Category: Uncategorized

A friend died violently this week.

I cannot blog this weekend.

Shawn

The world woke to an unfamiliar place on Friday. Journalists spun like Alice down a rabbit hole.

What’s going on? How did this happen in a modern Europe?

They were quick to explain it: xenophobia, racism, hate, and just plain stupidity.

Megan McArdle, of Bloomberg and the Atlantic, wrote,

“Journalists and academics seemed to feel that they had not made it sufficiently clear that people who oppose open borders are a bunch of racist rubes who couldn’t count to 20 with their shoes on, and hence will believe any daft thing they’re told.”

Rex Murphy, never shy of touching the wart on Grandma’s nose, saw the vote as a rebuke to Western elites.  Maybe Britons didn’t like elites in Brussels passing laws that Britons must follow?

Brexit & Doctors

Doctors in Ontario face a similar divide. Our leader elites cannot explain how the plebes could disagree with them. Health Minister Hoskins attributes greed to dismiss working doctors’ anger at Hoskins’ bumbling mismanagement.  Perhaps docs are just scared and confused, surely it cannot have anything to do with Bill 210.

Dismissive Reductionism

It is easy to dismiss your opponent as motivated by emotion, not reason or argument.

Whether we point to nefarious motives that deserve opprobrium, or humble motives that warrant sympathy, we reduce our opponent’s position to emotion to avoid debate.

We use reductionism to dismiss.

Dismissive reductionism attempts a condescending escape from facing real argument.

It leaves those, who have been dismissed as emotional, to prove that they do not have said emotion, or to prove that, yes, they do deserve to feel their emotional label.

Either way, the discussion is all about emotions.

As every schoolboy knows, emotions mean nothing in a contest. You play to win. Crybabies lose.

Eventually, people catch on. They see elites using the same old dismissive reductionism. At some point, citizens demand a vote.

Pay Attention, Politicians

Deputy Health Minister Bell and Health Minister Hoskins should take note. Regular working doctors cannot be dismissed as angry rubes forever, no matter how much the Deputy and Minister think they know about doctors.

Bell and Hoskins’ past lives a celebrity doctors – one in a world class teaching hospital, the other as global humanitarian – do not qualify them to say much of anything about what it’s like to run an office, in Ontario, on narrow margins.

Deputy Bell loves telling stories about his months working as a GP, 40 years ago. I won a math contest in high school. That doesn’t make me a mathematician.

The Western elites regret ever letting regular people vote on such an important issue, as leaving the EU. How could the plebeians know what’s good for them?

Prime Minister Cameron resigned after the Brexit vote, an honourable move. If only health politics followed this standard.

Doctors have legitimate arguments about the imbroglio in Ontario. Docs cannot be ignored with dismissive reductionism. Doctors will attack in the provincial by-elections, and then, do whatever they can to support voters who are sick of Premier Wynne, in the 2018 election. Will doctors target provincial medical associations next?

photo credit: news.nationalpost.com

 

This picture stands in place of several thousand words. It lists a small platter of the things thrown at doctors recently.

But the picture is too small.

We could add hundreds of pieces of legislation, dozens of statutes and regulations; special interest groups, competing stakeholders trying to smother any status doctors ever had; the media’s attack on physicians driving public envy-cum-schadenfreude.  It would fill a large mural.

• Why not Let Leaders Lead Healthcare?
• Who can stop and undo the Legislation Epidemic?
• Professionalism requires freedom. Will it be allowed to grow?

We need to communicate the same thing five times to get across one message. But some things are heard only by those who want to hear them.

High profile politicians inside Premier Wynne’s cabinet demonstrate they do not understand what’s happening in Ontario when they speak privately. If members of parliament struggle to understand the issues, how can we expect voters to see through?

Ontario has put doctors under siege. A siege delivers victory by attrition or assault.  Getting the Ontario Liberals to negotiate with doctors would be a tiny step towards peace. But healthcare needs more; probably more than any political party can ever deliver.

 

[This post came from a local doc. He drew a sketch, took a photo and said, “Write the post!” Thanks, Scotty.]