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Original question: What is the most mind blowing fact about either World War?Sir Francis Galton was a British intellectual with vast knowledge in different sciences like meteorology, anthropology, psychology, geography, proto-genetics, etc. He was knighted in 1909 for his many contributions to science, and for spearheading many firsts in several fields of knowledge.Galton was a half-cousin of Charles Darwin. He had read Darwin’s theory of evolution of plant and animal species, and afterwards he had the idea to apply Darwin’s theory to humans by formulating his own theory with the claim that desirable human qualities were hereditary traits. It is said Darwin strongly disagreed with Galton’s elaboration of his theory of evolution.After Darwin died in 1883, Galton gave his theory a name, “Eugenics”, which eventually became associated with genetics, hence acquiring some semblance of scientific credibility to it. According to Galton, eugenics is “the science of improving stock” by allowing humans with “suitable races or strains of blood” to reproduce against those humans with “less suitable” quality of genes.Eventually, eugenics gained notoriety in America and a few European countries, considering the principles of eugenics as a serious scientific discipline. In America, political leaders (i.e. Winston Churchill, Woodrow Wilson, etc.), intellectuals (i.e. John Maynard Keynes, Alexander Graham Bell, etc.), businessmen (i.e. John Harvey Kellogg, Paul Gosney, etc.), educators, and other professionals promoted eugenics by accepting the notion that modern societies should encourage the improvement of the human race through government intervention, as a matter of national policy. They envisioned that an improved human race was practically the image of Nordic people with white skin, blond hair, and blue eyes. Therefore, those who failed to conform to the Nordic stereotype would be labeled “unfit”. By the term unfit, eugenics advocates pertain to individuals who had mixed ethnicity, with mental health issues, behavioral problems and physical deformities, gays, belonging to the poor strata of society, among other criteria.The United States government enshrined the ideas and philosophy espoused by eugenics in the promulgation of such prohibitive laws as segregation laws, marriage restriction policies, and most of all, forced sterilization law, which was enacted in 27 or 30 states. One of these states was California where eugenics took deep roots. Two respectable institutions in the state that fully supported eugenics were the Board of Charities and Corrections, and the University of California Board of Regents. In 1909, California became the third state to adopt the forced sterilization laws in America.(Image via Google)Many prestigious universities (i.e. Stanford, Yale, Harvard, Princeton, etc.) got interested with eugenics in the 1920s based on the studies conducted several years prior by Prof. Charles B. Davenport of University of Chicago. Davenport’s fascination with Gregor Johann Mendel, 19th century priest and scholar whose scientific work centered on the transmission of hereditary traits on certain plant species through hybridization, led many universities in America to become believers of eugenics. With financial support from Carnegie Institution and several businessmen and a philanthropist, Davenport was able to establish the Eugenics Research (Record) Office and perform his experiments.In 1918, Harry H. Laughlin, a leading eugenics advocate, headed the Eugenics Research Office, which by that time was already under the control of the Carnegie Institution. Laughlin would later become known for his books on eugenics titled “Model Law” and “Eugenical Sterilization in the United States”.The U.S. was the first country to have systematic program of sterilizing its own citizens who were confined in mental health institutions, prisons, and other types of holding facilities without their full knowledge, or in most cases against their will. Early in the 20th century, the US government sterilized at least 60,000 Americans by force in support of eugenics that advocates for the improvement of the human race and the quality of life by encouraging reproduction by people with so-called “desirable” traits and discouraging reproduction by people who supposedly have “undesirable” qualities. (More about the topic in Raymond Martinez's answer to In your opinion, what event was the most inhumane in history?)Out of the estimated 60,000 Americans sterilized, some 20,000 to 30,000 of them were operated on in California.With the laws in place, extensive financial backing of several high-profile organizations and individuals, and support from political leaders and the education sector, eugenics became entrenched in America, and it became “intellectually respectable” in other countries like Canada and Sweden.Germany under the Weimar Republic (1919-1933) was in shambles and its