Dick Cheney’s heart
Of course, many of those who hate him would quip that the title of this post is an oxymoron, and that he hasn’t got one. Har dee har har har.
But this sounds pretty interesting to me—a book by Cheney entitled Heart and written with his cardiologist Dr. Jonathan Reiner. Cheney, who had a heart transplant 20 months ago, calls his recovery a miracle.
I’ll say! When he was chosen by George Bush to run in 2000, and then took office, I was convinced that Cheney would die during Bush’s first term or at the very latest his second. His prognosis was dreadful, and the stress of the office (which he apparently discounts; he didn’t perceive it that way at all) would be considerable, especially after 9/11.
For some reason Cheney’s health wasn’t that big an issue in the 2000 campaign, and the reason must have been that he was only running for Vice President rather than president. But that he survived and is thriving today underscores for me the fact that such prognostications for a particular individual are not that good except in the most obvious and inevitable of circumstances.
Remember all the brouhaha about John McCain’s age in 2008? I wrote a post predicting that McCain would be just fine at this point, thank you very much. But I wouldn’t have given two cents for Cheney’s survival. And yet here he is.
Cheney says:
…Dr. Reiner once made an analogy between the course of Cheney’s health and treatment and a person who gets up late and drives to work, but he sees all the traffic lights ahead are red. “‘Cheney,'” he says the doctor told him, “‘when you get to them, they all turn green.’ And that’s… a pretty good description,” says Cheney.
Exactly.
The Left has this Democrat and MSM scripted and fostered, Pavlovian, unthinking, visceral hatred (ask them why and they find it hard to cite anything but slogans) of Cheyney who, from what I can see was one of our most knowledgeable, savvy, and hardworking VPs; a man and patriot who pretty much ran himself into the ground working on behalf of our country.
My fear is that, left unchallenged, the Left’s burning hatred of the Right in general, their routine 24/7 slander and labeling of those on the Right as “the enemy” in a myriad of formulations will, over time and cumulatively, slowly erode our right to be heard, and then our rights in general, until eventually it will just be assumed and “common knowledge” “that everyone knows” that we are “evil,” “plotters,” “obstructionists” and “wreckers,” deserving and having the same status as Jews in Hitler’s Germany.
See, for instance, this statement today by far left Congressional Democrat Steve Cohen (http://newsbusters.org/blogs/mark-finkelstein/2013/10/19/congressman-steve-cohen-tea-party-republicans-are-domestic-enemies#ixzz2iBopVHlh) saying that “Tea Party Congressmen“ are the “domestic enemies” that government officials take an oath to protect and defend against. Enough of these libels circulating around, given credence and broad reach by the MSM, and they start to take on the aspect of truth.
It is becoming increasingly obvious that all of the bad things, all of the sneaky and nefarious acts, all of the evil thoughts that Leftists accuse those on the Right of doing and having are actually projections of what the Left actually thinks and does.
Wolla Dalbo:
Yes, it’s easy to see that the invective is getting worse and the slanderers becoming bolder and bolder. The White House acts as releaser, guide, and enabler of all this.
The problem is that even should a Republican administration be elected, even should Republicans hold the House and gain the Senate, some residue of these labels, libels, and ideas will remain, somehow made somewhat legitimate, and now there to be turned to again and again in the future; the rhetorical goalposts will have been moved.
Once you cross the line and nobody comes down on you like a ton of bricks but just ignores you, soon others will cross that line and, then, eventually pretty much everybody will cross that line.
I came across list around the beginning of Obama’s first term and thought the US was in stage three moving towards four. We are now fully in stage four.
Five stages of a coming persecution can be identified:
(1) The targeted group is stigmatized; its reputation is attacked, possibly by mocking it and rejecting its values.
(2) Then the group is marginalized, or pushed out of the mainstream of society, with deliberate efforts to limit and undo its influence.
(3) The third stage is to vilify the group, viciously attacking it and blaming it for many of society’s problems.
(4) Next, the group is criminalized, with increasing restrictions placed on its activities and eventually even its existence.
(5) The final stage is one of outright persecution.
Wolla-
Just for the record, Rep. Cohen has been the congressman from Memphis since 2006. He is (duh!) Jewish, a lawyer (duh! squared), his daddy was a shrink, his big accomplishment as a Tennessee State Senator was voiding the State’s constitutional ban on lotteries, generating the usual slush fund, some $2 billion since 2006, for TN pols and public education (that cry again: For the Children!). His district, almost all of Memphis, is >60% black. The mayor and a majority of the city council are black.
Cohen knows what side his bread is buttered on.
Neo:
I distinguish the “demands and responsibilities” of an office, public or private, from the “stress” of that office. They are not the same. Doing a good job well is not ipso facto stressful.
I was quite moved to see POTUS W hold the WH door for VP Cheney after a Rose Garden presser early in W’s tenure.
Picking Cheney as VP was W’s single best act; says a lot about the decency of W.
The amazing thing to me is that the progressive libels against Cheney are so wrong. Cheney is basically a big government guy. Read his book, “In My Time.” He never saw a domestic Federal program he didn’t like. And he was a master at bringing home the bacon to Wyoming when he was in Congress. Where he is conservative is in his views of foreign and military policy. He understands that you maintain the peace by being ready for war. He is also a believer that politics end at the water’s edge. He’s basically a Scoop Jackson type.
An old squadronmate of mine is married to a woman who went to school in Casper, Wyoming with Dick and Lynne. The Cheney’s left Casper behind, but they still stay in touch with their old high school classmates. When you’ve risen so high on the totem pole and still aren’t too high and mighty to snub people you knew back when, it says something about their character.
Cheney has been dealing with his heart disease since he was in his 30s. That he has soldiered on in spite of it also speaks to his indomitable will.
It used to be hilarious how the LEft were scared of this Dark Lord of the Sith. I used to hit them up with it all the time. They were shaking in their starbucks coffee foam..
I seem to remember, back in the 2000 election when Bush picked Cheney as his running mate, one of the news programs brought a doctor (cardiolgist?) on the program & began talking to him about Cheney’s medical history & whether the stress of high public office would bring on a heart attack or something. The doctor said something that I thought was rather interesting; he said that it wasn’t the stress so much, as whether or not you let it bother you that causes the damage. That is, if you weren’t frustrated or panicked, there would be no health consequences.
It would seem, then, that Cheney went through office largely on his attitude or ability to not let all the irritations of politics get to him. Not a bad thing to cultivate no matter what your career or vocation is.