"I Was Told I Couldn't Be Seen Unless I Submitted to the Test" - By Peter Meakly-Gunn
As you're all aware, the reprobate Emperor of Sacramento Gavin Newsom has very recently extended his mask-wearing mandate to all his personal serfs, i.e., the inhabitants of California, whenever we're outside.
As a prefatory remark, all of you know I live alone and seldom venture forth even in 'normal' times. Since the beginning of the virtual imprisonment of America, I have gone out perhaps six or seven times. The point is that my anchoretic life keeps me apart from people anyway. Even when I do go out I remain physically distant from most folks.
If the bureaucrats running the government agencies had any spine they might actually stand up for the rights of citizens. God forbid they do that, however!
This morning an officious government toady from the VA called me to schedule a long-delayed — at least three months late! — appointment for a potentially serious health matter that has plagued me since the beginning of December 2019.
She then had the temerity to tell me that in order to be seen I must undergo a COVID 'test.'
I replied that I am no longer government property (as is the case with any active-duty serviceman) and that no way in hell would I submit to the tyranny of a 'test.'
She answered, "it's VA policy." I asked her to provide me with the name of her supervisor and to show me in writing that imperious edict and who issued it. Naturally, she couldn't and then proceeded to tell me "I'm just doing what I'm told and following orders." All of us know there's plenty of historical precedent with that phrase. (Maybe she's never heard of the Nuremberg Trials?)
Once more she said I couldn't be seen unless I submitted to the test. So, denying a veteran medical care because he won't consent to ridiculous demands is now the VA's official policy? How's that for government efficiency and 'concern for our nation's veterans'?
We spent twenty minutes on the phone and, believe me, she got schooled! I'm not proud of it, but I reduced her to literal tears. Sometimes it's necessary to stand up for one's rights with strong language, harshness, and an unwillingness to cower before those who are supposed to serve a nation's citizens.
Everywhere in the history of the world, governments and their countless agencies have existed, ultimately, for one thing, and one thing only: to increase government power. None that I know of exists strictly for the benefit of its citizens.
(Yes, the Church, as ordered by Jesus Christ Himself, is supposed to exist for Him and by extension for the spiritual welfare of His flock, but look at the state of the Church over the past fifty or so years. Most of Her divinely ordained shepherds have betrayed Christ and turned the Faith into a circus, but I digress.)
Having worked for more than two years in a hospital, I absolutely do care for those who toil in VA hospitals, and for the fraternal comrades in arms who receive care at VA facilities.
But I'm no danger to any of them especially if they're wearing masks. Everyone who pontificates about wearing masks tacitly or loudly acknowledges that he himself is protected, so why the fear of illness from those who don't wear masks? One cannot have it both ways. Either the masks work or they don't. If they do, then the wearer is 'protected' from whatever cooties that the 'unwashed' and 'unmasked' among us might carry.
By the way, the woman called me again a little more than two hours ago and said she had talked to her supervisor. The VA might make an exception for me — HIGHLY doubtful — or perhaps I can use the 'Veterans Choice' program and see a doctor outside the VA; the VA would cover that cost.
(In theory, it sounds great but based on personal experience I can report to you it's awful and offers about as much 'choice' to veterans as a starving tomcat does to a hapless mouse.) You veterans receiving this e-mail may have similar experiences.
Anyway, if I croak in the near future remember that whatever procedures I undergo at the VA may entail poking and jabbing that may transmit, deliberately or otherwise, God-knows-what into my body. I inherently do not trust the great majority of people at the VA.
In about two weeks I'll undergo an endoscopy, before which sedation will be administered. I'm not looking forward to the whole affair, nor to anything nefarious, it may reveal or — God forbid — deliver into my body. How many physicians give a damn about or incorporate into their professional lives the Hippocratic oath?
Just know that whatever happens in the future may depend on how the VA views me: either as a pitiable, innocuous, noncompliant malcontent worthy of ignoring or an irascible son of a b*tch whose only worth is as lawn fertilizer after he's been buried six feet under at a National Cemetery.