population was greatly reduced after World War I, so the government turned its attention to popular eugenic theories and principles developed in America to restore and improve the health and physical well-being of its citizens. Inspired by Laughlin’s Model Law and other writings on eugenics by known American eugenicists, the German government drafted a plan to sterilize its citizens, specifically inmates confined in institutions with “hereditary illnesses”, since they were a burden to the financially strapped country. The idea was if these people were to be sterilized, they would not be able to produce children, and if they and their legal guardians consent to sterilization, some of these inmates might be offered to live on their own, outside the institution.One source says, the Rockefeller Foundation in the U.S. had funded German researchers and the establishment and operations of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics in Berlin headed by Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer, a biologist who specialized in genetics of twins. Von Verschuer is said to be the mentor of Josef Mengele who would later rise as SS (Schutzstaffel) officer and physician in Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II.On 14 July 1933, the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nazi) of Adolf Hitler took power in Germany. One of Hitler’s first acts after securing the highest seat in the German government was the passage of the “Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring”. This law was harsher than the sterilization law under the Weimar Republic because this policy mandates people who were considered to have hereditary illnesses to be subject to sterilization whether or not they consent. The Nazi regime considered the following illnesses as hereditary: congenital feeble-mindedness, schizophrenia, hereditary blindness, manic depression, hereditary epilepsy, Huntington’s chorea, serious physical deformities, hereditary deafness, chronic alcoholism, etc.The Nazi government established about 200 Genetic Health Courts managed by doctors who reviewed medical records of people to select candidates for sterilization, and lawyers who would subpoena and pursue cases. It is said legal proceedings in the Genetic Health Courts were strictly confidential, and their decisions almost always could not be appealed. Moreover, German doctors were trained in “race hygiene” and promote “selective breeding” to produce Aryan race population whose features were similar to the Nordic race stereotype taught by American eugenicists.The Nazis’ approach to proposing and promoting its own version of sterilization program among the people of Germany specifically highlighted the “success of sterilization laws in California”. Professor Davenport’s name was even printed on the editorial boards of a couple of influential journals on German racial hygiene.By late 1930s, the Nazi government used propaganda movies in line with its eugenics program by exposing the public to the idea that those who had hereditary illnesses were a threat to the general well-being of the country, hence they must be exterminated rather than be kept alive. During that period, Hitler approved the Aktion T-4 program that legally authorized certain medical professionals to carry out mercy killing (euthanasia) of individuals considered a risk to society and hence unworthy of life. The term “T-4” got its name from the address of the headquarters of 50 volunteer doctors who coordinated said program at No. 4 Tiergarten Street, Berlin.Doctors administered lethal injection or starved to death 5,000 congenitally deformed children under the program. Later on, the Nazi government expanded the scope of the program by including hereditarily ill adults. These doctors falsified the cause of death of children and adult patients in their death certificates.SS officers and German nurses gather during the dedication ceremony of the new SS hospital in Auschwitz. (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of anonymous donor. Image via Google)Back in America in 1939, Carnegie Institution finally concluded after thorough review of the works of its Eugenics Research Office that it did not have scientific merit after all, hence the Institution stopped funding it. But Carnegie Institution’s findings were too late to convince the rest of the world to rethink and cease the propagation of the supposed scientific principles of eugenics. In Hitler’s Nazi Germany, Aktion T-4 program, race hygiene program, and other policies under eugenics were already in full swing.By August 1941, about 70,000 people had been killed under the Aktion T-4 program. Hitler stopped the program upon the urging of church groups, but he later re-instituted it under a new name, Aktion 14f13 program in his attempt to achieve the “Final Solution”. This was the very program that caused the deaths of about six million Jews exterminated in gas chambers of concentration