Tag: dementia

A ‘Jezebel spirit’?

djt – “an impetuous child”

I saw this AP story, “What’s a ‘Jezebel spirit’? Some Christians use the term to paint Kamala Harris with a demonic brush.” And you wonder why many people steer clear of “some Christians.”

“Christian nationalist leaders are telling followers that Vice President Kamala Harris is under the influence of a ‘Jezebel spirit,’ using a term with deeply racist and misogynistic roots that is setting off alarm bells for religious and political scholars.

“The concept is inspired by the biblical story of the evil Queen Jezebel, who persecuted prophets and was punished with a horrible death. The word ‘Jezebel’ was used during slavery and throughout U.S. history to describe Black women, casting them as overtly sexual and untrustworthy.”

Never underestimate the power of misogynoir.

“In the context of ‘Jezebel spirit,’ the term has sinister connotations, suggesting the person is under the influence of demons in a spiritual battle between good and evil. People who have studied the Jan. 6 insurrection warn that similar rhetoric on spiritual warfare drove many to the U.S. Capitol that day.”

If you want to hear more about The Dangerous Reality of White Christian Nationalism, watch Kat Abu here.

djt keeps prompting Christians to go out and vote. I’m planning to do so THIS week (not for him), in the unlikely event that by doing so, I will stop feeling anxious about the contest.

Arnold Palmer and Mickey D’s

Of course, the election is a dead heat, despite rational reasons not to vote for the guy, not just over policy. The Weekly Sift guy has the right attitude, which I wish I could replicate. “I can’t help but learn from headlines that the race is still close. How much more do I need to know? I know who I’m voting for, and I’ve already written my check to the Harris campaign. I could spend all day fretting about whether the likelihood of Harris winning is 55% or 45%, but what’s the point?”

He also notes about djt, “Father Time is undefeated, and he gets us all eventually. What we’re seeing here is exactly how dementia works: It takes our little quirks and exaggerates them until they become serious dysfunctions.” He needs to release his medical records. 

From A Word A Day: “Whenever [djt] trains his blunderbuss…it’s difficult to decipher whether he’s deadly serious, merely trying to generate instant outrage, or just heading off on a senescent ramble.” – Irish Times (Dublin); Aug 9, 2024.

(The number of people who’ve told me that JD Vance and the cabinet are going to 25th amendment djt is astonishing. Even they believe that Orange is not up to the task.) 

Turn the entire machinery of the government to his whims.

But Ezra Klein takes a different view in the New York Times; djt is not diminished, just more himself. “It is Trump’s absence of inhibition that makes him a great entertainer. [Entertainer? Meh.] It is Trump’s absence of inhibition that makes him feel, to so many, like not a politician — the fact that he was already the U.S. president notwithstanding. It is why the people who want to be like him — the mini-Trumps… — can’t pull it off. What makes Trump Trump isn’t his views on immigration, though they are part of it. It’s the manic charisma born of his disinhibition.

“It is his great strength. It is also his terrible flaw…

“Trump’s disinhibition is yoked to a malignancy at his core. I do believe he’s a narcissist… Trump does not see beyond himself, what he thinks, what he wants, and how he’s feeling. He does not listen to other people. He does not take correction or direction. Wisdom is the ability to learn from experience, to learn from others. Donald Trump doesn’t really learn. He once told a biographer, ‘When I look at myself in the first grade, and I look at myself now, I’m basically the same. The temperament is not that different.”

Hit the brakes
Endorsements, or lack of the same
ITEM: Washington Post Says It Won’t Endorse Anyone for President. Will Lewis, the company’s chief executive, said the paper was “returning to our roots” of not endorsing presidential candidates. The Post has endorsed presidential candidates since 1976, when it gave its stamp of approval to Jimmy Carter, although it did endorse Dwight Eisenhower in 1952.

Robert Kagan, “editor-at-large of the Washington Post and a persistent neoconservative critic of [djt]… Members of the Post’s editorial board were surprised Friday when they learned about the decision not to endorse from top opinion editor David Shipley, Semafor reported. The board drafted an endorsement of Harris earlier this month, which was sent to the newspaper’s owner, billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who reportedly pressured publisher and CEO Will Lewis to not give an endorsement.”

The Borowitz Report, a satire column, noted: “Urging Prime customers not to miss out, on Friday Amazon founder Jeff Bezos offered to sell the Washington Post’s integrity as a ‘once-in-a-lifetime Black Friday Deal.’ Calling the Post’s integrity ‘a signature feature that made this former newspaper great,’ the product page for the item listed it at $4.99 with free shipping… Customers shopping for Bezos’s spine, soul, and human decency got an ‘Uh oh, something went wrong’ error message, indicating that the products did not exist.”

Also
ITEM : The Los Angeles Times opted not to endorse anyone for President. Per Columbia Journalism Review: “Mariel Garza, the editorials editor…, resigned on Wednesday after the newspaper’s owner blocked the editorial board’s plans to endorse… Harris for president. ‘I am resigning because I want to make it clear that I am not okay with us being silent. In dangerous times, honest people need to stand up. This is how I’m standing up.'” Two of its writers subsequently quit. “On October 11, Patrick Soon-Shiong, who bought the newspaper for $500 million in 2018, informed the paper’s editorial board that the Times would not be making an endorsement for president. The message was conveyed to Garza by Terry Tang, the paper’s editor.”
ITEM: The New York Times supported “The Only Patriotic Choice for President.” 
ITEM:  “Scientific American, the 179-year-old bedrock of American scientific publication, has endorsed Harris for President, only the second such endorsement in its long history.” Cory Doctorow notes, “Some institutions are getting over their discomfort with norm-breaking and standing up for democracy.”
FINALLY…
Expat Cole Haddon wrote on Medium: “All I can think about is the polls that continue to show Kamala Harris, a typically flawed Democratic candidate, polling neck-and-neck with a convicted felon, rapist, and accused insurrectionist currently running on throwing out the U.S. Constitution, punishing political enemies and whomever else he feels like, and mass-arresting and deporting millions of those he deems to be foreigners — and half of voters think this sounds like a great idea for their country’s future. In other words, nearly half of U.S. voters would prefer fascism over sharing what they perceive to be ‘their country.'”

