Symptoms of a Sick Society

 

Pundits have been claiming for years that Donald J. Trump is not the cause of the insanity which is MAGA; he is but a symptom. The same is said for Tucker Carlson, Ron DeSantis and a host of other MAGA-mutts.

That’s a decent assertion to make; all of the racism, bigotry, greed, authoritarianism and disdain for education witnessed in the writings, bleating and clamoring of the alt/right can be traced to earlier times in the noble, yet flawed, American experiment. 

Much of the fault and many of the tragic missteps could be accounted for by the on-going changes in social mores. As Martin Luther King, Jr. reminded us; “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” The sins of the past – slavery, disenfranchisement, etc – are rectified and addressed by the newer generation with a more ‘modern’ sense of justice and righteousness. 

One can, furthermore, understand the desire to mitigate the corrosive effects of psychotic personalities by claiming that political actors such as Trump, Hannity, Cotton, Gaetz, MTG, Cawthorn and Boebert are not truly indicative of inherent political and social rot but, rather, are merely symptoms which can be handily dealt with by level-headed care-givers and the application of analgesics. 

However, Trump and his MAGA-cult cannot and must not be dismissed simply as ‘symptoms’ of sickness in the body politic. To do so would be a monumental error. It would be akin to dismissing the inability to breathe as just a symptom of COVID-19 or pneumonia. Indeed, shortness of breath is a symptom but it is a life-threatening one; one that indicates the need for drastic action; hospitalization, intensive care, a prescribed regimen of pharmacological treatments.

That is where we find the democratic republic known as the United States of America; gasping for life. The symptoms are dire and life-threatening. (Think January 6^th) They must be handled with thoughtful aplomb and rational action.

As the pandemic tightens its strangle-hold on society with increasingly infectious and fatal variants, the metaphor could not be clearer; we must, as a nation, as a society, bite the bullet and take the bitter pill which will alleviate and ultimately eliminate the diseases of racism and economic inequality and thereby remove the symptoms such as Donald Trump from our body politic. 

My Dumb Over Your Smarts

‘My ignorance is better than your expertise.’

‘My lack of information trumps your encyclopedic knowledge.’

Hence, the MAGA disdain for education.

Critical thinking? Feggetabodit.

Go with your gut. If a primal emotion is triggered, then that’s what we imprint.

Needles bad! Vaccine Bad! Fauci BAD!

“My inability to grasp basic facts of the real world is the truth that I live by.’

My dumb is better than your smarts.

An indignant and cretinous woman at a public hearing on June 8^th, tried to testify to Ohio Republican lawmakers, that she had been ‘magnetized’ by the COVID vaccine. She claimed that she had just learned this new ‘truth’ over lunch. She then proceeded to demonstrate her newly gotten magnetic qualities. She placed a small metal object (a key?) on her nervously perspiring chest. The object adhered to her skin for a moment. This is a trick learned by children and demonstrated by adults at drunken parties. This woman, though, offered the sticky nature of human skin in warm conditions as ‘PROOF’ that she had been harmed by the vaccine; she had been magnetized!

The late night shows had a field day with her hysterical query to the room; "Any questions?"

‘Actually, quite a few...’ was a typical retort.

Questions such as; ‘What planet are you from?’ and ‘Did you sleep through all of your school years?’

(It would also be very tempting to ask how being magnetized caused harm and was undesirable. Sounds more like a low-level super power.)

Magnet Girl’s nonsense was preceded by testimony from Dr. Sherri Tenpenny, an Ohio osteopath who wrote a book called ‘Saying No to Vaccines’. Dr Tenpenny (I flash on Dickens every time) claimed that the vaccines made you magnetic because there was a ‘metal’ in the serum.
She stated (ahem...)

"I’m sure you’ve seen the pictures all over the internet of people who’ve had these shots, and now they’re magnetized. They can put a key on their forehead, it sticks. They can put spoons and forks all over them, and they can stick. Because now we think that there’s a metal piece to that."

To be clear, this is utter and absolute rubbish. Also, clearly, Dr Tenpenny and I go to very different parties.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had to address this preposterous non-issue on its website because they’d gotten so many questions on this bunkum.

“COVID-19 vaccines do not contain ingredients that can produce an electromagnetic field...”

The plague is not COVID-19 and its variants. The plague is brain-deadedness. 

Stay safe. Get your jabs.