camps, and the killing of millions of political prisoners, Gypsies, Afro-Europeans, handicapped, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Soviet and Polish Prisoners of War (POW), and gays during the course of World War II. It is estimated the total deaths by genocide reached about 17 million after the war.In retrospect, the eugenics theory that was conceived in England, and developed into a scientific discipline by the Americans, had been perfected by Hitler’s Nazi Germany as a method for ethnic cleansing during World War II through its very efficient and effective propaganda, medical community, and national policy machinery.Read:History of science: When eugenics became lawLaughlin’s Model LawThat Time The United States Sterilized 60,000 Of Its Citizenshttps://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2757926/Chapter 5 The Nazi Eugenics ProgramEugenics and the Nazis -- the California connectionWar Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race, Expanded Edition: Edwin Black: 9780914153290: Amazon.com: BooksEugenic sterilization and a qualified Nazi analogy: the United States and Germany, 1930-1945. Sofair AN, Kaldjian LC. Ann Intern Med. 2000 Feb 15; 132(4):312-9.Note: Thanks to Alex Hartmann for his patience. This answer was quite long in coming.

I’ve been battling depression and anxiety for many years. Since I was in middle school. However towards the end of last year I began displaying very erratic behavior and brand new symptoms. For a couple of years I’d been on occasion hearing auditory hallucinations and suffering from delusions. I wrote it off as a side effect of heavy drug use. However after some googling it was fairly apparent that I was developing paranoid schizophrenia. My memory of those early days is fuzzy, but I’m fairly certain I went to a crisis counselor first. She wouldn’t diagnose me, but did say that it was most likely what we feared. After this point I had a full blown psychosis and was hospitalized. I had been in the psych ward once before for an intentional OD on painkillers, Xanax, and beer. I didn’t mention any of my other less common symptoms from fear or denial. Perhaps if I had much hardship could’ve been avoided.My second trip to psych resulted in my official diagnosis. Another doctor saw me and drew the same conclusion. After being released and placed on antipsychotics along with my other meds I ended up returning five or six times in total within a few months. Each episode seemed worse than the last. In April or May of that new year I began seeing a new doctor (after allegedly assaulting my previous ones staff) that ran a suboxone program at the local recovery clinic. She took over my med management although it took some time to find the most effective meds.For over two years I had been seeing a pain management specialist for legitimate pain issues. The goal from the beginning though was to have a stready supply of opiates paid for by insurance. Other than my suicide attempt I was able to hold things together well. I never ran out before the next refill and set aside a pill from each script in case I did run out but still needed to show on a UA. This lasted for a long while until I was switched to Opana. My one true love. They were a generic brand and easy to crush and snort. A fellow junkie taught me how to defeat the gelling mechanism and shoot them. From there things went south fast. At first I’d sell a good bit of the pills using my oxy script to fall back on. They went for 30–40$ per pill. After a few months of making several hundred dollars of free money a month I began to realize I was needing more and more.I ended up with a high paying job as a machine operator at an industrial bakery. That only lasted a couple of months as I sank deeper into my Opana abuse. Every drug I did was now injected. Eventually I missed too many days due to running out of pills early and going into withdrawal. I’d spend my paycheck on suboxone from the street to make it through until the next fill.A few weeks after I lost the job I began developing the schizo symptoms. By the turn of the new year I was headed for the psych ward. I held on to my cycle of opiate binging until the pills were gone and then turning to meth most often for a reprieve as it was cheaper than the suboxone. The meth only made my paranoia, delusions, and hallucinations that much worse. After a few months, and like I said many hospital stays things were at a breaking point. My always loyal girlfriend was at her wits end. She couldn’t take my shit anymore. I went through a huge supply of Opana and oxycodone that should’ve been able to last even junkies heavy in their use a full month. I blew through it all in eight nights and one morning. My new record. Later that afternoon I went in to see my pain doctor. I told him that I wanted to switch to suboxone. I didn’t say why only that I wanted to switch. He made sure I understood I could never go back to the good stuff. He had to have known