Dementia, anger issues, and many guns

Confronting Dementia And Guns

From the Alzheimer’s Association

There was a touching article in the July 24 edition of the Boston Globe by Jake Berry Ellison Jr. titled, “My elderly father had dementia, anger issues, and many guns. What were we to do?” The subtitle: “One underreported aspect of America’s firearms epidemic: armed seniors with memory problems. My family had few legal options for disarming our dad.”

I don’t know how to make it available to you. However, I can provide some useful links from the piece. Here’s the third paragraph:  “My father was one of some 60-plus million Americans over 65, an age demographic on track to make up nearly a quarter of the US population by 2054. Of this population, it is estimated that nearly 7 million currently suffer from Alzheimer’s or related dementias, and in 30 years, that number will grow to more than 13 million. Of those elderly with dementia, as many as half of them will live in a home with a gun.”

A few paragraphs later: “Researchers, physicians, and public health experts have been working hard to get information and tips about firearms and dementia to the general public. Dr. Emmy Betz, professor of emergency medicine at the University of Colorado, says progress is being made, albeit slowly, with the help of firearms enthusiasts, sellers, and associated groups who are raising awareness…

Having a plan

“Betz and other experts have developed the Firearm Life Plan to help families have that conversation.” The website states: “The Firearm Life Plan was developed through feedback and guidance from firearm owners, family members, and other individuals who have experience with firearms or in providing support and care to older adults who own firearms… [Coversations] helped us develop tools, discussion points, and other materials that might assist firearm owners make and share these decisions with those they trust.”

Think of planning how to initiate conversations about taking away an elderly person’s car keys, only potentially more consequential. Or consider it like other decisions that need to be made if a family member becomes severely ill or injured and why you should have the conversations beforehand.

Betz co-authored the 2020 article Views on Firearm Safety Among Caregivers of People With Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias.

“’If you are not in your right mind, and you have a delusion that the kid knocking on the door is the devil or a robber, of course, it’s dangerous,’ says Fredrick Vars, a professor at the University of Alabama law school and author of the 2017 paper Not Young Guns Anymore: Dementia and the Second Amendment.”

Self-registry

The article discusses Donna’s Law for Suicide Prevention. From the site: “Donna’s Law is a voluntary self-registry prohibition to gun sales for those who choose to create self-defense against gun suicide.”

Check out the Kaiser Health News and PBS piece, Unlocked And Loaded: Families Confront Dementia And Guns from 2018, by JoNel Aleccia and Melissa Bailey. 

But there are roadblocks to getting better data about gun violence. “Historical underfunding for firearm violence prevention research has created challenges for expanding the evidence-base and implementing life-saving policies,” the Surgeon General’s advisory states.

From the Globe: “One legal tool available to family members of people with dementia is the Extreme Risk Protection Order, known colloquially as a ‘Red Flag’ law. Unfortunately, ERPOs are very hard to obtain.”

This is a fascinating topic that had simply never occurred to me before, though there was a 2018 report about it on NBC News.

Movie review: The Father [Zeller]

about dementia

The FatherIn the film The Father, the storytellers found a new way to figure out how to portray losing one’s facilities. We see Anthony (Oscar-nominated Anthony Hopkins) in his apartment.

Or maybe it’s the apartment of his daughter Anne (Oscar-nominated Olivia Colman). She’s moving from London to Paris. He finds this ridiculous since “They don’t even speak English.” Or maybe she isn’t.

Anne is clearly devoted to her father, although occasionally exhausted. Anthony can be prickly with his primary caretaker, which is often the case, though he appears to love her as well.

Laura (Imogen Poots) is one of his caretakers, looking very much like someone else to him. Paul (Rufus Sewell) is Anne’s impatient partner. The portrayal of different actors in the same roles is a clever device. Mark Gatiss is The Man and Olivia Williams, The Woman.

The screenplay is by Christopher Hampton and Florian Zeller, based on Zeller’s play.  This is probably why the production feels a bit stagey.

Or maybe that’s an asset. Megan Basham of the WORLD notes, “The close-set and small cast are the ideal building blocks to illustrate the narrowing that so often comes with the end of life, when the world available to us, both physically and socially, grows so small.”

Because I was so damned confused – as we are supposed to be, I suspect – I didn’t really warm up to this film until near the end. It’s very well acted; it’s just a tough subject.

In the pantheon

The Father is a fine addition to the list of Movies About Alzheimer’s and Dementia You Shouldn’t Miss, published in January 2020. I’ve seen only the two most recent, Away From Her and Still Alice. These are more dramatic portrayals, as I recall, effective in their own ways.

The reviews for The Father were 98% positive in Rotten Tomatoes. Eli Glasner of the CBC News Network writes, “Ultimately I’m struck by Anthony Hopkins’ courage. At 83, fearlessly taking on this role with such vulnerability.”

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