CULTS... POLITICS...AND THE DEMISE OF HUMOR

The "Progressive"  movement like all proto-totalitarian movements has morphed into a thug like cult of fanatics who are humorless, insensitive and intolerant of anyone who gets in their way. 

They take on  pseudo sacramental symbolic  rituals speech and actions of the religions they so despise because their lives are empty and divorced from  the reality of the human condition. 

They want a society where the collective will as defined by a select elite few squashes individual wants, needs and rights like a bug.

To get to the utopia of automatons they desire, they have to dismantle  western civilization, brick by brick.  In the process of doing this  they have become the purveyors of truly asinine and idiotic ideas due to their lack of connectivity to historic norms that have stood the test of time... hence the circus we are threatened with being imprisoned in at the present.

America is in the midst of the of the rise of neo-Jacobin  politics trying to create a French Revolution "deux" to replace ex post facto, the revolution which gave us our freedom and liberties.  Ironically it is also simultaneously going down the "Red Book road" via a domestic version of China's "Cultural Revolution" where those who don't demonstrate sufficient ideological purity and zeal, first become pariahs while on their way to becoming enemies of the state.

THE CASE OF PRISONER JUSTINA PELLETIER

To those who have not heard the story of Justina Pelletier, prepare to be outraged.  To  those who are familiar with it ...prepare to be outraged again.

Her ongoing nightmare was first chronicled by Boston Globe reporters Neil Swidey and Patricia Wen in December of 2013.  Justina is now a 15 year old young woman from West Hartford, Connecticut who was diagnosed at Tufts University Hospital with Mitochrondrial Disease by the Chief of Metabolism Services , Dr. Mark Korson, who had been treating her for three years.  Mitochrondrial Disease is a group of rare genetic conditions that effect energy, the stomach, the muscles, the brain and the heart.  Justina was the second daughter in a family of four daughters to be so diagnosed.

In February of 2013 while suffering from the flu, she  was rushed by ambulance accompanied by her mother Linda, to Boston Childrens Hospital (BCH ) in Massachusetts at the recommendation of Dr. Korson to see her Gastroenterologist, Dr. Alex Flores who had transferred to BCH from Tufts.

When Justina and her mother arrived at BCH she was not seen by Flores.  Instead her case was taken over by the Psychiatry Department at BCH who within three days came to the diagnostic conclusion that instead she was suffering from Somatoform  disorder which in laymen's terms translates for some into something like "your condition and related manifestations are all in your head".

THE GIRL WITH THE BOOKBAG WALKING THE RICE TERRACES OF BANAUE

In the northern mountains of Luzon in the Philippines lies the remote Province of Ifuago, home to the historic Rice Terraces of Banaue.  The terraces, 5000 feet above sea level were built by hand two thousand years ago, carved into the mountains and still worked by people living along their rims  and in the valleys that separate one set of terraces from another.

The people in the valley in particular live largely without electricity eking out a living as harsh and primitive as you will find in the developing world.  This is a hard life for all who depend on the rice, but one that illustrates the indomitable strength and will of the human spirit.

One day at dawn from the balcony of my hotel in the village of Banaue, which looked over a portion of the terraces which go on for many kilometers, I watched a speck of a person  on the far side of the valley that separated the terraces, begin an hour long trek down one set of terrace steps, then across the valley floor and the stream that split one side of the valley from the other and then up the corresponding terrace steps to the top of the other rim.  The speck was a schoolgirl with her book bag and she made this pilgrimage by foot over hard terrain every school day  be it monsoon season or dry season because not going to school is not an option to her and her family.