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03 - Betrayal
34 Plays18 days ago
“The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture and the Ministry of Plenty with starvation. These contradictions are not accidental, nor do they result from ordinary hypocrisy: they are deliberate exercises in doublethink.”
George Orwell, 1984
Since the Vietnam War, Americans have grown weary of their lying federal government, which has cynically committed troops to vague foreign objectives at great cost in American lives and the lives of civilians who are caught in the wars. Iraq is only a recent example of the betrayal of trust that has been hammered home for decades.
These lies and betrayals come at a high cost in public trust, not only in the political sphere, but in public health, trust of Americans in each other and in the possibilities of the future.
I think we have only just begun to fathom the trust that has been lost, the cost of the cynical and repeated betrayals of the American people by those in power.
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Transcript
Doublethink in Institutions
00:00:11
Speaker
In 1984, George Orwell wrote, The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture, and the Ministry of Plenty with starvation.
00:00:27
Speaker
These contradictions are not accidental, nor do they result from ordinary hypocrisy. They are deliberate exercises in doublethink.
9/11 Attack Witnessed
00:00:40
Speaker
The first year medical student stood next to me with a black stethoscope casually draped over the shoulders of her short white coat. She had stopped mid-stride and inhaled sharply.
00:00:53
Speaker
Involuntarily, she covered her shocked open mouth with her left hand, her eyes wide. I stood next to her as we watched the second aircraft slam into the World Trade Center tower and explode.
Preparedness and Aftermath
00:01:09
Speaker
Activity in the entire medical school cafeteria arrested in disbelief as CNN coverage displaced shot every thought. trying cnn There was a shared moment when all the medical students and staff realized this is not an accident.
00:01:28
Speaker
Shortly afterward, we received communications from the Boston University Medical School authorities that we should not expect to go home that night. Rather, we would all be needed as second responders for triage and emergency medicine.
00:01:45
Speaker
Fleets of ambulances would be expected to arrive from New York City by evening, filled with the injured. Lacerations, fractures, head trauma, shock, and blood loss would need immediate care to prevent further mortality.
00:02:03
Speaker
No matter our training and background as surgeons, janitorial staff, pathologists, pediatricians, graduate students, orderlies, teaching faculty, secretaries, deans, we would need to snap on blue medical gloves, don white coats, take a deep breath, and pull together as a team of hundreds.
00:02:30
Speaker
But nobody came.
00:02:33
Speaker
They were all dead, or had walked away from the World Trade Center site. I will never forget the hollow feeling walking home alone in the dark that awful day, along brick sidewalks of my Boston neighborhood, past stoops of brownstone homes, lit with the flickering, warm candlelight glow of dozens of votive candles,
00:03:02
Speaker
People sat quietly on their steps, absorbing that the world had changed, and in ways that no one yet understood.
Shift from Sympathy to War
00:03:13
Speaker
For the next few days, the entire world was deeply moved, united in solidarity and sympathetic to the United States. The headline in the famously acidic Le Monde was, Nous sommes tous Américains.
00:03:31
Speaker
And then, almost as suddenly, the United States was at war in Iraq. Not with Osama bin Laden, but with Saddam Hussein.
00:03:42
Speaker
A fig leaf of weapons of mass destruction covering the most appalling lie that this conflict would mete out justice to the perpetrators of September 11th.
00:03:56
Speaker
American officials lied to the United Nations. General Colin Powell later said, I regret it. I will always regret it. It was a terrible mistake on all our parts and on the intelligence community.
00:04:12
Speaker
I wish it had been different. The Lancet estimated the Iraq war beginning with the 2003 invasion deaths, 601,000
Deceit and Erosion of Trust
00:04:19
Speaker
them violent. cost six hundred and fifty four thousand nine hundred and sixty five excess deaths six hundred and one thousand of
00:04:32
Speaker
Since the Vietnam War, Americans have grown weary of their lying federal government, which has cynically committed troops to vague foreign objectives at great cost in American lives and the lives of civilians who are caught in the wars.
00:04:49
Speaker
Iraq's only the recent example of the betrayal of trust that's been hammered home for decades.
00:04:57
Speaker
Hilariously, tragically, without apparent irony, The Trump administration has now changed the Defense Department's official name to the Department of War.
00:05:10
Speaker
Orwell would be entertained at the lack of subtlety.
Pandemic and Trust Issues
00:05:15
Speaker
These lies and betrayals come at a high cost in public trust, not only in the political sphere, but in public health, of trust of Americans in each other and in the possibilities of the future.
00:05:29
Speaker
the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated trends in declining trust that were already firmly in place. Before the pandemic, I would have said that a great public health crisis would naturally tend to pull Americans together to create a shared purpose and goal and common understanding, the way that a great external threat so often brings a nation together, just like 9-11 had done.
00:05:55
Speaker
How wrong I was. Now, I doubt there ever could be a crisis so grave, a new 1917 influenza, a Great Depression, a Pearl Harbor, a Sputnik, that would unite Americans in solidarity and mutual trust to press forward with American ingenuity and optimism to change the course of history.
00:06:19
Speaker
I think we're past that point. On the other hand, maybe I underestimate the power of mass death to create strong feelings of unity and connection, of shared suffering and compassion.
Memorials and Reflection
00:06:32
Speaker
My other indelible memory of 9-11 is the trip I took to New York City in October of that year. I went to St. Vincent's Hospital, the nearest major medical facility to Ground Zero, which was not even overwhelmed with injuries on that terrible day.
00:06:49
Speaker
Outside the entrance, in the chilly, darkening, early evening, I walked quietly and carefully past a folk memorial. The walls of the hospital held Scotch-tape flyers with pictures and names and phone numbers with tags to rip off asking, Have you seen my dad?
00:07:10
Speaker
Have you seen my brother? Have you seen my mother? Most of the votive candles lined up under the flyers had long since burned out, but one or two still flickered, or had been replaced by a fresh candle.
Hope for Honest Leadership
00:07:30
Speaker
I think we've only just begun to fathom the trust that's been lost, the cost of the cynical and repeated betrayals of the American people by those in power. I call to mind those flickering votive candles,
00:07:44
Speaker
Whenever I begin to feel too comfortable with my life, too pleased with progress in oncology, too optimistic about the arrival of new drugs and medical technologies, too certain that I have understood mortality, my own or any anyone else's.
00:08:02
Speaker
I hope that America's new leadership will find the courage and the honesty to do the same. But I doubt it.