Disclaimer: The writer knows beans about medicine, or viruses, for that matter.
However, whatever medical information is contained here comes from credible medical literature as sourced.
The rest of the content comes from the author’s heart and mind and reflects his personal views and opinion.
Commenting on the sad state of affairs our country finds itself in today, one of our most esteemed readers and contributors, J. D. Ledell, notes how, even a hundred years or so after some of our worst episodes of cruelty and inhumanity (he mentions slavery and the “holocaust” of native Americans), a large segment of our society has not evolved at all.
Ledell suggests, “what has happened to America,” would make for a good essay.
Well, here is a short essay. Whether it is good or not is up to the readers to decide.
However, it is my honest opinion that the United States of America is still the greatest nation and has the greatest culture and people on earth.
It was such when I decided to emigrate to America 61 years ago.
It was such when I decided to serve my adopted country in the military.
And it still so today.
But Ledell is correct in asking:
What has happened to empathy in America?
Why do we hear the “n-word,” perhaps the most offensive and divisive word in the English language, so frequently these days?
Why don’t we hear our churches, our schools and other institutions speak out on what is happening in America?
Why have donations to our charitable institutions “fallen off a cliff” recently? “Is selfishness the new American Ideal?”
Finally, Ledell broaches an issue which this author believes is at the heart of America’s temporary moral and ethical slump.
Ledell writes, “Trumpism is like a disease, and I thought our American society was strong enough to fight off the parasitic invasion killing the basic American goodness.”
Now to my medical analogy.
Since we are merely human, I believe that the vestiges of bigotry, prejudice, intolerance, etc., are like a certain virus: lying dormant, lying in wait to be reactivated years or decades later by just the right body politic infection, the wrong challenge to our moral system immunity and false stimuli.
I believe those infections, challenges and stimuli are with us today and are reawakening the virus in many.
The right circumstances are clearly the divisive rhetoric, the dog whistles and the in-the-open hateful and discriminatory statements, policies and actions by Trump and his administration –- too many to even list here.
The good news is the claim by medical scientists that while a high percentage of people have been infected with at least one virus, many will never have a problem with it.
And that, just as science hopes that understanding interactions between infectious agents and the immune system “will help us survive in a complex microbial world,” understanding the interactions between a poisonous philosophy and leadership and a small part of the American electorate will help our nation continue to be great.
We do not need to “make America great again.” America remains Great. It will rebound from this temporary challenge to our moral and ethical immune system sooner rather than later.
Just as medical science will, America and Americans will one day eradicate any vestiges of this virus in our politics or at least prevent its reawakening.
J.D., thanks for “getting me going.”
The author is a retired U.S. Air Force officer and a writer.