It Is Not About Private Versus Public. It Is About The Shit That You Hire

Awesome World Cup match yesterday between Franceand Argentina! This game indirectly says a lot about Québec, which, in turn, will indirectly be an element in the main topic of this entry as it provides several examples of my point. France defeated Argentina 4-3 and advances, booting Argentina out of the World Cup. This was duly and publicy noted by the Falklands Islands, which are British. Neither of Québec's white nationalist Richard Spencer-wannabes, François Legault of the Coalition avenir Québec and Jean-François Lisée of the Parti Québecois--both of who market themselves to ever-so-gullible, jump-at-every-dog-whistle, voters as"defenders of the French culture"--evinced any signs of noticing this, or of any of the French team's accomplishments in this World Cup. This would tell a normal person capable of thinking-other-than-that-inspired-by dog-whistles that Legault and Lisée are frauds and con artists, just like Richard Spencer, who rails against urban multiculturalism while conveniently neglecting to mention that he is a lifelong K-Street pimp, as was the late and entirely unlamented draft-dodging warmonging asshole Charles Krauthammer.

Two of France's goals yesterday were scored by nineteen year-old Kylian Mbappé, who had scored in a previous game this World Cup, and who, in his day-to-day life plays for Paris Saint-Germain, France's best soccer/footy club. The REALFrench, as in France's National soccer/footy team and PSG, accept Kylian Mbappé as one of their own. Kylian Mbappé, however, would be banned from Québec by Legault and Lisée because of the colour of his skin. Legault and Lisée would also ban Force India Formula 1 driver Esteban Ocon from Québec because he has a Spanish last last name, despite the fact that he is actually French--as in REALFrench--in real life, a fact evinced by his open support of PSG, an epitome of REAL French culture these two self-appointed "defenders of the French culture" Legault and Lisée routinely issue zero press releases about.

To paraphrase August Diehl's Major character in Inglourious Basterds, Québec is as "French" as is the bar of any whorehouse. Québec does, however, provide some sterling examples of the main topic of this entry.

The other day, I was having a discussion that devolved into libertarianism and the argument of "which is better, private or public?" This argument has been around forever and is beginning to reach the same "jumped the shark" status as "which is better, 9mm or .40S&W?" Let me explain, and lengthy explanatory asides will be necessary in the course of me doing my 'splainin'.

I have not been well as of late, necessitating a higher-than-usual (and certainly higher than I would care for) number of interactions with Québec's health care system. A good part of Québec's health care system (hospitals, most doctors and this only-in-Québec firmly installed fixture of an abortion called the CLSC, conceived of by hippies to eventually replace hospitals and doctors, but which largely turned out to be such showers of shit that they make the Afghan National Army look like the French Foreign Legion) is public. A small, but significant, part of Québec's health care system (medical devices, pharmacies, agencies subcontracted by the lazy, fat-arsed, pink-haired, crying on Facebook CLSC nurses to do post-op/post-hospitalisation home care) are private.

Both Québec's private and public health care sectors suck immensely and reek of unprofessionalism. This is true as a general statement, but there are decent people within both the public and private aspects of the system, an explanation of which requires one of the asides I alluded to in the penultimate paragraph.

First, understand that, just as not all lawyers are created equal, not all doctors are created equal. In common law jurisdictions (America, Britain, Canada outside of Québec as regards non-criminal law), wherein statutes are often nullified by precedent, the best law school graduates get plucked up by Cromwell&Sullivan to do mergers&acquisitions/martinis&fornication. The losers among law school graduates become prosecutors, and the absolute worst law school graduates become public defenders or full-time lawyers for their Bar Association. This translates very easily into medicine. Amongst medical school graduates, the very best become orthopaedic surgeons (bone surgeons) or ophthalmologists (eye surgeons), while the absolute worst medical school graduates become general practitioners/family practitioners.

This has been my experience in Québec. Every specialist physician I have ever encountered in Québec has been thoroughly professional, so much so that I have to wonder if they snuck in five years in the Foreign Legion sometimes, given how different they are, not only from general practitioners/family practitioners, but also from Gaspesians like François Legault and Patrick Huard as a whole. General practitioners/family practitioners in Québec are disgusting slobs who have a bare minimum of competence, make all sorts of asinine, irrelevant jokes and remarks, the latter involving 30 minutes out of a 45 minute visit spent bashing the Minister of Health, and run around half-naked during the summer months and with Chechen beards twelve months a year. The latter may be a uniquely Québec thing. I also dealt with a lot of general/family practitioners in New York. They were thoroughly professional, never tried to be my fucking friend, never bashed the State Department of Health, were clean shaven with regulation haircuts, and wore the uniform (shirt, tie, lab coat, regulation trousers and shoes, or scrub suits) all the time, despite the fact that they were not on active duty at the time I saw them.

In my experience, the quality of nurses in Québec splits down ethnic lines. African and Asian (in the US, as opposed to British, sense of the word "Asian") nurses tend to be professionals, just like the New York general/family practioners I knew. So do Italian nurses and French-Canadian nurses who speak fluent English. Gaspesian nurses, on the other hand, are disgusting slobs who cannot even speak French properly (it is hard to imagine Jean-Michel Jacquesrountinely having "BOIN-LA-LA!",  "WUUUAAAY" and "WHY-ON DOHNK!" fly out every time he opens his mouth.)