I was deep into addiction. My hair was unwashed, I weighed 40–50lbs underweight, and I had the most junkie looking shirt I owned on inside out. There was a burn hole in my sweatpants from smoking on the nod. Still, we had gotten close over my time at the clinic and he did as I asked.During one of my worse episodes I missed my monthly appointment to refill my suboxone. I went in after I was released from the hospital only to have him confront me about the episode. He said that there was meth in my system when I was admitted and that is what caused the psychosis, not schizophrenia. He continued by saying he had dealt with meth addiction in his own family, would not abide it, and that I was released from his practice. Mercifully he gave me one last refill of suboxone. I ran out for a month or so before I was able to get in to see the sub doctor at the recovery clinic. Dealing with the weight of severe mental illness, repeated stays in the hospital, and a family that insisted I was being influenced by demons had me completely frayed. I was miserable and felt alone. The cravings to use overcame me and I sought solace in drugs and beer.Towards the summer my meds began balancing out. I attendee the horrid 12 step meetings at the clinic. I was the only opiate addict the others were all on meth. Fucking cultist bullshit. I stopped going gradually. I hadn’t had an episode resulting in hospitalization in a few months. I still had one or two incidents but they were less severe and my woman was able to avert the worst of them. By this point I had been confirmed by four or five doctors as being schizophrenic. I began a disability claim (that still hasn’t been processed) and started part time work at a job rehabilitation program. My drug use was only sporadic.From then until this year things have improved. January marked the year since my diagnosis. I was accepted into subsidized housing although I had lost my hours at work. One day a week is not enough to sustain anyone. Thankfully I was on Medicaid by this point. My medications and bus pass were paid for every month by the state, my food supplies through the EBT program. I ended up losing that job recently. I’ve taken to selling extra suboxone to afford beer and occasionally Xanax. I’ve stayed away from the harder stuff for once.There’s one hitch. Over the Christmas holiday I ran out of my meds and didn’t bother refilling them. I made it a month before suffering a full blown psychosis although I still suffered the entire time leading up to it as my symptoms returned in full force. The night ended with me slashing my wrist, Macing a neighbor, and booting his door. Thankfully I called my ex to come pick up my dog so he wouldn’t be harmed. I slashed my tv with a knife for talking to me and bodily resisted the police who kicked in my chained door after the neighbor had called them. I was tazed, tackled, and loaded into an ambulance. The officers were extremely rough and one gouged my eye because I was squirming against the multitude of restraints holding me to the gurney. My memory is hazy so I can’t remwber that bastards name, though I asked it. My arm was stitched and I was sedated to limited effect. After hours of struggling, cursing, crying, and begging that I be kept from the ever present shadow people that were haunting me I was finally given enough sedatives to be knocked out. I woke on my way out of the ER to psych.I was told I was facing felony assault and burglary charges by my ex. After a couple of days I worked up the courage to call the jail. No charges, no warrants. By some miracle the police and prosecutor had decided not to charge me. I assume this is because I tested negative for meth and they all realized I was severely ill, not high. I only had a 48 hour hold. The afternoon after my hold was up I asked to leave and checked out against medical advice, something my lawyer tells me can only hurt my disability chances. Fuck it. I still left.My family, who is completely on board with the schizophrenia diagnosis and the need for me to be on meds by this point came out to visit me. They chewed me out pretty good. Apparently I had texted my mom some disturbing statements the day before as my psychosis was being whipped into a frenzy. The visit did help me feel better and my brother at least didn’t express his deep concern. Morgan brought my dog back and I settled in beginning the cycle between episodes aknew.My parents are convinced that I will be better. Many with this illness get worse the best that can be hoped is that the episodes dwindle. I don’t believe that I will ever be a normal, functioning adult again. My best hope is to maintain my living independence as a group home would be hell, be approved for disability, and keep my episodes to a minimum and hopefully mild ones at that.So that’s my story. I know it was extremely long. I went in for pain treatment, then depression, and eventually received a diagnosis of one of the worst mental illnesses