Van Gross, M.D. of Philadelphia: A Shadow Presidency If There Ever Was One

By Kenneth Bruce Van Gross M.D.

The culmination of a 25-year Essay and Poem Series beginning in 1997, Van Gross, MD of Philadelphia captures the final six years of this four-book journey.

Leading off with the revenge packed Van Gross of Monte Cristo that covered 1997-2004, followed by the mega-compilation Five Books of Van Gross’s spanning 2004- 2007 and its acclaimed follow-up Van-Dalismo 2008-2015, Kenneth Bruce Van Gross, M.D. either was to enter the dust bin of history with the ultra-contemporary Van Gross, M.D. of Philadelphia (traversing 2016- mid 2022) or induce an irrevocable stupor in those who actually muddled through this ridiculous collection of so-called literary works.

But seriously folks, take the Master Work Quarter Century Series, please. And throw in the now legendary Visiting Other Countries with Coral Brain and “Friends”.

Mark Twain, P.J. O’Rourke, Kerouac, Keats, Whitman, Freud, Jung, Camus, Lenny Bruce, Sinclair Lewis, political commentators up the wazoo, you like all these things? You enjoyed the Healthcare, Education, Sports, Race and Philosophy positing in the prior four essay/poetry volumes that turned you into combos of Fauci, Jonas Salk, Paolo Freire, Red Smith, Kierkegaard and Bob Marley? Well, all these characters are embodied in the multi-dimensional Van Gross, M.D. mind climax in this epic final volume, Van Gross, M.D. of Philadelphia.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 18, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669842446

Kenneth Bruce Van Gross M.D.

Preceding deplorables such as Hillary Rodham Clinton and wallflowers such as Donald J. Trump, Kenneth Bruce Van Gross, MD jumped off an earth seeking asteroid and became one of the early founders of "fake news" which was originally called “satire” back in the early Aughts but was adopted if not stolen by evil doers to spread political propaganda. Van Gross, MD is a writer and neurologist who has been awarded Diplomate status by both the American Board of Internal Medicine and by the American Board of Neurology and Psychiatry (N). He has lectured extensively on The Aging Brain/Aging Mind and presented original thoughts and poetry on that subject. He has delivered commencement addresses at medical college graduations and dissected the brain, body, and behavior in addition to the great speeches of Kennedy and Lincoln as a University Adjunct Professor in Neuropsychiatry, Medicine, Public Speaking and Communications. Beyond his knowledge in medicine, speech/language and the neurosciences, Van Gross, MD, has developed a unique career as a commentator, poet, and multi-dimensional writer. Having been published in peer reviewed medical journals, popular university newspapers and in the general press, he has revealed diverse literary talents. These include the ability, rare among individuals who have entered medicine, to spell the word “cat” and appropriately place it in a sentence. In addition, his stinging wit and unrestrained consciousness pervade much of his poetry and prose on subjects from Politics, World Events and American Cultural Wars to how the brain works in the cranial vaults of zealots, pundits and those who are addicted to reruns of “Get Smart” (“Chief? Max”). Finally, he has violated boundaries with riotous neurosociological and neurophilosophical commentary (including voice impersonations) through the audiotapes That Neuro Guy, Mind Ramblings of Van Gross and published works on the Primal Neuroanthropology of Sports. He has appeared on musical, cultural and educational programs carried by WRCU-FM in Hamilton, NY and by WGBB-AM on Long Island. He has also been featured in The Love Jones Revived Show in Miami as a Spoken Word Artist during which he has presented his Neurofusion Poetry including “MedRap”, “Black White Race, Sex and Sports” and “USA-World Poetry Slam”. While wasting away in Miami, the Caribbean and now Philadelphia compiling a treasury of illegible essays and poems to form works such as Van Gross of Monte Cristo, The Five Books and scrawling the nearly incoherent but Writer’s Digest award winning fictionalized medical adventure, i.e., the play, Movement Disorder, Van Gross, MD also paces and exhibits circling behavior, characteristic of the deranged in preparation for his next radio, lecture or writing gig. So, the Five Books of Van Gross’s covers important years in the Aughts, in this lead up to this retro Roaring decade. And don’t worry, Van Gross, MD has material for follow up works for other intercurrent years in this wild and wacky 21st century. It’s kind of crazy, but many of the same characters from the Aughts somehow resurface today. Karzai, Rudy, Bidey, Kerry, Iranians, Climate Players and even versions of Bush and The Cheney Man. We’re just doing reruns!! But I’ve got a book for that (in the works supplementing if not magnifying the mega-impact of the Five Books collection).

