"Nurse, is the surgeon who will be operating on me considered good at his job?"

"He is the most progressive doctor I've ever known."  

"But does he save lives?"

"The government has given him many prestigious awards."

"I'm going to die, aren't I?"

"It depends.  What's your party affiliation?"

How far away are we from overhearing conversations like this in hospitals across America?  What once would have called to mind some scene taking place behind the Soviet Union's Iron Curtain now sounds eerily descriptive of America's future.  The professional practice of medicine in the United States has always been held in great esteem because it was seen as a calling that required hard work, discipline, objectivity, and dedication to truth.  After two years of watching doctors all around the country mindlessly follow Commissar Fauci down his rabbit hole of politicized science, though, a lot of Americans will never see medicine the same way.  Even worse, they will never entirely trust physicians again.  Any profession that would seek to deny common therapeutic treatments for suffering patients, betray its bioethical obligation to fully advise patients on potential harms from experimental "vaccines" before demanding their consent, or refuse to respect the personal wishes and needs of patients has surely surrendered any pretense of a loyalty oath to, "First, do no harm."  Any profession that encourages censorship of dissenting expert opinion has surely sacrificed any reputation for objectivity, integrity, or dedication to truth.   

Hey, it's not all bad, though.  The American Academy of Pediatrics, always looking out for the most vulnerable in society, has proved its allegiance to politically powerful teachers' unions at the expense of politically powerless children by insisting that students continue to wrap their faces in cloth all day long during the most critical stage in their lives for developing healthy language and social skills.  And thousands of doctors have proved to the government that they possess the "correct" thoughts required of their new Hypocritical Oath by condemning all protests against "vaccine" mandates as needlessly spreading disease while simultaneously celebrating Black Lives Matter demonstrations as necessary for tackling the public health scourge of "white supremacy."  People in white coats sure do seem obsessed with race, don't they?  Anyway, a lot of ambitious doctors have demonstrated through their "woke" virtue signaling what talented political scientists they really are.  Grants, promotions, and special titles will surely reward their efforts.  

Alas, medicine has debased itself these last two years, so that it may join with the scoundrels of other professions, claim its spoils at the government trough, and cozy up next to the immoral apparatchiks, parasites, and bullies of the State.  Add medicine's scalp to the sizable collection already taken as trophies during the last century's Marxist slaughter of reason and objectivity one profession at a time.  We have public school teachers who refuse to teach, prosecutors who refuse to prosecute, judges who refuse to judge impartially, reporters who refuse to report on anything that might undermine their personal politics, and now health professionals who choose pharmaceutical patronage over patient health.  The professional classes have hollowed themselves out so completely that they stand for nothing aside from whatever talking points they've been handed by the managerial enforcers of State-sanctioned "truth."  Remember, citizens, nothing is correct unless it is politically correct first.  To progress, we must all obey!

Taking a step back, however, it is also helpful to grasp how the Marxists have successfully smashed once-cherished professional standards and transformed white-collar vocations into shallow Potemkin professions lacking any real substance.  The political left chiefly undermined professions by redefining prestige as having nothing to do with merit and everything to do with privilege.  No longer could a college degree be seen as something that required hard work and study; instead, it was merely a way to separate the haves from the have-nots.  No longer could a good job be seen as evidence of someone's talents; instead, it became proof of unearned privilege.  No longer could rigorous professional standards be seen as elevating the most worthy; instead, any standards were viewed circumspectly as preventing the least worthy from obtaining success.  The end result has been the depreciation of academic excellence, skill, work ethic, and competence.  For the generations suckled on "trophies for everyone" assurances, unearned prestige has elevated the meritless.  

Where merit disappeared, dogma took over.  No longer does it matter how much you know but whether you know what the Marxists want you to believe.  Freethinking, originality, and genius have disappeared on university campuses today because those once-treasured gifts are threats to groupthink, political correctness, and obedience.  It is no surprise, then, that students lack all capacity for critical thought and that professors lack all capacity for birthing novel ideas.  Science, as traditionally understood, has always been an investigatory process that almost always augments and replaces majority-held consensuses over time with paradigm shifts fashioned from the radically divergent observations of contrarian thinkers.  However, when diversity of opinion is forbidden and professional careers are killed for wrongthink, then science dies, too, leaving only the mediocre consensus of fools draping themselves in the prestige of science without any inkling of what it requires.  The vacuum created by no longer seeking the talented creates a space for the talentless to reign.  Some of those talentless beneficiaries became medical doctors.  Many of those became willing disciples of Commissar Fauci and his State decrees.  You see, elevating students who never learned to think on their own means elevating professionals who follow orders, not truth.

We are left with a professional class, then, unable to perform its duties and steeped in contradiction.  Colleges have been dumbed down, but degrees are important.  Politicians condemn U.S. history while profiting from its triumphs.  Marxists decry unearned privilege while promoting unearned privilege.  What remains are "professionals" only capable of going along to get along because they've never known success any other way.  Prestige factories produce cheap products that break easily and do not last.  When you look around at society today, from the lowliest municipal bureaucrat to the president of the United States, it is obvious that the further Marxists have succeeded in destroying professional standards, the more guaranteed it becomes that the meritless will rise in those professions' ranks.  After two years of quackery posing as science, it is clear that medicine is the latest log on the left's bonfire of reason, rationality, achievement, know-how, diligence, and faith.

Image via Max Pixel.