plaguing our society. Not what I hoped for when the fear began to follow me through those early days of terrifying symptoms but it has become my lot in life. I will never have a child for fear of passing the dual curse of mental illness and addiction on. I doubt I will ever find a woman’s love again. It seems unlikely. I doubt whether I will be capable of working even limited hours until my disability comes in. If my parents stop paying rent, phone, and internet I’ll be either homeless or forced to move back to a lonely farm with even less prospects for bettering myself. Though my parents would take me in I know they don’t wish to be their adult sons caretaker.I’m no longer suicidal, which is good. All I can do is try to better myself and hold to my treatment plan. I have a loyal dog though I once had three and a woman to share them with. The only direction I can move is forward. My only other option is to hop a bus to Chicago or out west were I can be a homeless junkie until I die. I will admit it does hold some temptation for me. Not as much now as during the days leading up to my last episode. Maybe I’ll take a heroin holiday when my money comes in should it be approved. Even if so I still won’t give up totally as that seems to be the surest way to the end of my life. I enjoy beer, books, games, and shows. Food and the love of my dog. I do not wish to die a complete failure. It would only cause more suffering to my family. So I will carry on. I will linger and strive to make the best life I can hope for such as it is.If anyone is reading this you’re very determined. I haven’t slept and probably sound mad. Still, this has been therapeutic I think. I wish you good fortune in your own struggles. Thank you.

Zonker and Tom: this is for you. Habib and other members of estimable organizations like the Horus Hocus Pocus Caucus: this will be up your alley. It will also be long. I promise you a payoff, however, in amusement, and perhaps in affect and somber reflection as well. “The laying on of hands.” Yes, I have seen this.More disturbingly, this answer, about the laying on of hands, also answers another A2A I have from Isaac Starobin, who wants to know if I’ve ever “experienced a ‘faith mechanic.’” Not exactly a mechanic, but yes — and it was he who did the laying on of hands.Buckle up.The story I will now unfold will strain credulity. I can only swear that it did, in fact, occur, and that I am not consciously exaggerating or embellishing anything – aside, perhaps, for a couple of efforts to fill in a couple of minor lacunae in my memory of the incident. Remember that the truth is always, or at least often, stranger than fiction.But yes, I have had someone try to resurrect my dead automobile by laying hands upon its battery. Here’s how that went.Preamble: “Teal Wheels”It’s summer 2003 – July, probably. I’ve been in grad school for almost two years. I drive a 1991 Volkswagen Jetta Carat (the “fancy” Jetta of that year), which I’d bought used. It is a hideous metallic teal color, so my friends refer to it mockingly as “Teal Wheels.” Some friends have the audacity to begin calling me Teal Wheels. Those friends are, of course, dead now. [Okay, that last detail is not true. They’re in my basement, though.]Anyone who was driven a VW of that vintage – say, 1988-1993 – knows that those cars all too often had a peculiar problem. Now, my auto-mechanical know-how is only marginally superior to that of the average garden salad, so my description will lack a certain technical rigor.But basically, what the car would do is this. In hot and humid weather, especially when in stop-and-go traffic that made the engine heat up, inspiring someone like me – for whom heat and humidity are Kryptonite – to use the air conditioning, you’d probably get where you were headed, but you wouldn’t get back any time soon.This was because once one turned the engine off, it would not restart, sometimes for upwards of two hours. The symptoms were those of a near-dead battery, but it has been given me to understand that the real origin of the problem was the solenoid.Hank, the HealerOne blistering summer day I drove away from my apartment building just off the campus of the university where I was studying. I do not remember the exact nature of my errand, but it took me to a strip mall about six miles away – “six more miles long and sad,” as Hank Williams would say, because the only route to the strip mall lay down the single, extremely congested road leading from the campus to points north. It was early afternoon; the air was fetid and swampy, but the sky bright and clear; and it took me a mere fifteen minutes to get to the strip mall. But the air conditioning was blasting. I lived in fear of showing up anywhere soaked through with sweat, my coiffure like a nuclear blast site, etc. Teal Wheels’ climate controls were powerful.I arrived, turned the car off, did whatever it was I had to do – it was something really quick, like sending a package from