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Copyright © 2022 by Kenneth Bruce Van Gross, M.D.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 08/23/2022

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Contents

Prologue

2016

Introduction

Time, Place, and Person (January 2016)

Trump Banned from Kellogg’s Cereal Consumption

Trump on Alligator Tragedy: I Smell a Muslim

The Trump Launch and Its Meaning

2017

Introduction

The Making of Movement Disorder

Movement Disorder: Short Synopsis Of The Play/Film

God to the World: Cut the Gadget Fixation

Birth and Death on Middle Street

Charlottesville

Selected Fusion Programs in Medical Education

Sample Fusion Programs in Medical Education

Sample Program Multiple Sclerosis

Fusion Interspecialty Variant Seminar Topics

Fusion Interspecialty Variant Seminar Topics

2018

Introduction

The Radical Neurocreativity Project and the Presidency

Psychosis, Sports, Mummers, and Certain Roots for Mass Shooting

Fusion Clinical Multimedia’s Radical Neurocreativity Project and the Kenneth Bruce Van Gross, MD, Leadership Campaign for the United States and the Americas

Basic Content of Interactive Discussion Lineup

Cuba, Consciousness, and Edgar Allen Poe

2019

Introduction

Trump to Execute Mulvaney

The Greater Fusion Big Ed Educational Project

On My Medical Teaching Philosophy

Come Meet Your Maker

Primal Neuroanthropology: A Neurosports Hypothesis

The Year of the Big Cat . . .

2020

Introduction

Arrowsmith Meets The Plague

White Paper: Covid Now

Subacute Mild/Moderate Neuro-Neuropsychiatric Covid-19 Syndrome

Larger Issues in the Prevention and Treatment of Covid-19

General Covid Commentary: A Work in Progress

Emergency Covid-19 Measures for The United States and Other Nations

Multifaceted Highly Targeted Sequential Multidrug Treatment of Early Ambulatory High-Risk Sars-Cov-2 Infection (Covid-19)

Mike Lindell and White Sheeters Team Up in Giza

2021

Introduction

Biden Pontification About Himself and the Nation

The Race Case is the Ultimate Disgrace

Covid Has Reinvented Medicine (Consciousness Streams)

Alzheimer’s: The False Amyloid Hypothesis and Other Neurological Disease Enlightenments

Foundation For A New Psychoanalysis/Neurology Society

2022

Introduction

New Medicine Overview 2022

Autoimmunity: The Final Frontier or an Overrated Epiphenomenon?

Sociological Psychosis

Biden and His Legacy: The Man Who Wasn’t Trump

Magnus Opus 2022 in the Americas

Nation By Nation

Ukraine Et Al.

2022 Absurdia as Evil Reigns in Ukraine

2022 Skidoo

This Is Your Sports Fan Life in South Philly

Unleashing the 2020’S Creativity Explosion

Epilogue

Jeffersonian Epilogue

References

To Jeffersonian freedom and creativity which remain

the cornerstones of our American democracy

Van Gross, MD, of Philadelphia includes historical and educational discussions of medical subjects. It is in no way to be used as a template or directive for individual physician or patient case evaluations and treatments.

Van Gross, MD, of Philadelphia uses invented names in all stories, except notable public figures, companies, organizations, groups, and countries which are the subjects of satire and parody. Any other use of real names is accidental and coincidental.

Prologue

When in the course of human events, an epoch from 2016 to 2022 arose, it seemed I had to do something about it.

I had a professor at Colgate who insisted that he didn’t know what he was thinking until he wrote it down. I suppose I carried on that tradition. What I was thinking in the lead up to Trump in 2016 to his election that same year to the chaos that ensued and has continued was that the American and international tables had been overturned, so I might as well join the fun.

Indeed, in the spirit of an independent American streak, along with a concomitant anti-establishment bent (echoed in the rise of Boris Johnson and Brexit and the forthcoming moving and shaking in the Middle East), I voted for the man in 2016. By the time January 6, 2021, rolled around, with a couple of impeachments and a second presidential election under the national belt, the question I had for the Van Gross, MD, entity was What in tarnation had you signed up for that early November day in 2016?

But what also captured me in the years leading up to these middle months of 2022 was the intervening COVID shock and awe and a realization that this pandemic had whipped medicine, my professional pursuit, into a rebirth as another field following the deaths of millions from what was simply a variation of a common cold virus.

