Words are our tools of communication. JVF
I don’t know how I became interested in words. My teachers would certainly attest to the fact that my efforts in English education were at best perfunctory (an action carried out with minimum effort). I remember my seventh-grade teacher who insisted her students purchase a box of flash cards containing 1000 important words for success. The box sat in my closets until eventually becoming lost with the serial moves of growing up.
I think I became a nascent (coming into existence) writer when I began spiritual journaling 25 years ago. Perhaps my search for the right word to express my feelings motivated me. I later discovered the term mot juste is the perfect word for a situation or thought.
The Covid pandemic of 2020 still weighs heavily on our children and all of us. The coronavirus is one of many viruses that produce the common cold. But the weaponized coronavirus from Wuhan, China, killed millions, led to government tyranny and crippled our children’s education.
In 2020, we sat quarantined in our homes and surfed the internet for information and the latest proclamations of titular (in name only) experts. And like other living things, the English language evolved to produce the portmanteau (blended) word doomscrolling. Mr. Webster defines doomscrolling as “spending excessive time scrolling through online content, especially news, that makes one feel sad, anxious or angry.”
I admit that I am guilty of doomscrolling. My excuse is that writing this column requires me to stay abreast of current events and research the topics about which I write. Admittedly, it takes a toll on me. But as I have recently written, this is my “tour of duty,” and this column is what I can do to educate and encourage others to resist the great evil that has come upon our land. I have been blessed, and Jesus said, “To whom much is given, much is expected” (Luke 12:48). And I should not whine because I’m not in harm’s way, like our troops or our president.
Actually, I also spend time on the internet searching for encouraging stories, often just scrolling through the incessant doom and gloom headlines of the major news media rather than reading their screed (rant).
There is positive news. If you just listen to the NY Times’ attempts to discourage Republicans, you would be unaware that Republican voter registration between 2020 and 2024 added 2.4 million, eclipsing Democrat registration. The trend has continued in 2025 and 2026. Remember, political campaigns are largely built on “soundbites and snapshots.” In other words, they often use gotchas, from the 1974 amalgamation (combining) of got you.
Two online news services do offer positive segments like “America Together” and “Faith and Values.” Another offers “American Life” and “Faith.” However, sensational and negative stories sell newspapers and generate internet clicks and advertising revenue.
In antiquity, education was built on the Trivium comprising grammar (words and usage), dialectic (the study of ideas) and rhetoric (the study of persuasion). In the Middle Ages, the more science-oriented Quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy) was added to form the traditional seven aspects of a classical liberal arts education.
Admittedly, my interests and formal education were more science-based along the lines of the Quadrivium. However, my informal education after medical school has continued with aspects of the Trivium in an autodidactic (self-taught) fashion. Now I use grammar to present ideas and to persuade through rhetoric and logic.
Since I’m now retired from medical practice and no longer study medicine, I have a lot more time for keeping up with current events, doing topical research, writing, spiritual journaling and personal reflection. Aristotle challenged me, writing, “the unexamined life is not worth living.”
I never thought of myself as an academic, although I practiced internal medicine and geriatrics in an academic medical center for years, training young doctors, medical students and later physician assistants. But then I never thought of myself as a writer until I became a columnist with The Knoxville Focus in 2008. That was nearly 1000 essays and three books ago. Now with both formal and informal education, I’ve been blessed with careers as a doctor and now as a writer of sorts. It’s been a good run.
If you found this foray into the origin of “The Doctor is in” column boring, I apologize. But how can you draw conclusions without some understanding of the source?
I’ll conclude with the far more important issue of the November midterm elections. Everyone has a bias, and claiming otherwise is the calling card of dishonesty. So, if you haven’t figured it out, I am a conservative and support common sense policies. And I am opposed to the “crazzies” now in charge of the Democratic Party. Actually, it is not the Democratic Party because they are anything but democratic, as their leadership and Kamala Harris proved in the 2024 ouster of Joe Biden.
Because the Democrats have few sane policy initiatives, they have chosen to make the midterms about President Trump, though he is not on any ballot. Consequently, in the last several columns I have been listing the accomplishments of the Trump administration. Here are a few more factual examples:
Gas averaged $5 a gallon under Biden, but is now $4 a gallon, despite a war to keep Iran from having a nuclear weapon.
The border wall is being completed.
The average American family income has reached record levels.
Lowest unemployment in 60 years.
Drastic reduction in crime except in sanctuary cities.
Treasury Secretary Bessent said, “When you take the illegals out of the workforce, working-class wages go up. When you send illegals back home, rents go down.”
Finally, I’m voting down-ballot for Republican common sense that supports the police, the military, ICE, voter ID, term limits, capitalism, and against the Democratic Party’s advocacy for gender reassignment surgery for kids, unlimited abortion, socialism, sanctuary cities, abolishing the presidency, packing the Supreme Court and giving citizenship to 25 million illegals.
Yes, folks, they are really that crazy. Vote to stop them, or we’re done!
