What’s The Big Deal? He’s
Just Another Fraud
By
Leonard Zwelling
In an age in which a rookie Senator can rise to the
Presidency (and the Nobel Peace Prize) on the strength of his lofty rhetoric
unmatched by any legislative or executive accomplishments, why should it seem
strange that a billionaire reality star can rise to the White House, too? How
much more qualified was Barack Obama in 2008 than Donald Trump is today? Not
all that much.
Hillary Clinton could go down as the only woman to run for
and lose the Presidency to two different snake oil salesmen. Wow! Talk about a
triumph for feminism!
Over the weekend, we were treated to stories about the ill
ways in which Mr. Trump treats women in the NY
Times, the fact that he served as his own PR agent while lying about it
both twenty years ago and now (Washington
Post), and how he has no policies or principles on which he stands for more
than five minutes other than the one that says he’s king (pick your cable news
outlet). It must have been a slow news weekend because none of these items are
real stories.
I am still amazed that people are amazed that shysters and
hucksters like Trump continue to talk huge swaths of the population into buying
the baloney they sell, because as PT Barnum said about suckers being born every
minute…
The American electorate is so desperate for a Daddy figure
that can fix what ails the nation, that it has now voted for a know nothing
Texas Governor, an even less qualified for executive service freshman Senator,
and now, apparently, a TV star who, after all the bluster really cannot finance
his own campaign because he has insufficient liquidity to do so.
The American dilemma is multileveled. The economy has gotten
away from the blue collar folks whose future used to be guaranteed. That
economy is no longer manufacturing based. It is knowledge based and a high
school education won’t allow you to earn enough to get your kids through
college.
The educational system is a basket case due to the rise of
private schools, the dumbing down of public education, and the general
mis-emphasis on things that don’t matter (e.g., trigonometry) and the ignoring
of things that do (e.g., probability, health, home economics, knowing how to
make change).
The US infrastructure is the world’s joke as airports,
highways and railroads fall into greater disrepair. And the TSA’s hold on
security is slipping away like my pants with my belt in the x-ray machine’s
belt instead of on my pants.
Our entitlements are outstripping the ability to pay for
themselves and still our medical system is inequitable and poor for most (http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/15/sunday-review/sorry-we-dont-take-obamacare.html).
Deficits
climb and our national debt rises to the benefit of China.
Virtually any reasonable Democratic candidate should be able
to stomp Trump in the general election given the innate electoral advantage
held by the Blue Team and Trump’s major negatives, not the least of which is
that he probably gleaned all of only 40% of the cast Republican votes in the
competitive part of the primary season. So, of course, instead we get a deeply
flawed older woman with a substantive resume but deep crevices in her character
that go back 25 years. And let’s face it, while she always worked hard her
accomplishments are also meager: health reform in 1994-nope; major success as a
senator-nope; triumphs as a Secretary of State-Benghazi and the Iran deal-not
exactly!
This should make for a close general election race between
two people to determine which of the two is the least disliked by the voters of
America.
Oh, were we to have such a choice at MD Anderson!
Instead, in 2011, only one real contender was even named for
the Presidency and the smallest amount of due diligence in Boston would have
revealed that he had as many warts as Trump and Hillary combined. Not only was
he ill-equipped by experience to lead a major cancer center, he was
ill-tempered as well, with real questions about his ethics that persist to the
present day. He should have been disqualified instead of being the sole
finalist.
It is difficult to understand how such people as Hillary
Clinton, Donald Trump and Ron DePinho come to be leaders, but at some point we,
as the governed, must take some responsibility. If this is who we vote for or
this is who we tolerate, then we cannot blame the stars for our circumstances.
The fault ain’t there. It is in ourselves.
We need a revolution all right, but not the one that Trump
is leading of the disenfranchised who society has left behind and Trump has
ready to build a Wall and storm the Bastille. The true American leaders in
academia, politics, the arts, finance, the military, education, and the
professions need to rise up and vote for people with character and with ideas.
Not sure that any of those who ran this time qualify, but we will get another
chance in 2020.
As for MD Anderson, it is my assumption that Dr. DePinho is
what the Board of Regents and Board of Visitors want in a President. If so, I
suggest all you true academics and physicians wishing to do meaningful research
head for the hills or at least for somewhere in which your ideas have as much
weight as the bad ones coming from the high tower in Pickens.
The big story that I saw this weekend came from the Duke
Medical Center where engineered polio virus is being used to eradicate brain
tumors and no one sequenced the tumors’ DNA first for this study. Now THAT’S clinical research!
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/60-minutes-fda-breakthrough-status-duke-university-cancer-therapy/
