Spring and the Apocalypse
It’s a beautiful spring day in Salt Lake City, the snow caps amaze, and the sky is that clear blue that you don’t often see at home back East. We are going to see a minor league baseball game, and the Easter bunny decorations add a delightful touch to the neighborhood. We celebrated Passover with all the family here, and it was wonderful. I look at the interactions of the children and grandchildren, and it fills me with a sense of what my wife and I accomplished in life. There is a Mormon temple in the background, a rainbow flag in front of a house, as well as a Trump 2024 flag. We still live (mostly) in a tolerant, ecumenical society. This is the U.S. that I grew up in. To paraphrase Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., we have bent our historical arc towards justice in the last half century.
The news, however, is not far behind, and it is extremely depressing. We have an autocratic leader who speaks in lies and profanities. Those who work for him have North Korean smiles affixed in HIS presence. They are stripped of all dignity, and are drawn to power. The president may fire them and curse them on social media, but he will not execute them with an anti-aircraft gun like Kim Jun Un does. Why do they stay?
Timothy Snyder says to expect another coup attempt. Paul Krugman opines that we are in for a period of economic distress and war crimes. Anne Applebaum eloquently describes our lurching towards autocracy, with all its corruption, intolerance, and militarism.
I don’t know if we are leaving NATO or NATO is leaving us. President Trump has torched long alliances and is in the process of solidifying closer relations with a club of autocracies that include Russia, Hungary, and the far right parties of Europe who may attain power in the next year.
Our health care system is being dismantled one by one. Foreign trained physicians who come from one of the 39 designated countries cannot renew their visas. They will not be able to provide care in underserved and rural areas. President Trump is proposing a budget that will cut the NIH by 20% and increase military spending by 50% next year. Along with the Medicaid cuts that are set to start after the midterm elections, things will be rough for the poor and near poor, and for the MAGA base.
My time in the Free Clinic has shown me just how inequitable and cruel health care delivery is in this country. I am not a socialist. I have lived my life as a business owner, and employer. I own my house, and I have a stock portfolio. I do all the things a good capitalist should do. But capitalism has fatal flaws, or fails. One is the tragedy of the commons, where people pay less attention to property that is not theirs. It also relates to externalities, where your polluting affects others. Unfettered private health care is another capitalism fail, something that has been recognized for over a century. Public health affects all of us. A healthier society where the poor, the ill and the elderly are taken care of by all of us, rather than just by the family and church, is beneficial for everyone.
There is a famous LBJ campaign commercial in 1964 that shows a young girl picking daisies in a beautiful field, followed by a film of a mushroom cloud. The ad was only shown once. The point then was that you could not allow his competitor, Senator Goldwater, to have control of the bomb.
I hope we are not at that moment today.
References:
https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2011/10/21/arc-moral-universe-long-it-bends-toward-justice
https://www.amazon.com/Autocracy-Inc-Dictators-Want-World/dp/0385549938
https://rollcall.com/2026/03/27/sources-white-house-to-propose-20-percent-cut-to-nih-funding/
https://defensecommunities.org/2026/01/dream-military-trump-wants-50-defense-budget-increase/
Thank you for writing so clearly.
Im still shocked at tye wide spread apathy. Tuevdeafening dilrnce ofbthos who must be in intenrtional, conscious denial.
Thank you for practicinging in your current setting.
I came to an inconvenient 3rd world country 25 years ago to be more effective using my internal medicine skills. Its a much less culturally noisy place to live. Unaffiliated, living working with them.