a UPS store (which might actually be what I did that day). The parking lot was narrow but very long – the length of the strip mall, and usually jammed with cars. I found parking close to the store I’d come to visit. What luck!I come back to the car, hoping the brevity of my ride to the strip mall had not provoked my solenoid to malicious retaliation. I turn the key. The car’s dead, Jim.All the way on the other side of the strip mall there is a Starbucks. I don’t like Starbucks. The coffee, in my opinion, is bitter swill, and in my neck of the woods, the habitués are loud.I myself have never had an Amex card; the item I don’t leave home without is my bag. Today it contains the Modern Library edition of Aristotle’s major works, edited by Richard McKeon, University of Chicago eminence grise and father of one of the professors I had studied with. The book is a handul – 1500 pages or so. I am reading Aristotle’s Rhetoric as part of my preparation for my oral qualifying exam for my Ph.D. In March 2004 I will sit in front of four professors, who will ask me whatever they like about any of the 250 texts in six languages I have on my “orals lists.” If I pass, I get to write my doctoral dissertation. If I do not, I will be invited not to permit the door to hit me on the ass when I exit. (Yes, I would go on to pass.) I took my bag, stuffed with this and probably other volumes, all the way across the parking lot to the Starbucks, where I sought air conditioning and a quiet spot to read until my car was ready to start. I figured it would do so soonish, because I hadn’t been on the road long enough to cause real trouble.Starbucks was, that day, one of many hells a sadist could imagine for me. Playing was some local chanteuse’s self-recorded CD of Tom Waits covers. I remember walking in and feeling just how powerful her evil was: she had weaponized “Hold On,” a thoroughly beautiful song, and I felt myself develop several terminal illnesses on the spot. Remember Scarlett Johansson’s album of Tom Waits covers? This was even worse. I would not believe this was possible had I not heard it for myself.I was also drenched in sweat from the walk across the lot. So began an afternoon of hyperhidrosis (Greek for “sweating way too much”) whose lack of proper documentation will forever be a loss to medical training. Weep, Dr. Fanny, for the gallons of salty findings lost that day.Unable to face the heat and humidity another moment, I sat down and began trying to read Aristotle’s disquisition on the passions as the “singer” continued to rape Waits classics: “Falling Down,” “Cold, Cold Ground,” “Who Are You?,” all of them consigned to some kind of musical Auschwitz. I was unable to grapple meaningfully with Aristotle’s text under such bombardment. The wave of relief that swept over me when the CD ended abruptly evaporated when it was cued up for immediate replay. I would hear it many times that day.Now began a three-hour cycle. After an hour of Tom Waits mutilation and Aristotle Fail, I oozed back to my car. It would not start. Still more deliquescent, I oozed back to Starbucks. There hell awaited again. Rinse, repeat, three times. The development of body odor during this time is best left unimagined. The condition of my nether regions, front and back, are also best left out of your contemplations. Alas, that I could not ignore them as well. What musk!Anyway, in 2003, I was still manfully resisting technology. People were getting those high-tech “cell phones.” This was the heyday of those cutting-edge flip phones. But I? I, who read Aristotle in Greek, but also in English on occasion, including the occasion in question? I had no cell phone. So I dragged my increasingly ectoplasmic self to the pay phone at the other, far end of the strip mall, deposited sweat-slicked coins in the pay phone, and called AAA. Dispatched to me was an emissary from a local towing concern.After one last self-melting walk across the lot to the Starbucks, where I would wait out the hour or so it now took for the truck to make it to the strip mall – rush hour had arrived – and hear for the seventh or eighth time the album of Tom Waits abortions, my sanity was much in doubt. If you want to glimpse my psychological condition, read the King James translation of Job, chapter 3.Finally the truck arrived. Out stepped an unkempt man with several chins, missing teeth, and considerable facial stubble, wearing, even in this heat, a flannel shirt. I have never remembered what his name was. He looked like a Hank. Every time I’ve told this story since, I’ve called him “Hank.” Let’s call him Hank now.Hank proceeded to put my car through the usual paces. He mucked about with cables, repeatedly asking me to “try it” (i.e., turn the ignition key and see if the car would start). My assurances that the battery was likely not dead, that this was a “solenoid issue” (literally the sum total of my knowledge of this topic), but that this time, the “solenoid issue” simply would