Then there was the crystallization of the endeavor I had devoted chunks of this century on, the Radical Neurocreativity Project, a pursuit that combined my devotion to the brain, the mind, their themes and their workings, and their playing, in addition to the fields emanating from that cerebral psychosocial duality, such as interdisciplinary and hemispherically attentive teaching and learning within the fields of education (through Fusion Clinical Multimedia), merging on the artistic front with same brain/mind formulations, including the roles of painting, theater, humor, further insights into the neuroanthropology of sports, and where the dialectic within the nation should be harnessed not to further polarize but to better identify where we might advance from here. Imagination is not housed in the brain region. It is as diffuse in our thoughts as is music or philosophy or mathematical insights.

In uniting such ideation into a singular realization, I decided in 2018 to run for US president, not based on any delusions about launching a successful campaign (although in some way channeling the comedic, if not satirical, breakthroughs of a President Zelensky), but based on a desire to advance a new national script not entirely focused on the material or the constant American self-directed congratulations or the political or particular accomplishments in so many realms.

What has actually devolved in this country since 2018 was an identity that had unraveled as a result of the outcries from competing camps. When I found myself on the ballot in 2020, I felt that perhaps I should have made more of a ruckus as a seventeenth party candidate. Perspectives had become combative that no solution would seem to rely on the status quo, a two-party system with opposing ideologies that highlight differences and hope for victory over the other as the raison d’etre of each of the two political factions. These factions were dedicated not only to each one’s survival but also to the maintenance of a system mostly committed to its own singular importance, though such unquestioned top ranking was bathed in hubris.

Enter Van Gross, MD, on the ballot that November day in 2020, but such a counter-culture entry was, as it turned out, only a way to create a broad theme for this tome. Well, let the games begin!

Kenneth Bruce Van Gross, MD

July 18, 2022

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

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2016

Introduction

As 2016 rang in, the United States and the world shook via the populist emergence of Trump and Boris Johnson. Trump and his America First (again) call, along with the independent clamoring of Johnson via Brexit fever, were bells tolling yet affirmed as real until late 2016 with Trump’s election and the months early in 2017 that followed.

Like it or not, Trump introduced alternative facts, which one might better label alternative perspectives. Political matters were only a piece of this revolutionary pie. The very foundations of national mindsets and sovereignty were being shaken with Trump and Brexit.

This was met with great antagonism for those who had every right to favor institutionalized governmental arrangements and interactions.

But as noted in the Time Place and Person essay herein, which I wrote prior to the mid-year Trump escalator descent that announced his candidacy, I had been thinking of different models of thought for years.

What we assume is gospel is often arbitrary, particularly in entities such as time and place, which may not be entities at all but represent abstract constructs.

Beyond that, we have innate drives to demonize the Other, although some others might deserve it. The 9/11 tragedy happened. It wasn’t a figment. Muslim terrorists caused the death of thousands. Mexicans stream across our southern border illegally. Are they illegal humans? Of course not, but among them are Trump’s bad people, just as there are "bad hombres" among American citizens. How much got generalized falsely or correctly via anti-Trump bias regarding Muslim terrorists and Mexican migrants remains an ongoing source of American consternation and polarization.

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Time, Place, and Person

(January 2016)

The irreconcilability of the passage of time with the fact that there are fixed elements

Our DNA both changes and remains the same with the reeling of the years.

A three-year period for an eighty-year-old is only 3/80 or 4 percent of his life, whereas three years for an eleven-year-old is 3/11 or 27 percent of his life, with the latter percentage even greater because during the first three or four years, he is essentially unconscious, so three years is really something like 40 percent of his conscious knowledge.

February 29

February 29 is the day of vague time, for it exists every four years, but in non–leap years, it does not exist.

How can a date not exist?

All time is arbitrary.

Why not take a bad year or decade out of existence for yourself?

Remove that year or decade and note that you simply erased a block of time that had once been called X. Now you simply identify a new leap year calendar for yourself called Y.

So time is an elusive number

And it can be different numbers depending on your calculations, and certainly, it can mean the translation of the said numbers has varying biological implications for any given organism based on the age of that organism (bone age vs. chronological age in a teenager—different ages in the same person speak to differing clocks; time is not one number).

Indeed, before the Time Revenger Botox, the age of a senior was inscribed on his face with wrinkles the way adultery’s A proclaimed the guild of Hester Prynne in Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter.

