Ask health care providers to describe what constitutes a serious health event, and you’re likely to get a bewildering assortment of medical definitions based on lengths and levels of experience of the opinionaters as well as the nature of their medical specializations.  They’ve all seen such a variety of human health crises that it’s impossible to narrow all their experiences down to a common description, even of a single event.

But I will wager that almost every health care provider in the country, upon viewing the video of Hillary Clinton’s collapse at the 9/11 memorial last weekend, will agree that what we are witnessing is a serious medical episode.  They will vary widely as to causation, but considering the age of the subject and her past health history, virtually none will dismiss the events depicted in that brief video as anything less than a serious medical incident.

Yet the Hillary campaign is doing its very best to dismiss possible thousands of professional opinions in its attempt to convince the American public that her serious medical occurrence was inconsequential pneumonia and indicative of nothing medically prohibitive regarding this almost 70-year-old woman’s ability to serve four years in one of the most stress-inducing jobs in the world.

All of which brings me to CBS and 60 Minutes, which just ran a segment on the continuing nuclear threat to America, presumably from the Russians, in some new Cold War the media keeps insisting we are now entering.  The 60 Minutes piece, which will air a second segment next week, was obviously contrived to insert doubt in the minds of American voters as to whether Donald Trump is up to the mental and emotional challenges of handling a nuclear confrontation.  The timing is simply too convenient to be otherwise.  And consider the source.

As I watched all the ominous details unfurling on CBS, an image kept replaying in my mind: that of a seriously debilitated senior citizen first being held rigidly erect, then collapsing toward the pavement; being grabbed up, thrown into a van, and then hustled away out of public view.  My reaction: How could any person in that condition be capable of responding effectively to an alarm of incoming missiles should the two events occur concurrently?  Moreover, wouldn’t the circumstances of such a physical collapse by the commander-in-chief throw the entire National Command Authority into question?  Who present would qualify to determine the c-in-c incapable of performing her duties?  Long, confused minutes would tick by while incoming missiles continued to fly at near-orbital speeds to their American targets.  Until such a medical determination occurred, who in the command structure could or would assume the enormous responsibility of ordering our defense forces to respond?

As the 60 Minutes piece made clear, intricate codes and confirmation processes are all part of the failsafe protections built into our National Command Authority to prevent a mistaken release of our own nuclear arsenal.  Watching that CBS presentation, I had to wonder how any person in the condition of that woman who stumbled from that curb and collapsed toward the pavement beside that van could possibly comprehend such complexities as those codes and processes demand.  And if she could not, but her authority couldn’t be quickly transferred, what might be the fate of our nation?

Thank you, 60 Minutes, for opening my old, weak eyes to Hillary’s inability to serve.