not resolve itself with the passage of time, fell on deaf ears. He was a working man. He had a job to do, “best practices” to follow. And who was I to be so cocksure the battery wasn’t to blame? Here we were, four hours in, and the car would not start.At some point during Hank’s initial ministrations to my battery, I amicably whined the kind of thing one whines when trying to making idle chitchat with a stranger in whose hands the rest of one’s already-severely-compromised day temporarily resides. “Couldn’t have picked nicer weather for this to happen,” or something like that. The kind of vague weather-related observation that makes you want to punch someone. I was that asshole.It is at this point, patient reader, that the story gets interesting. “Yeah,” Hank chortled. “And any day now the apocalypse’ll be here, too.”Pause. I think, for a moment, that this man has a dry, sly wit, and is reproving me for whining. Or again: was this intended as a witticism whose wit I was missing? What choice did I have here, if I were to respond at all? I chose the path of bonhomie. Mustering the best fake laugh I could muster while in the condition of a bipedal puddle, I said something like, “Heh heh, yeah.” What was I affirming? No idea. What was the valence of that remark? As yet, I was innocent. He did not respond right away, so I added something to the effect of “this car is itself a sign of impending apocalypse, I believe.” He seemed satisfied that I was joking and a nice sort of person, so he continued his labors.But those labors, those jumper cables and such, were all in vain. The Solenoid Issue had prevailed over all of Hank’s this-worldly remedies.It was at this time that Hank said: “Let me try one more thing,” placed his hands on the car’s battery, and added, “Sometimes this helps.”“I’m sorry – sometimes touching the battery helps?”“Well, if you send the right vibes, sometimes the car’ll start.” He dropped his chins and closed his eyes.NO. I AM NOT KIDDING.Then he told me once more to “try it.” Hallelujah! It didn’t start. The Solenoid Issue had prevailed over the vibes as well. And now I was more than a little leery of Hank, especially because I knew what was next. He would have to tow Teal Wheels to University Shell, a quarter-mile from my apartment, all the fucking way back up that miserable congested two-lane road, which was like a syringe feeding motorists into the city at its end, during this most infernal of rush hours. (Rush hour in my state lasts approximately four hours.)So I would be riding up front in the truck with Hank; Teal Wheels, its hateful facelike headlights and grill up in the air and mocking me from behind. I hoped there would be no more strange references to apocalypse or to the vibes that permitted Hank, sometimes, allegedly, to heal sick car batteries, but apparently not refractory solenoids.Thus began a conversation I will never forget, which began with “You a believer?”Concerning “The Vortex”“In what?” I asked.Well, Hank decided to wax prophetic. He covered the following topics, at great length, and with maximum abstrusity:The apocalypse really was nigh.It was going to be caused by three main malefactors: the terrorists, the homosexuals, and the pharmaceutical companies.The terrorists were, of course, “Moozlims” tied to “Al Kay-duh.” This wasn’t terribly long after 9/11; this kind of fear was rampant. One was still seeing red, white, and blue “TIME TO KICK ASS” stickers in pickup truck windows, with the words beneath a representation of the now-fallen Twin Towers (if memory serves).The pharmaceutical companies were not only profiteering off of people and refusing to cure diseases like cancer because it was more profitable to treat them, but they were manufacturing the birth control pill. This was especially important because. . .. . .the homosexuals, along with the birth control users, were, through their respective perversions, going to “break the cycle of generation” (verbatim quotation) – i.e., cause the human race to go a generation without producing offspring.This eventuality would open up what Hank termed The Vortex.Through this “Vortex” the resplendent Christ would return, and the end of the world begin. How the rupture in reproduction was recast in spatiotemporal terms was not covered in Hank’s lecture, which went on, with digressions and divagations that have mercifully passed from my memory, for the first half of the hour-long drive to University Shell.Gentle reader, I broke down, rather like Teal Wheels. You could say that my intellect was affected by a Solenoid Issue of its own. Behind me, through the little rectangular rear windshield with the rounded corners, was my car, whose front, as I have indicated, looked to me for all the world like a face, expressive, in a smiling sort of way, of an unfathomable malevolence. Before me was gridlock. Beside me was Hank. Everywhere the stale odors of tow truck, sweat, crotch-rot, swamp-ass. I broke down.