Op-Ed: A Letter to a Woke Medical Journal from a Doctor - We've Had Enough
The woke are a uniquely pestilential force in the nation and surely lacking in good taste, but one generally does not expect them to appear in what is ostensibly an ENT (ear, nose and throat) publication. Alas, leftism is religion for the godless, and so the woke show up in the most bizarre settings, serving their fundamentalist creed like any believer.
I took note of some mischief in my corner of the universe and responded in writing.
To the Editor: “In multiple issues over the last couple years and particularly post-George Floyd, the editorial staff at ENT Today decided that an ENT publication should, along with providing ENT information, also promote and advocate for woke leftist ideology.
We are already bombarded by this every day and everywhere, in our schools, colleges, the media, Hollywood, professional sports, corporate America, Big Tech, Wall Street, the Democratic Party and, to a lesser extent, even the GOP. It only stands to reason that our cultural betters at ENT Today would feel compelled to educate us on wokeness as well.
I would ask the enlightened leftist wokesters at ENT Today if there is no bastion where we can be free of race-baiting politics, the demonization of America, and the destructive reduction of the nation from a land of free individuals possessed of God-given inalienable rights to a country of warring ‘identity groups’ or tribes based on race, sex, ethnicity and sexual orientation.
Is it possible for you to spare us the racial taunts, insults, diatribes and accusations? Must we be lectured on ‘systemic racism,’ ‘white privilege’ and ‘diversity, equity and inclusion’ in an ENT journal? Is there not enough of that already, across the fruited plain? Does the notion of a colorblind meritocracy not ring a bell somewhere in the misty caverns of your woke corpus callosums? Do the words of a famous black preacher who once dreamed of a nation where Americans will ‘not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character’ no longer measure up?
Why not stick to your mission of sharing ENT information, which heretofore you performed admirably, and dispense with the cult Marxism?
You may enjoy virtue-signaling, but you do not help blacks and other minorities by continually picking at the scabs of our racial history. Slavery has been universal and present throughout time. It exists today, including in Africa and elsewhere. This may surprise you, but it was not an invention of the United States. Only one nation fought a war to end it — this one.
Minorities do quite well in ‘racist’ America. Many risk life and limb to come to ‘racist’ America. To be able to live in America is a dream for ‘people of color’ around the world; to have that privilege is to have won life’s lottery. It is not America’s fault if there are not identical outcomes for all racial and other identity groups. That’s called life. Even within a given family — same genes, same upbringing — there are often gaping disparities, let alone in a nation of 350 million from every walk of life, culture and nation on earth.
Many blacks, Hispanics, gays, Muslims and so on are very successful, very wealthy and very influential in ‘racist’ America. Many minorities, including from Cambodia, Korea, Pakistan, Bolivia, Iran, Taiwan, India, the Philippines and many other countries, enjoy higher per capita income in ‘racist’ America than whites. We have had, in case you missed it, a black president and now a black vice president. How does that happen in a systemically racist country?
The answer is that we are not systemically racist.
The existence of disparity between races does not mean systemic racism but points to other factors, such as culture, social dysfunction (high rates of out-of-wedlock childbirth, educational failure, criminality, incarceration, all particularly high among blacks), bad choices, self-selection and preference. We have equal opportunity and treatment before the law — not equal outcomes. Equal outcomes or ‘equity’ has a name. It’s called communism. North Korea may be the model you are seeking.
No one questions, for example, why there are few Asians, Hispanics or even whites, relatively speaking, in the NBA. We recognize that the selection of players is meritocratic, as it should be. Blacks are better at basketball, by and large. It is not questioned.
Every disparity in outcome does not imply fault or indict society. There are many more female nurses and teachers than males, for example. Does that imply misandry? Absurd. There are many more men in our military than women. Does that imply misogyny? Ridiculous. Precise proportional representation in a nation this diverse is not possible nor desirable.
I would recommend that you save your lectures for left-wing friends and colleagues in your private time and relieve us of your predictable and monotonous sermons. And, by the way, spare us other leftist shibboleths as well, such as climate change. Puhlease…
Steer clear of it. We have quite enough of it already. It is ubiquitous. It does not belong in an ENT newsletter. If you want to affect politics, write a column for The New York Times or run for office.
I do not expect you to make pro-Trump, pro-MAGA pronouncements or call for secure borders or to abolish abortion. It is not your place to do so. Similarly, I do not expect you to push a divisive, anti-American, leftist agenda, offensive, I would imagine, to the majority of your readers.
You have unnecessarily politicized what was otherwise an excellent ENT journal. A shame. However self-righteous and virtuous you may feel in doing so, your polemics are distasteful to me and, I suspect, many others. Cut out the race, gender and diversity nonsense, and spare us the politics.”
I sent this letter to the editor and staff at ENT Today along with some 40-odd members of the advisory board. Not surprisingly, I heard not a word. Humility and acknowledgment of wrongdoing are not traits of leftists, besotted as they are with their secular faith.
But at least they have heard. Better that than to continue down their stuporous path, oblivious to how drunk they are in their misbegotten ideology.
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