Another PCIntern true story!!
Please allow me to preface this by saying that I am not so creative that I could possibly make this stuff up. The only reason I have this many stories is that I have dealt with thousands and thousands of people over the years on a very intimate basis and stuff just happens.
In the mid-1980s I was practicing in my original office which was down the hall from another dentist who had purchased a practice from an older gentleman who had treated many of the theater crowd, including performers, directors, support staff and even some of the wealthy and connected producers here in Philadelphia as well as a number of politicians, both city and state. Philadelphia used to be a great center for theater, wherein major shows were tried out and refined before they opened on Broadway. The idiotic Philadelphia media at the time however nixed so many shows by giving them bad reviews that went on to become hits that they stopped doing the preliminaries here and focused more on New Haven, Connecticut before they quit the practice nearly entirely.
The men’s room on our floor was 1920s vintage, and it doubled as access to the electrical system for the floor. One morning, I walked into the bathroom for the usual reason and standing in front of me, trying the locked door knob repeatedly, was former Pennsylvania governor, Milton Shapp. Governor Shapp had been the CEO of a company called Jerrold Electronics which I believe still holds patents for cable boxes used throughout the world. He was the first Jewish governor elected in the Commonwealth and was a somewhat progressive Democrat. Anyway, so I’m standing there and governor Shapp is trying to leave the bathroom via this locked door. I immediately said, “Governor, would you like me to take you back to the dental office?” Now I knew that’s where he had come from because we were the only two practitioners on the floor of any type. So he very gently and quietly said, “If you would be so kind.“
I walked him down to the other office and opened the door, and sitting in the waiting room was a woman dressed in a nurse’s outfit sitting next to a walker. I said to her “I presume the Governor belongs to you. And she looked up from her magazine and said, “Oh, yes. Thank you.“
I rolled my eyes figuratively to myself and walked back to my office, thinking that so many Pennsylvania politicians had surrendered to one form of dementia or another, including former Republican Senator Hugh Scott, who was the minority leader in the Senate for many years, and very powerful in Pennsylvania, and was one of the three senators who informed President Nixon, that he would have to resign. I was very saddened by this turn of events, because I had no idea that this had happened to him since he had been out of the news for years.
But, as usual with my stories , this preamble to the story has nothing to do with the real narrative. This dentist who worked down the hall was born in one of the eastern bloc countries, and had immigrated to the United States as a young adult, telling some dentists whom he meant on the beach, (I believe at the Jersey shore), that he had been a member of the Czechoslovakian Olympic water polo team and had fled to the United States for political asylum. These dentists happened to be at the time extremely politically powerful and paved the way for his immigration and citizenship in the minimum amount of time required.
Now, this fellow was extremely athletic and good looking, and I’m not going to get into the other aspects of his activities, because quite frankly in this day and age, that’s nobody’s business. What I discovered working down the hall from him however was that he was an utter and complete sociopathic liar. He lied about almost everything, and the upshot to his career was that he was substituting for a dentist out on the main line, convinced a woman that she needed a dental reconstruction and that she should pay him $10,000 in cash which he would be happy to have collected at her home, did so, and then vanished into thin air. Eventually, there was a federal warrant out for his arrest, and he fled the country to Europe. I understand he is still there doing “business“.
And then, almost unbelievably it turned out that he had never ever been on any water polo team of any type, let alone an Olympic team, and he had lied about absolutely everything concerning his background. Everything. He was also one of those seducers who would literally charm the pants off women and some men, including but not limited to his own dental staff and a number of his patients. (And yes, I’m well aware of those implications)
He would tell stories and lie the way a certain congressman from New York has done so. Everything was elaborate and intriguing but believable enough that it could be true and yet somehow stretch the bounds of reality. People sensed this and knew this, but he functioned in his capacity for over 30 years, doing this repeatedly, with no retribution, until he finally crossed the line with the wrong person. it is unbelievable what the society will tolerate and just shrug its shoulders. It is, therefore no surprise to me that this asshole from New York, this narcissistic sociopathic malignantly lying son of a bitch is just propped up, and we have to basically Al Capone him by going only after the money fraud, as opposed to all the other frauds, which he has perpetrated and are fundamentally antithetical to a society founded upon reason.
They’re everywhere….you can’t get away. Between the prevaricating sociopaths and the cops who will beat you to death for absolutely no reason, and everything else that’s FUBAR’d, we are sinking fast into oblivion . Unfortunately, I believe that we, as a society, have crossed the Rubicon.
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These pathological liars (a la George Santos) can only exist when they find others who have a stake in maintaining the liar's ruse. Santos has found his in Kevin McCarthy, who has every reason to pretend he believes the lies. We all know he doesn't, but if he were to admit it, he'd have to do something about it.
I hope I am using that word correctly. There was nothing he had not done, he would change the accomplishment based on to whom he was speaking. Because of my love of music and photography, he would be the expert on both these subjects. I can't tell you how many famous bands he "played" with, from Aerosmith to Pink Floyd. Of course, any proof of these events would be packed up somewhere out of immediate reach. 
He was also very untruthful about his "wealth". He would often brag about how many investments he had, but NEVER had enough money to pay his power bill. 
I am so glad this man is out of my life forever.
"Everything was elaborate and intriguing but believable enough that it could be true and yet somehow stretch the bounds of reality. People sensed this and knew this, but he functioned in his capacity for over 30 years, doing this repeatedly, with no retribution" These two lines describe my former boss to a tee. I am sure many people know a person JUST like this one. Unfortunately, they ARE everywhere. 
Imo need some plot work. 
After all, oblivion means...oblivion and crossing the Rubicon's passing a point of no return.
Problems big enough to scare whole societies provide big kicks in the pants that always cause societal changes and often big advances. Last century the U.S. and Germany chose very different directions, but both ended up with both. I believe where we are now is similar to where we were in the 1930s. Same old human race.
Scary. Quick oblivion might sound preferable to the worst futures some are imagining, but I think the most possible big happening would be a pivot point to a new era, worse or better. The transition could be very hard for those who survive to live through or look much like the lives we've been living, new devices, new work, new leisure, new luxuries, etcetera, depending.
Reminds me that current estimates are that somewhat over 1 billion people of our species have now lived. It's something new that we'll be hitting 8 billion at one time before long. Instead of big disasters obliterating village- and town-sized populations as so common in the past, present and future disasters will sometimes kill far more people. But we're having a lot fewer of them, even with climate change causing a real surge.
