Hillary's Not the Only One to Go From Seasonal Allergies to Pneumonia

Seasonal allergies. Then pneumonia. You might think I’m referring to Hillary Clinton’s recent medical history accentuated by her stumble as she tried unsuccessfully to depart gracefully from Sunday’s 9/11 commemoration ceremonies at the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan.

Actually, I was referring to Gilda’s condition in September 1970. We had been dating for a little more than six months when summer arrived. We each chose to counselor at different sleepaway camps. Gilda came home early with pneumonia triggered by what we later learned were seasonal allergies. One benefit—at 21-years-old she finally learned to swallow pills under threat of intravenous hospitalization.

For several late summers after that she would get sick, sometimes developing pneumonia. After we married in 1973 and moved to Connecticut our internist explained she had seasonal allergies. To avoid their blossoming into pneumonia she needed to be alert every day from late August-early September and diligently take an antihistamine at the first sign of itchy eyes. Since then she hasn’t had pneumonia.

And since that first summer of pneumonia we haven’t been apart for July and August for 46 years.

Hillary’s Real Stumble: Will there be political fallout from Hillary’s illness? I doubt it will diminish support from those already committed to her. 

Trumpsters, on the other hand, will just add this setback to their long list of anti-Hillary screeds. 

For non committed voters the decision might well depend on their differentiation between a physical illness and the mental stability of Donald Trump. He has given ample evidence of being unfit psychologically, temperamentally, and intellectually for the office of president. 

But there persists in this country a level of non belief in the debilitating impact of mental illness. Just ask the many veterans who suffer from PTSD how difficult an adjustment their family, peers and work associates have had in accepting their condition. So Trump might get a pass despite his unstable behavior.

When Hillary suffered through a coughing bout last week I joked to friends that we could expect a tweet from a Trumpster or from the man himself that she was afflicted with consumption. I wasn’t too far off in my diagnosis though I didn’t hear or see any such missive.

As usual, the coverup got Clinton in more hot water than the truth. No one except Trump and his Trumpsters expects her to be superwoman. She is human. But her failure to accept human frailty cost her credibility points, points of which she already has too few to spare.

When she gets back on the campaign trail, Clinton needs to humanize herself. Real people—not the moneybags she hobnobs with to finance this election—need to see her, speak with her, get spoken to, about their real concerns. Jobs. Healthcare. Wages. Homeland security. Social security. Personal safety. Discrimination. Climate change. 

As long as we’re on a medical theme, injuries from youth soccer figured in a 25-year study published in the most recent issue of Pediatrics. The magazine reported that injuries more than doubled over the course of the study, with head injuries climbing an astounding 1,596%.

Every day more than 300 kids visit emergency rooms with soccer-related injuries. Strains and sprains account for 35% of the trauma, 23% come in with broken bones.

Which brings me to the Forseter connection, specifically Dan Forseter’s time in youth soccer. Dan played on a travel all-star soccer team from the age of nine. As the goalkeeper he would fling his body towards the ball, even running headlong into any advancing forward. He did not give up goals lightly. One weekend tournament he played four games before the coaches noticed his left wrist was a little wobbly. Shuffled off to the local emergency room, he came back with a cast on his fractured wrist. 

For the record, this happened before 1990, so Dan was not part of the Pediatrics study.

Trump Is Running to be Alienator-in-Chief

It is hard keeping up with the alienator-in-chief. He’s not the presumptive AIC. He won the actual title from the moment he declared his candidacy for president. Or maybe four years ago with his advocacy of the birther movement to delegitimize the presidency of Barack Obama.

Donald Trump believes in shooting the messenger while ignoring the message. His preferred tactic is to ridicule anyone opposed to him, as if diminishing their stature would somehow reduce or eliminate criticism of his actions or words. His latest salvo pins the label of “devil” onto Hillary Clinton. If that doesn’t stick, maybe he will mine literature and biblical history for some equally dismissive appellation, such as Lady Macbeth, Cruella de Vil, Jezebel or Salome. 

To small-minded America, to those who hate his opponents, to those whose bigotry he has given cover to, Trump’s in-your-face tactic exudes strength and refreshing leadership, qualities that politically correct politicians do not harbor, they believe. Should he win, and obviously I hope he does not, Trump would be the alienator-in-chief of an alienated nation.

At what point, however, will Trump say something so outrageous that even his most ardent supporters see him as the boob he is, unfit for the highest office in the land? Would it not be a delicious irony if Trump was taken down by a Muslim?

Sadly, I don’t think the Khan affair surrounding Trump’s defamation of the family of a Muslim American U.S. Army captain killed in Iraq will be his undoing. Trumpsters—I can’t claim authorship of this term for Trump supporters, though I swear I had not heard it before it popped into my head recently—anyway, Trumpsters are so entwined in his candidacy that rational arguments cannot and do not work on them. 

While public figures on both sides of the political spectrum sees Trump as a neo-dictator in style and substance, Trumpsters only see positive aspects of his authoritarian style. Like dumpster divers who believe hidden gems can be found among the detritus of society, Trumpsters view him as the fulfillment of their dream for a new American revolution that lowers taxes, removes the burden of government regulations, strengthens the already strongest military in the world while signaling Russia that NATO isn’t to be considered a deterrent to its Baltic and Black Seas expansionist desires, reduces entitlement programs but god forbid does not touch their Social Security or Medicare, builds a protective wall around our country to keep out criminal illegal aliens and cheap goods that will now be built in America but cost more, restores law and order by putting minorities back in their place behind white America, and appoints judges that will halt, maybe even reverse, the last 60 years of progress toward social equality in the country.

Trump is a factual chameleon, changing positions day to day, denying statements made in print and the airwaves. Yet Trumpsters don’t care about the truth. 

Apparently, neither do Republican Party leaders. They may cringe at what he says, but they are betting their future, and that of the country, on their ability to control him should he take the oath of office. They are as foolish as the voters and government leaders who thought they’d be able to contain Hitler, Mussolini, Hamas, and other dictatorial movements. Trump’s pronouncements, as offensive as many may be, such as limiting entry to America by select foreigners, oftentimes are within constitutional grounds. The CIA director has said he would not re-institute torture, but if Trump wants to, no doubt he would find some acolyte who would do his bidding.

In Monday’s New York Times Paul Krugman refuted reasons why Republicans cannot support Hillary Clinton (http://nyti.ms/2aVCiQN) . He cited three areas they find fault with her: economic policies, national security and the fear of executive overreach. In each case Krugman argued Trump would be worse. As cogent as his arguments were, he failed to mention the key impact this election may have on the coming decades. The next president will most likely nominate two to four Supreme Court justices. Presidents set policy for four to eight years. Justices influence lives for decades. 

Perhaps that is why GOP poobahs like Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell and John McCain and Mike Pence have not abandoned their support of Trump. To their shame and lack of patriotic duty. 

Five and six years ago I wrote that Profiles in Courage should be required reading for public officials. It is John F. Kennedy’s 1955 Pulitzer Prize-winning account of eight U.S. senators who, at different times in the history of the Republic, acted on their conscience rather than succumb to political pressure to conform to party politics or the majority of their constituents. They did so at great risk to their careers, in the interest of serving country first.

Republicans want to go back to the “good old days.” Those days included times when public servants truly put the public good ahead of their own self-interests.

Here’s your election witticism of the day, courtesy of whowhatwhy.org:

A politician thinks of the next election; a statesman thinks of the next generation. —James Freeman Clarke