The Contagion [View all]

[H2O Man]

“The future belongs to those who prepare for it today.”
– Malcolm X


I was thinking about a couple things this morning, as I was hanging out laundry on the clothes line. As I had fed the birds first, I was reminded of the Iroquois belief that it is the song of the smallest birds that is most pleasing to the Creator. A number of them had gathered in the tree tops, making for one of nature's finest choruses.

Dr. Bandy Lee speaks about how the felon changes some people in “ 'Trump and Vance' the Varieties of 'Trump Contagion' “ :

“A hallmark of what I have been calling, 'Trump Contagion,' is that individuals around us vividly transform—even transmogrify—before our eyes, to the point of being unrecognizable. We have seen this in Lindsay Graham, Ted Cruz, Rudy Giuliani, and Alan Dershowitz. Nevertheless, nowhere has this phenomenon been more striking than in JD Vance. Surely he, like the others, had vulnerabilities and predispositions in the past, but far from explaining away Trump Contagion, these are the very conditions that facilitate it. What is clear is that it would be difficult to imagine that they would be where they are today without Trump Contagion.

“Let us consider Vance‘s transformation: one of his most remarkable metamorphoses is his dramatic shift from a vocal critic of Donald Trump to becoming his running mate—and now vice president. In 2016, Vance described Trump as 'reprehensible' and even speculated that he might be 'America’s Hitler' in private messages. Yet, over time, he convinced himself that Trump was a necessary figure to disrupt what he perceived as a broken political culture. When this ideological pivot propelled him onto the national stage, he was elected to the U.S. Senate by 2022 and selected as Trump’s VP pick by 2024. Now, he even subscribes to the conspiratorial rhetoric he once decried.”

Individuals transform. Malcolm X was a young hoodlum and convict, before undergoing a transformation and becoming a powerful minister. Others go in the opposite direction, as Vance has. When a large number of citizens suddenly become grotesquely amoral and advocates of social violence, the process is known as transmogrify. It is something that has happened at different times in different places around the world.

Just as one can learn the process in which a caterpillar “enters” a cocoon, then comes out a butterfly, one can learn from historic examples how to measure the tides today. Hatred is not innate in human beings – it must be purposefully cultivated. The levels of anger, confusion, and outrage required to get Jared Wise his gig as a senior adviser in the Department of Justice is alarming. The whole administration did not result from happenstance. It has been purposely refined.

Dr. Edwin Fisher wrote about collective psychopathology in in both “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump” and “The Much More Dangerous Case of Donald Trump.” One of the factors that stands out would be isolation. This can be a physical isolation, as in Jonestown, but more importantly, a mental isolation. A lack of access to a variety of opinions. A diet of Fox News and rabid right-wing internet sites. Information incels tripping on Q-anon while watching Glenn Beck's hallucinations.

This leads to pointing out individuals and groups that the leader blames for all of the cult members' problems. Add white christian nationalism, and the public enemies expand from non-white human beings to books about history and science. The levels of aggressive ignorance build. We see that the hate in America has left the cocoon, as ICE and the felon's plan to begin federalizing law enforcement are destroying the rule of law.

The next step in the process is to divide and separate groups, to weaken potential opposition. This, of course, is done by appeals to two core emotions, anger and fear, while flattening the “trust” on Plutchik's wheel. “What you're seeing and what you're reading is not what's happening,” the contagious one told his flock on July 24, 2018.

The opposite of the social disintegration that empowers the maga cult is cohesion. That is the way that we defeat the threat to our country. This means that, as Democrats, we have to recognize we are not the majority of registered voters. We need to be able to communicate in a manner that creates a cohesion of values. That doesn't mean we have to agree on everything with those to the left or right of us, so long as we share common values.

We might have differing views on some issues with other good people in the Democratic Party. Some of the time, these are settled in primaries. To not recognize and respect the outcome is to damage the foundation of our party. It is as wrong for any Democrat to donate to or support Andrew Cuomo today as it was to vote for Jill Stein in 2016. Every time we have lost a presidential race since 1968, it was a result of such toxic fractures within the party. There's lots of room for finger-pointing, though that would be a waste of time.

Our opposition knows that we will take back power with the 2026 mid-terms. That's why they are in a panic, looking for ways to cheat. They will seek to spread the new variant of the contagion. We are in a dangerous territory now, for sure, but we have everything we need to turn it around. I'm an old man now. I'm honored to do my best to take part in the struggle for social justice and the rule of law. Let's work to stomp the shit out of the maga threat.

Thank you.