THE VIRAL NATURE OF EVIL MANIFEST AS POLITICAL BULLYING

Politics, religion, news, science, education – the venue does not matter; evil wins every time. The more salacious the content, the more likely it spreads, or maybe “infects” is a better choice in wording. Newspapers have known this for years by luring readers with incendiary or licentious headlines. It is the mainstay of politics. An opposing viewpoint is dismissed in the most derogatory terms, cajoled and mocked until any who hold the opposite viewpoint blush with shame. How incredibly effective this bullying tactic is.

Remember the “spotted owl”? That was a propaganda campaign launched by the timber industry to discredit those who wanted to save the forests. They took one minute detail from among the forest of reasons to curtail clear-cutting and turned it into a national campaign that brought mockery to the entire “save the trees” effort. And those who sought to enlighten others with regard to the delicate balance that constitutes a thriving forest were derided as “treehuggers”.  The nation was once again unevenly divided between those infected with the virus of hatred and those who were not.

The Peace Movement of the ‘60s was boxed up and derailed with a few words, “dirty hippies”. Although peace was ultimately achieved with the conclusion of the Vietnam War, those who were derisively known as “peace-lovers” continued to be dismissed as unbalanced fringe elements. Ponder that for a moment, those who embraced both “peace” and “love” were mocked.

Viruses learn. Viruses adapt. Fast-forward four decades to 2001. After the preventable destruction of the Twin Towers (and building 5), our country was at an impasse.  The issue was not why did this happen, but how to achieve retribution. Vengeance overrode intellect, analysis, investigation. Wanton murder of innocents is universally condemned and perpetrators punished - but this mass murder was accomplished by a clandestine group. How does a nation declare war on a group whose members might be anywhere in the world? One solution might have been to engage with other nations of the world to ferret out the masterminds of 9/11 at the propitious moment when international expressions of condolences were ubiquitous. The solution seized upon, however, was viral, “Shock and Awe”. The loss of American life in 9/11 was requited with the deaths of innocent Iraqis. It was known that those who hijacked the planes that caused the destruction of the Towers were almost all Saudi; yet, somehow, the Iraqis became the targets of our vengeance. Infected minds were convinced that this was an equitable solution. More than a decade later, the true nature of that decision, proclaimed to the world by one who wrapped himself in the flag and religion, would most aptly be termed “evil”, motivated by greed and fueled by a blood lust twisted with religious overtones.  

Viruses don’t intend to destroy the host unless they are in the lysogenic cycle. Viruses in the lytic cycle reside in the host without destroying the host until they enter a lysogenic cycle.  Along with most of the world’s nations, America remained in the Lytic Cycle, harboring the virus of hatred and evil for over two centuries. In 2001, that virus entered the Lysogenic Cycle, during which the virus activates, multiplies, and destroys the host. That is the current state of America. The election of Barack Obama to the presidency in 2008 represented a mass acknowledgement that we were somehow on the brink. That we, as a nation, required strong medicine to destroy the virus before it destroyed us. Barack’s medicine came in the form of hope and promises of change. Three years into his presidency and it is obvious that he, too, is infected. Add to that the virulence of the Republican Party that stands ready to sacrifice America to impede any progress for which a black man in the White House might receive credit. America, on its 236^th birthday, is on its deathbed, about to succumb to the virus that has festered within it since its inception.

Viral hotbeds such as the political party created by the Koch Brothers and Fox News, voter suppression laws, rescinding laws that guaranteed a woman the governance of her own body, political pundits and politicians who lie knowing that there is no media to challenge their lies and also knowing that if you tell a lie often enough, it is perceived as truth – these infections have brought the nation into the Lysogenic Cycle – virused, impacted, filled with such hatred that it will soon burst and unleash the virus to cascade from nation to nation.  The DNA of our democracy has been corrupted, altered, unraveled, and absconded by the viruses that infect it and now rule it.

There are those of us who continue to hope, believing that at some point our numbers will multiply enough to overcome the virus, but time is the deadly determinator. How long can a democracy exist when the leaders forget the simple and most important responsibility of leadership: take care of your people.

The Meaning of America

Part One 

 It’s hardly been subtle. But it is increasing at an exponential rate. The meaning of America. And it’s getting meaner every day.

No longer are we our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers. Americans today shout “Let them die” at town meetings rather than let them allocate another tax payer dollar for adequate health insurance for all. Legislators obligingly cut the safety net provided by Medicare and Social Security even though it is so porous that huge segments of the population fall through to oblivion. Children are easy prey as school breakfast and lunch programs are sacrificed to squeeze out a few dollars more to provide tax cuts to the wealthy. They will still sleep soundly burying the knowledge that hunger reigns in the lives of so many innocents. After all, it is their own fault. They have no one to blame but themselves (and being born to poor parents). They do not pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, no matter that they have no boots. Their children suffer. Why did they have children they obviously knew they could not afford to feed? Oh. Yes. We deprived them of birth control and made a woman’s choice in the matter a sin. Collateral damage. Reversing the clock does not occur without a price. And that clock has been running backwards since the presidential years of Ronald Reagan.

Ronald Reagan. The myth builder. The dispenser of faux truth. The one who painted portraits of the poor as masters of deception, driving Cadillacs to pick up welfare checks. “Liberating” the mentally ill so that they could live free lives pushing grocery carts laden with their worldly possessions. Reagan gave birth to the first “Bag lady” with that onerous budget cut. He suffered no labor pains, although his budgetary “offspring” have been suffering ever since. It’s good to be greedy. It’s good to be callous. Jesus would have wanted it that way. Ronald Reagan’s “let them eat cake” moment came in the form of “ketchup is a vegetable” and “if you’ve seen one tree, you’ve seen them all”. Although never seen as a bully, he was a master of the bullying ways. Mockery. Disdain for a person’s station in life if it was lower than his. Show no compassion. All of it conveyed and instantiated in the minds of upper class America via the bootstraps.  Not give to the poor, but give to the wealthy and they will throw a few crumbs to the poor. “Trickle down” economics is the appropriate moniker. But after a while, Americans realized that the “trickle” was a drip. The drip became an occasional drop. And during Bush’s presidency, the leak was sealed.

FDR’s vision of the government was benevolent; that vision fostered by the programs he created. The government was there to “promote the general welfare”, to help and care for the least among us. We are our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers. Reagan turned that vision of a government committed to the health, happiness and well-being of its citizenry upside down with his famous “Nine most terrifying words…I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” The government is to be feared. The government is the enemy. The government can do no good. Translation: we don’t need government. We don’t need to financially support the government. The government must be diminished. The Small government ideal enabled Reagan to decrease taxes on the wealthiest from 50% to 28% (although the bottom rate was raised from 11% to 15%).