Bloodletting, Leeches and Carbolic Smoke Balls – Who Says the Cure is Worse than the Disease?

On economic tariffs:

“Sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something.” – Donald Trump

Sometimes “the remedy is worse than the disease.” – Francis Bacon

 

Or is it?

Let’s revisit some old remedies to show how they were not so bad, after all, and how they might apply to fix our current economic woes.

Bloodletting – The surgical removal of a patient’s blood for therapeutic purposes. Sure, blood can be useful, but it also carries viruses, bacteria and fluoride. How do we get rid of these interlopers? Easy. Just get rid of your blood. Tear open your corporeal frame and watch the bad mojo flow right out. Problem solved! Same with the economy. We need an economic bloodletting. Let’s tear open the corporate fabric of the nation and watch business activity, capital investments and consumer confidence flow right out. Problem solved! We’ll feel so much better. And sexier, in a pale kind of way. Like Brad Pitt in Interview with a Vampire. Or Timothée Chalamet whenever.

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Leeches – Parasitic, predatory worms used for medicinal purposes. Don’t fear them or recoil from them. Instead, put the leeches to work, sucking out the poison in the American economy. Poison like Medicare and Social Security and soft power. Let’s watch them sink their tiny, strange teeth into federal agencies and work their slimy magic. Leeches may be gross, but they are also at best, ineffective, and at worst, destructive. Move over, fish pedicures. It’s all leeches now.

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Carbolic smoke balls – A rubber ball filled with smoke-like particles that one inhales into the lungs to cure influenza and other pulmonary conditions. Genius. If you are worried about future damage to your lungs, just damage them now. Presto! The worry is gone. If you are worried about a possible future global recession, just instigate a global recession now. Boom! No more worries about how you are going to retire because you will never retire. You can also start growing cabbage in the lot behind your apartment because, be honest, you always wanted to take up gardening.

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Lobotomy – A surgical procedure which severs connections in the brain’s prefrontal cortex to cure psychological or neurological disorders. In other words, mess with the infinite complexity of the human brain in some rudimentary way and hope for the best. Sounds like a plan! Let’s bust a hole right in the middle of the socio-economic-political complexity underlying the global economy and poke it with a blunt instrument. Tariffs. As a nation, we might die, but we might also get a better personality. As an added bonus, we might even forget the last decade. Let’s take our chances.

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Shock therapy – The administration of electrical currents into the brain to induce a seizure as a means of treating mood disorders. Let’s do it. Let’s shock the stock market and our allies and Democrats and criminals and immigrants and exes and Kanye and librarians and anyone who negatively affects the national mood. Seismic, earth-shaking, international-rules-based-order-defeating, shocks, just to get us laughing again. Laughing diabolically, but laughing, nonetheless.

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Self-flogging – The act of hitting oneself with a whip or a rod to cleanse the body of disease or bad humors. We should hit ourselves where it hurts – right in our 401Ks. And in our retirement funds. And in our ability to buy a car or a television or food for our families or, heck, anything at all. Who needs commerce if the global world order completely collapses? We can then move from self-flogging to flogging local witches, like the good old days.