reanimate him. The old doctor would have liked to stop them, but they were in the uniform of law enforcement and all those standing by could not even know whether he was a doctor. So he kept quiet. The paramedic dragged the defibrillator on, while the woman continued to pump, he opened the shirt, exposed the chest and stuck the electrodes on. The screen showed no regular heart action, so the electric shock was delivered. After that, no effect. Another shock, now the screen showed a heart action again, irregular, but at least he had an irregular pulse and turned a little pink, but remained unconscious. The woman disappeared into the ambulance and came back with a stretcher and an infusion bottle. The old man was placed on the stretcher, the IV placed in a vein in his arm. Then the old man was carried to the ambulance by the two of them, the young woman stayed with the patient, the man quickly closed the rear door, gave a brief greeting, climbed into the driver's seat and away they roared with flashing lights and the siren got quieter and quieter. The whole haunt might have lasted three minutes.

Yes, this whole performance had been extremely professional and virtuosic. Such quality and speed can only be achieved with constant practice. At the same time, the staging had something synthetically unreal about it: the paramedics looked like shiny Lego men who functioned with their Lego ambulance in a perfect Lego world. Or like computer animations in those American films in which all surfaces are imitated so perfectly - virtual reality - and yet everything remains unreal.

For this perfect Lego world, this shabby old little man was the wrong object. He obviously had been independent so far. And now in very old age his life wanted to come to an end. His luck would have benn to meet a death that had everything one could want from death: sudden, peaceful, and painless.

But they took his death away, postponed his death into care dependency, to a nursing home. Was that what this man wanted? Would we have that wish? Does our health budget have enough money to pay for such idle pastimes?

If this old man were an isolated case it could be ignored. But he is not an isolated case. His case  is the expression of a general philosophy. The old doctor remembers: At a young age he was trained in the internal medicine clinic, which was considered the best at the time in his country. The directive there read: "Every cardiac arrest has to reanimated because interns have to practice". The same directive applies to paramedics, whether this makes sense on the given object or not.

Nobody asks us…