A legitimate question would be if there is DNA recognition of relative time

Wallace performed a phylogenetic analysis of DNA and found that some of the genes found in Alzheimer’s patients lurk in modern man as pseudogenes before exerting their degenerative effects on dementing victims.

Eight hundred thousand years ago, during the hominid evolution, these pseudogenes were active in our genetic coding

They were quieted as modern man emerged. Why these genes are reactivated in Alzheimer’s disease is a broad Darwinian neuroscientific question demanding a molecular, biological, and anthropological response in the twenty-first century.

The case of sialic acid also deserves mention re: aging and evolution

A gene for sialic acid became inactivated right about the time that man began to evolve from primates.

Aging is also associated with loss of sialic acid on red blood cells.

Birth of a species has a corollary with the death of erythrocytes.

There is this degeneration-birth connection in the nuclear imaging of old and young brains

The PET scan of an advanced AD patient mimics the PET scan of an infant.

There is something regarding turning back time linked to AD and its relay race teammate Death that conjures up the idea of a circular running track.

The race may not end . . . Death hands off to birth, and the running continues

Not only is there the ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny, but also there is life’s journey to death reversing our ontogenilogical clock.

So time moves forward and backward during our life spans.

But is the primal appeal of the movie Seabiscuit. The track-circling vehicle of our own evolution based on the more mind-friendly concept of life–death–birth cycling?

Thus, there are no absolutes in the time department in the world of neurophilosophical–psychological constructs

Freud found the virtual immortality of the wishes of the id an approach to the most profound discoveries and near the end of his life expressed frustration that time’s secrets had eluded him.

Freud was a Fraud—he, in fact, did not know everything, although he was clearly the most superconscious the world had produced in his heyday.

Woody Allen said, "I do not want to achieve immortality through my work.

I want to achieve it through not dying."¹

So let us talk about other absolutes now that we have ruled out the presence of absolute time

Presence of a mind (or as we say idiomatically and lyingly presence of mind) is abstract, but the presence of a brain is proven by way of physical evidence.

Deleuze spoke of the brain as a screen,² simply a place on which the mind projects

Nevertheless, the physical demise of the brain is tangible.

The physical demise of the mind, like the proof of certain relocations in place, is not verifiable.

Whereas physical death can be proven, at least from the standpoint of not showing ongoing biological functions that replicate what occurred during life, abstract death or death of the mind cannot be verified.

The animal lying dead in the road will always retain elements of its original biology; its brain lives on though it is electrically dead.

And although the brain decomposes, it remains physically in existence.

But if the dead animal’s mind cannot be seen in the physical world, is the mind not proven to exist in the first place, still in existence with the demise of the biological organism?

Furthermore, if one were to remove the dead animal’s brain and burn it to smithereens, would the mind, an unverifiable abstraction during life, still be in existence, whatever such an abstract existence" means?

OK. We have highlighted the abstractions that are our conceptions of time and the mind. Brain constructs as related to a living thing is being, birth, aging, and death . . . we have hinted at the sacrilegious notion that the brain is simply a place.

Traveling in place often matches traveling in time, but whereas time travel is reflected through aging, travel from place to place may be associated with no physical evidence.

Recently, upon returning from a faraway land, I had the unusual perception that my arm had traveled from one place to another, but there was no tangible evidence that had occurred, so absurdity was suggested. I might have just as easily claimed that my arm had traveled through time and belonged to an ancient ancestor of mine during a past life. Maybe I was an imposter—or some genealogical spinning off a Mitosis Simulated Fractalized Body Double-Capgras Syndrome Case. Then it dawned on me that there was no evidence that my mind or the person called myself had traveled to this exotic land. What in fact then did move my body and myself there really mean from the standpoint of the tree falling in the forest question: If someone insists that something happened and there is no physical evidence that it happened, did it occur?

Does the mind travel to the brain during life and then travel elsewhere when the brain dies? (See Penfield, the first and only neurosurgeon to have philosophical musings.)

Either way . . . where is the proof?

Place is inert

But Place is inextricably woven into time. The child conceives of time as limitless until he develops object constancy.

Around age 2 or 3 according to Piaget ³: With object constancy, the capacity for a sense of duration is established for the first time. The sine qua non of successful psychotemporal adaptation requires that in infancy and early childhood, there has been continuity of experience and constancy of object.

And with this object constancy imperative, we develop to reinforce our appreciation of time a psychic basis for our