“So,” I said. “What church do you go to? Where’d you learn all this?” I was speaking, of course, about the terrorists, homosexuals, pharmaceutical companies, perversions, Vortex, and ensuing Christ Event. I had other questions, too, of course – if the apocalypse were imminent, did this mean local hospitals would attest to a 100% drop in births? Where had all my current students come from, were procreation not proceeding apace? Well, well, well. I wanted to start small.“I don’t go to no church,” said Hank.“Then where did you get this?”“I pray,” he said.“You pray,” I repeated. “To whom do you pray?”“To Jesus Christ.”“Oh,” I reply. “Okay, so you’re a Christian. Have you read the Bible at all?”“I don’t much like readin’.”“Well, okay, sure, but where else are you going to learn about Jesus Christ if not from the Bible? He doesn’t say anyth—“And here I was cut off by a suddenly-chafed Hank.“I told you, I pray!”“But, but, but, but,” I stammered, “How do you know who Jesus is, or what he teaches, or whether there will be a Vortex, if you don’t read the Bible?”Hank seemed genuinely bent out of shape.“I pray!”I was a little unnerved, but also, I admit, fascinated. This was anthropology hitherto unglimpsed by me.“So you learned about the Vortex from praying?”“Yup.”“Do you mean that God talks to you when you pray?”“Jesus talks to me.”“Jesus literally discusses the pharmaceutical industry with you while you pray?”“Yes, I told you!”“Holy. Shit.” And I fell silent, as did Hank, who seemed quite put out.The remaining minutes of the ride passed in silence until University Shell was in view at long last. Hank, sensing that our parting was at hand, grew suddenly affable.“Hey, nice talkin’ to you, buddy,” he said, in a way that I admit to finding both unnerving and poignant – because here, after all, was another human being, one perfectly capable of being kind and friendly, who believed things I could not, in 2003, believe that anyone could believe. (Yes, many “believes” in there. A veritable clash of credulities.)And then he added, in something like an apologetic tone, a sentence I will surely never forget: “I didn’t mean to impute my theologies onto you or nothin’.” Sic. Impute his theologies onto me.Scarred for life, I said, “Oh, please, don’t mention it. You have a great day!”He proferred me something to sign for AAA; I signed it, jumped out of the truck, and ran into University Shell, whose service team and owner knew my car all too well – I suspect they considered it something like a family member. Certainly it was a cash cow.The owner smiled at me as I walked in. “Back so soon?”I sighed, shrugged, gesticulated the futility and misery of all my life’s works and days.The owner laughed and saw Hank outside driving off, having removed my car from the truck. I followed his gaze. “So you had [Hank],” the owner said.I outlined, without specifics, that it had been a harrowing ride, and that a religious rant had been involved.“Yeah, we’ve had a lot of complaints like that over the past couple of years,” the owner said. “[Hank] was in a car accident a couple years back, and he hit his head pretty hard. He hasn’t really been right since. He’s harmless, though.”A wave of terrible pity for Hank surged through me. Once again, I had been unable to hold my tongue when confronted with craziness. Here was a reminder to be kind. I felt a twinge of contempt for myself, for having held the man in some mixture of contempt and dread. Oddly enough, Hank had, indirectly, induced a fit of fellow-feeling and guilt over my own imperfections that I had first learned from the Bible, which my father read to me as a child, and in the Roman Catholic church, in which I had been raised, and from which I broke just prior to my confirmation at the age of thirteen.“Let’s go see what’s up with that car,” the owner said. He took the key, walked out to the car, and tried the engine.The fucking thing started right up.Then and on subsequent occasions I would tell the owner and his team that a Solenoid Issue was involved. It was never repaired by them or by any other repair team whose services I could afford. The Lord’s grace never did shine upon Teal Wheels.Epilogue: Of Tales Told Too LateIn 2017, I find myself amazed at how this story has lost the shock value it once had. I once figured I’d have to write about this encounter in a novel. Perhaps I still will. But what’s truly breathtaking is that in the ensuing years, evangelical right-wing extremists in the United States have forwarded religio-political ideas not wholly dissimilar to Hank’s. We have seen a war on birth control. We have seen states make every effort to ensure their continuing right to persecute LGBT citizens. And Islamophobia seems as rampant now, in the wake of Donald Trump’s election, as it was in the period immediately following 9/11.I wonder where Hank is in the world now. Did he work for the Cruz campaign? Will he earn a spot in the president-elect’s cabinet? “Film,” as newscasters used to say, “at eleven.”