What has happened to the Country (Western Civilization)

i probably have more time to waste on this buffoonery than most (I own a business where I run around like there's a fire with my hands over my head yelling and screaming and occasionally crying and then nothing to do for 2 or 3 days). I should have listened to my mom and went to med school; oh well. My son is top of his class at Brooklyn Tech and, co-captain of the wrestling team #1 ranked team. (((proud dad))) ). He's going to be a doctor so if I live long enough, I can live vicariously through him. I know we have a lot of physicians here who are laughing at me right now but I promise you persons of character and civic minded people still look up to doctors as they should. The United States lost her mind when we decided to idol worship portfolio managers and investment bankers over surgeons. I'm not that old that I can't remember a time when doctors lived in all the best apartments on 5th Ave in NYC and had half the country club memberships at Winged Foot. What happened in this country???

/end rant

[ What happened in this country???

/end rant[/quote]

The 60's
Assassinations
Bad wars
greed
Politics

Jonathan Darman sums it up nicely in "Landslide"

Whew it has been a wild ride.

Lawsuits happened. Frivolous ones. The only sure winners are the lawyers and a good percentage of them are unscrupulous.

Politics happened. Greedy politicians. They aren't "of the people, for the people" any more - they're "mine, mine, mine" and blame it on the other party.

Laziness happened. America has gone from the "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country" age to the "what da gubment gonna gib me?" era.

It's the beginning of the end..... just like the Roman Empire. Everyone is looking for a quick, or free, buck.

You can say that again. This place is a mess.

U know what they say, a lawyer will stand by u till your last cent

Shameless bash, but I read this recently and now have an excuse to share: "if it weren't for lawyers, we wouldn't need them".

In seriousness, rule of law is one of the underpinnings of our civilization. I am grateful for it and know that lawyers play their part. As for the litigious culture that's been referenced, well that's another story.

I'm in school to become a paralegal in Ontario, Canada, and the Law Society of Upper Canada, who 'controls' lawyers and paralegals in our province demand that we take TONS of ethics courses to break the stigma of lawyers (and paralegals) being crooks. In theory, lawyers and paralegals should be on the same moral standard as saints.

In Ontario (I can't speak for the rest of Canada, or the world, in that matter) Lawyers and Paralegals are under the watchful eye of the LSUC, and anyone can file anonymous complaints via their website.

For those interested:
Ontario Paralegal Wiki Page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontario_Paralegal
Law Society of Upper Canada webpage: https://www.lsuc.on.ca/

Yeah there are some slimy lawyers but they aren't as prevalent as many enjoy thinking and play a useful role.

Anytime you have anesthesia your risk of harm today is lower than before the evil lawyers got their shark teeth into the doctors.

If you may recall back in the 1980's it was predicted that anesthesiologists would be forced out of practice because of malpractice lawsuits. While there were some in the profession who wanted to seek protection via tort reform, a group of them got together (with the help of insurance carriers) and started looking at the malpractice claims to see if there were common threads and then whether they could alter their best practices to address the problems.

They were successful in their efforts.

They created the Difficult Airway Algorithm a step-by-step approach to difficult intubation as the standard of care and insisted that surgical suites be equipped with a pulse oximeter (the little LED thingy they clip on the tip of your finger)and the end-tidal CO2 monitor. If your blood oxygen falls or you fail to produce CO2 in your breaths they know there is a problem and can address it.

In 1985 the average anesthesiologist paid $36,224 per $1 million of malpractice of coverage in 2009 that coverage cost $21,480

The pressure of litigation saved lives and quality of life in people who benefitted from those changes by not being killed or hurt.

NURSING HOMES
I know an attorney who for a number of years made some serious money suing nursing homes.

A lot of the fly-by-night guys who got in the nursing home business had been basically warehousing people and staffing the homes with some pretty shady people at minimum wage that other businesses wouldn't touch.

About four or five years after he went into exclusively taking on those cases while his partners did other types of cases, I asked him how things were going. He said great because he expected to start taking other types of cases again. "We've just about got them f___ers to the point of taking proper care of people. I'm sick of seeing malnourished, maltreated, and beaten old ladies with huge open sores and need to do something else."

MORE PERSONAL
Thirty years ago my four year old step-daughter was riding with my sister-in-law's sister (my wife's sister's sister-in-law). She lost control of her car hit the side of a bridge and Amanda was killed instantly and it had to be a closed casket funeral.

The insurance carrier offered to pay for the cost of the ambulance to take her body from the scene of the accident to the funeral home and the cost of the funeral. When I pointed out my wife and I lost a week of pay each (neither of us had paid leave) and that my wife would need grief counseling (we had catastrophic health insurance that wouldn't cover such luxury) the adjuster smirked and said "Everyone wants to profit from a "loved ones" death" I put loved ones in quotes to denote the way he snarkily said it.

So we sued the insurance company and the jury awarded a 2.5X what we had offered to settle for and some children's charities received nice gifts as a result.

Greed.
Avarice.
It has always been around, but at some point in the late 1980's/early 1990's it became acceptable to be overtly greedy. Some point to the film Wall Street as the starting point to the greed-is-okay ethos. It was, some say, an intentional negation of everything the 1960's represented.

A powerful thing, the singular desire to acquire. Luckily no one on this forum experiences it. 😗

Maybe people stopped being able to afford pay-at-point-of-use healthcare?
I say this as someone who has just today waited 2 and a half hours for a 2 minute doctor appointment on the NHS. Some would say you get what you pay for.

2 bit celebrities who are only famous for making a sex tape

Two things seem to have become ever more prevalent.

1) Politicians seem to have completely forgotten that they are elected to serve not rule and that their first duty is to their constituents not their party.
2) Respect for the law. And by this I mean laws that are fundamentally just and fair and do not oppress or serve only narrow, vested interests.

I could mention other factors such as the cult of the personality, entitlement without contribution etc., but don't want to come across as too much of a grumpy old git 🫨

Can anyone explain "Donald Trump"?

What is it?

Isn't he, technically speaking "Money" too though?

As far as I can see he's about as far from the man on the street as it's possible to be - unless the rest of the US is homophobic, racist, misogonistic, etc. - which having worked for US companies, and been over a lot in the last 10 years, I just don't see.

Please say that all this is just the Spectacle, and not really the way that the US will vote?

Because I'm stirring up trouble on the forums today, I'll join in...

Tony C. has it right - it's not just about Trump but the message being sent to the establishment.

We in the USA have a long tradition of electing either a congress or a president who is of the opposite party to the party currently in power. The "throw the bums out" reset of government. After the last 30 (50?) years of trying this, it is not working as neither party has addressed or even been willing to discuss serious issues around immigration, labor, taxes, welfare, individual rights, etc.