Isolation Report, Week #49

[You could also read the most recent report, or even start at the beginning.]

Well, it’s a been a few weeks since I checked in on the political front, and that means it’s been long enough that the Senate performed exactly as expected and acquitted Trump of inciting the riot that stormed the Capitol and resulted in several deaths.  The majority of the Republicans, of course, had made up their minds beforehand.  If this were an actual trial, such potential jurors would have been dismissed as prejudiced ... in fact, the roots of the word “prejudiced”—meaning to “pre-judge”—are specifically referring to this type of behavior.  There were apparently only seven Republicans who were brave enough to vote to convict someone of doing something they very obviously did (on video, even!), and two of them aren’t running for re-election.  Think about what that means: for 86% of Republicans (or at least 86% of Repulican senators) care more about getting re-elected than about being honest.  Even if you’re a Republican, that should concern you.  Even if you believe Trump that the election was stolen, you can see that he did the thing he’s being accused of, right?  Hell, even if you agree that storming the Capitol was the right thing to do, and even if you believe that the Deep State government has no right at all to hold him accountable for his actions, you still understand that he incited the riot ... right?  Hell, if you were at the riot, you believe that: the Senators were shown footage of rioters chanting “We were invited by the president of the United States!” So he did it.  There isn’t much debate about that.  Senators voting to acquit are lying.  Maybe we could dream up some motives for that lie other than wanting re-election, but sometimes (as William of Occam was wont to say) the simplest explanation is the right one.

To be fair, many Republicans are concerned about this.  So much so that many prominent Republicans met to discuss the possibility of forming a new party.  They eventually rejected that idea, though, because a third party would not be successful.  Which right there ought to tell you that we have a serious problem with our system.  “We have to stay with the crazy people because the system is designed to help them remain in power” is never the position you want to be in.  And, honestly, my problem with this whole plan is partially the Democrats.  Sure, I’m absolutely a progressive and more or less a liberal, but I am not a Democrat.  I don’t want the Democrats to have too much political power and control everything from here on out any more than the more conservative among you do.  Furthermore, the Democrats are half the reason that a third party is not viable.  For all that they tear at each other’s throats, when it comes to shutting out third parties, the Democrats and the Republicans are in lockstep.  And, ironically, they will now pay the price for that decision, because having the Republicans split in two would only help the Democrats.

Ah, but enough about politics.  How’s our pandemic going?  Well, not so great, honestly.  The Mother had to go to the emergency room for severe pain about 3 weeks ago; they completely ignored her advising them that it was probably her gallbladder and said maybe she had some strained muscles in her back, shot her full of a souped up version of ibuprofen and sent her home.  She got an appointment with her doctor, who told her it was probably her gallbladder but she needed an MRI to confirm.  She got the MRI, the results said it was her gallbladder, and shd had a followup appointment with her doctor next week.  But, before that could come around, she was back in the emergency room with even more extreme pain, and this time they had the brains to work out that, hey: maybe it’s her gallbladder.  So, this past Monday, after spending the weekend in the hospital, she had an emergency gallbladder removal.  She’s fine now, and home, and recovering, albeit somewhat slowly.

Now, you may remember we have this little thing called a pandemic going on right now—it’s sort of the basis for this blog post series, in fact.  What’s it like, having to go to the hospital in the middle of the pandemic, even if for a non-pandemic-related cause?  Well, the first thing is, I can’t tell you firsthand: the farthest I ever got into the hospital was the front desk, when I went to drop off some knitting and a cell phone charging plug.  In fact, even taking her to the emergency room meant driving her, dropping her off at the door, then waiting in the parking lot until they let her in.  Yep, that’s right: when you walk up to the emergency room (at least ours), a security guard comes out, asks you what you’re in for, then makes you wait outside while they figure out what to do with you.  Once they did let her in, all I could really do was go home and wait for news.  I didn’t see her again until they wheeled her out to go home.  (And of course that was days and days later, because I dropped her off on a Friday night, and when you need “emergency” surgery on a weekend, that means you wait until Monday.  But that’s probably a whole separate rant.)

But my secondhand report is, the hospital staff is haggard.  They’ve had to see a lot of death lately, and they’re probably being pushed to their limits ... if not beyond.  I could almost forgive the original idiot doctor who misdiagnosed her with “back pain,” except for the extra $400 it’s going to cost me (that’s what it’ll cost me, mind you: it’s going to cost the insurance company much more).  But we’re lucky enough to have a hospital very close to us, and second time was the charm and she got a good doctor, and excellent nursees, and overall we’re pretty happy.  And, even though she’s still in a lot of pain from the surgery itself, the lack of a gallbladder full of gallstones (which the surgeon described as “highly inflamed”) means that she feels a lot better than she did when she went in.  So we can’t complain.  Too much.

Hopefully we’ve exhausted our drama quotient for the year (both personally and politically), and the rest of 2021 will be completely boring.  At this point, I’m looking forward to that.