Jean-Michel Jacques  is supremely illustrative here. I could not find anything substantive in English about him, so I will translate bits of Jean-Marc Tanguy's article on him in Number 382 of the REALFrench magazine RAIDS. M. Jacques is currently a legislator and a Mayor (Yes, France allows its elected officials to multitask between Federal and local roles.) He is a trained nurse who served in the French Navy's Marine Commandos (like US Navy SEALs), including several tours of Afghanistan, secondment to GIGN,and who--crucially to the topic at hand--helped to form France's elite OPSC (Combat First Aid Operators.) Gaspesian nurses and other health-care workers are among those who screech "Je me souviens de mes origines françaises!" ("I remember my French origins!") the loudest, yet not a damned one of them is ANYWHERENEAROPSC standards. Like the OPSC, Gaspesian nurses are public sector, at least overwhelmingly so. This, and elements of a common written language, are about the ONLYthings Gaspesian nurses and other health-care workers have in common with the OPSC. The OPSC train at Lorientwhile most Gaspesian nurses and other healthcare workers train at some shithole like CEGEP de Gaspesie.

Long story short,Jean-Michel Jacques was a public-sector nurse (and indeed is still in the public sector as a legislator and a Mayor today), as are Gaspesian nurses for the most part. Jean-Michel Jacques is the epitome of professionalism and competence, while his fellow public sector nurses who are Gaspesians are just plain SHIT! Private versus public does not enter into this as far as quality is concerned.

Let me give a personal example. I had to visit a doctor recently. Before I saw the doctor, I had to go through a Gaspesian nurse, who was the poster-girl for what the DSM-IV calls "inappropriate display of affect." Stupid-ass ear-to-ear grin trying to be my fucking friend. But, when I told her I had concerns about my systolic, she got the constipated look as if I was speaking English, Klingon or Martian. I had to patiently (extremely patiently, I have to add), explain what systolic is. (Systolic is the upper figure in a blood pressure reading.) This led to a lengthy "AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!" when the light finally clicked in the empty void behind her eyes and between her ears.

By stark contrast, here is a video of OPSC-trained nurses in action.

Not only are these OPSC, unlike the dingbat Gaspesian nurse I had to deal with, REALFrenchmen, but they are VERY WELL AWARE of what systolic is. As with Jean-Michel Jacques, these OPSC, like the Gaspesian nurses and other healthcare workers, are public-sector and share elements of a common written language. This is where the similarities end. Jean-Michel Jacques and the OPSC are the epitome of PROFESSIONALISMwhile Gaspesian nurses and other health care workers are the epitome of SHIT.

The same thing applies to private sector health care in Québec. In my experiences, African pharmacists and African pharmacists' mates act with a professionalism identical to that of Jean-Michel Jacques and the OPSC. In my experience, post-hospitalisation home care in Québec is mostly done by Ostlegionen, which is to say non-Russian former Soviet personnel. I have no clue as to what there actual ethnicity is, nor do I care. What I do know is that they speak neither French nor English with any degree of comprehensibility, are white, and behave in the same loud, aggressive, manner as did the Georgians at Lienz at the end of the war as described by Graf von Tolstoy. These Otslegionen are private sector, as were the general practitioners/family practitioners I knew in New York. That is the ONLYthing these Ostlegionen have in common with the general practitioners/family practitioners I knew in New York. The latter were professional, disciplined, and to the point, while the former are loud, dressed like slobs and talk 95% of the time about their daily woes (such as how they are Nobel Prize-winning physicists in their country of origin but have to take menial jobs here because the Boards will not recognise their credentials) and do little to nothing about the job  THEY ARE ACTUALLY PAID TO DO, which is a specificpost-hospitalisation service.

The Québec health-care sector may or may not be representative of the woes of the private and public sector, so let me give another example. June and July are national holiday months in Québec, Ulster, Canada, America and France. Gaspesian musicians are arguably private sector. They get fed a shitload of my taxpayers through the gigantic abortion of a waste of my taxpayer dollars (which would be far better spent on health care) that is SODEC. Yet, SODEC, atrocious abortion of government waste of taxpayer dollars that it disgustingly is, does not constitute the sole revenue for Gaspesian musicians. For this reason, one can make the argument that Gaspesian musicians are private sector. Here is what these disgusting slobs shat out to celebrate their "national holiday."

Like Gaspesian musicians, Flute and Drum bands in Ulster and Scotland are private sector. Below is a video of the Govan Protestant Boys Flute Band. The contrast between their discipline and professionalism and the fucking abortion of a shitshow that is Gaspesian musicians in the video above could not be more stark.

As I said, the GPBFB are, like Gaspesian musicians, private-sector. That is the only thing they share with Gaspesian musicians. The private-sector GPBFB, on the other hand (and most counterintuitively to libertarians) have a LOT MORE in common with the public sector bands of the United States Army in terms of professionalism and discipline.

According to libertarian logic, Gaspesian musicians and the GPBFB should be far superior to the US Army Bands because the former two are private sector while the latter is public sector. In reality, the private sector GPBFB and the public sector US Army Bands have far more in common with each other in terms of professionalism and quality, rendering the public-private divide between them entirely meaningless, just as the commonality to Gaspesian musicians and the GPBFB of both of them being in the private sector is entirely meaningless given that the latter are entirely professional while the former are entirely shit.

Public versus private is a dumb and meaningless argument. Quality of personnel is what matters. Just like quality of Frenchmanship is what distinguishes REALFrenchmen from Gaspesians. For convenient reference, here, again, is how Gaspesian slobs celebrate their "national holiday,"

and here is how REALFrenchmen celebrate their National Holiday.

Now, I am not 100% without empathy. I can understand how someone who does not speak French can confuse a Gaspesian for a REALFrenchman. Even if you do not speak French, however, the stark, massive, contrast between the two videos above shows why a Gaspesian is to a REALFrenchman what what a Tribeca street vendor tries to hawk onto you is to a REALPrada, Gucci, Dolce&Gabbana or Rolex.