Irish Alzheimer's

I have run into a spate of forgive/forget stories about the various George Bush people who have been president. David Brooks, particularly, went out of his way to praise the senior Bush recently.

Well, no. The senior Bush, after all, has Panama as a visible but rarely mentioned stain on it's otherwise whitewashed record.

The invasion of Panama in late 1989, which resulted in the deaths of some 20-30 U.S. troops, and 3,000 to 4,000 Panamanians, took place with essentially no rationale. There was something about "tension", and something -- which I remember clearly -- about the wife of a Marine captain who was insulted on the street, and something about the president of Panama being involved in drug traffic. Bang, bang. Noriega in prison. And, that incredible 100-1 ratio of dead. Yipes. How did that happen????

The elder Bush bears the guilt -- he has the blood of those thousands on his hands. Doesn't seem to be too repentant, does he? Apparently part of the genetic makeup of these folks it to murder and maim large numbers of people who are of darker skin than they are.

But, even better, there is some pretty good evidence that the Panama massacre -- what else can you call that 100-1 ratio? -- was the result of the elder Bush's hyperthyroid condition, which was finally diagnosed and treated shortly after the murders began. The younger Bush has no such excuse, and must live with having no medical reason for mass murders. Hyperthyroid results in overactivity and impulsive functioning, among other problems.

The old joke is that Irish Alzheimer's is forgetting everything but the grudges. Sometimes I think that Panama is completely forgotten by everyone else -- hell, sometimes I think Iraq is completely forgotten by everyone else. But I am continually astounded that we allow these people to go outside, to talk with others, to seem to live pretty well. Why don't they have to pay? Why is it forgotten so easily and completely? So much for the vaunted "accountability" that I hear so much about.

I don't know that I want to dig up the grudges of, say, the Spanish-American War, or the Albigensian Crusade. The Panamanians, though, are not so at peace with all this; there are marches and days of mourning every year on the anniversary of the invasion. Good thing none of them wants revenge for, say, a murdered family member. Same for those folks in Iraq and Afghanistan. Otherwise, I might be worried.

Invincible ignorance

When the boy-child was about 11, he went over the handlebars of his bike, and landed flat on his back. Later in the day, he seemed to make some odd movements while breathing, and said his back hurt some, so we ended up in the emergency room. It was the only truly empty emergency room I have ever seen; staff was standing around, eager to pounce.

Well, he was fine, but the doc -- a very thorough diagnostician who didn't have much else to do -- did a complete workup and interview. Was he under a lot of stress? No, he responded.

As she walked us to the door of the hospital, relieved, I asked her what the stress question was about. She stopped walking, turned bright, bright red, and said: "I can't help it, I just can't help it".

She explained that the site of his back pain could indicate a stomach ulcer. In spite of all her training, family legends of various relatives who had ulcers, and were "Type A" personalities, took precedence; ulcers were caused by stress. Never mind that medical school nonsense. Ulcers are from stress. "They better get your uncle Harry to slow down, or he's gonna get an ulcer".

Well, no. Stomach ulcers had long been considered psychogenic but in the early 1980s, mainly in Australia, there were a series of observations and discoveries which showed conclusively that roughly 90% of ulcers were the result of infection by a certain bacteria. Another 4% were from cancerous growths. The rest, nobody really knows. The 2005 Nobel in Medicine went to the docs who made the connection. Good work all around.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_peptic_ulcer_disease_and_Helicobacter_pylori

So, what is up with the doc in the emergency room? She was young; it wasn't as if she had been practicing for 35 years and seen thousands of ulcer cases. I wondered, on the way to the car, whether the folks who had been practicing for 35 years had an easier time changing their beliefs. When I talk to people now, no matter what age, it is still common to hear the belief that ulcers are emotionally caused. And, there is still a rear-guard action from some docs who spend huge amounts of time and energy trying to show that "stress plays a role in the development of stomach ulcers". By golly, we don't retreat at the first sign of science.

So, a sticky belief, one of the "things we know that we pretend we don't know". A meme. Well, an incorrect meme. Why this one?? For a long time I thought it had to do with the American ambivalence toward achievement -- that if you did well, and worked very hard, you would pay a price somehow. But now, less so; now I think it has more to do with the wish that abusive people will somehow be punished, even if they can emotionally bully us.

So, is that a common factor in all the sticky beliefs? Hard to imagine -- on the face of it, differences in height of populations doesn't have much to do with payback for abuse. But maybe. It may be that they all have to do with differences, and we hold on to the beliefs because, otherwise, they would be us.

Whaddya think????