The Crisis Coming in 2024

Bart Gelman’s recent piece in the Atlantic Monthly, “January Was Practice,” should alarm every American. It lays out in clear and chilling detail what very nearly happened in the wake of the 2020 election (particularly on Jan. 6), but also who, exactly, the people are who would support the overturning of an election (and democracy itself) should Donald Trump be defeated again in 2024. There are at least 20 million of these people, according to Gelman, who cites a recent CPOST (Chicago Project on Security and Threats) poll. And the vast majority said that Biden was an illegitimate president, and that violence would be justified to restore Trump to the White House. 

            This is astonishing in itself. But one other statement “won overwhelming support” among the 20 million respondents, about two-thirds of whom agreed with this statement: 

“African American people or Hispanic people in our country will eventually have more rights than whites.”

This is a version of what has been called the “Great Replacement Theory”—an ethno-nationalist theory, popularized by French writer Renaud Camus, who warned that the white population in Europe was being replaced by non-European (i.e. black and brown) immigrants, in a process he called “reverse-colonizing.” A form of this Great Replacement Theory has taken hold in America; and what makes this belief even more alarming is not only that these are the very people willing to use violence to overturn an American election, but that these violence-prone crazies who assaulted the National Capitol on January 6 were NOT primarily from rural areas of the American South or Midwest as we might have thought. Rather, they were people with decent jobs in well-populated counties—but counties where “the white share of the population was in decline.” As Gelman writes, “for every one-point drop in a county’s percentage of non-Hispanic whites from 2015 to 2019, the likelihood of an insurgent hailing from that county increased by 25 percent.” In other words, the bulk of insurgents on Jan. 6 were white people who believed what they seemed to be seeing: that “their” country, like  the 2020 election, was being “stolen” from them by “non-whites”—aided and abetted, of course, by the government actions of the hated Democrats who (they believe) specifically favor those non-white workers. 

            These ‘committed insurrectionists,’ as they have been called by Robert Pape, form a virtual army of shock troops ready to use violence to support the ex-president if he runs again, and to start a new Civil War, if necessary, to preserve their white privilege. If this sounds like hyperbole, listen to some of the Jan. 6 rioters Gelman interviewed. One guy (Phil is the only name he would give) said:

“Civil war is coming…and I would fight for my country….Oh Lord, I think we’re heading for it. I don’t think it’ll stop. I truly believe it. I believe the criminals—Nancy Pelosi and her criminal cabal up there—is forcing a civil war. They’re forcing the people who love the Constitution, who will give their lives to defend the Constitution—the Democrats are forcing them to take up arms against them, and God help us all.” (Gelman, ibid.)

 

Another Jan. 6 rioter, Gregory Dooner, told Gelman something similar: “Violent political conflict…was inevitable, he said, because Trump’s opponents ‘want actual war here in America. That’s what they want.’” (Gelman, ibid.) Notice that the pattern here is the usual one in the Trump era: total reversal of the truth. The hated Democrats, led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, are allegedly forcing a civil war (I assume by not recognizing Donald Trump’s Big Lie.) They are forcing those who are “defending the Constitution” to take up arms. As is obvious to anyone not blinded by right-wing propaganda, exactly the opposite is the case: the right wing insurrectionists are the ones taking up arms, and, they hope, forcing those who respect the Constitution and democracy to fight a new Civil War. Such a war would be based in the same determination with which the Confederacy tried to overturn the Constitution (and the Declaration) by insisting that NOT all men, particularly enslaved Africans, were created equal. And, importantly, that states had the right to institute their own laws keeping those Africans slaves, in defiance of the federal government. 

            Gelman goes on to show that this is precisely what Trump, his advisers, and now the entire Republican Party, is intent on doing in 2024. It was “the main event,” as he terms it, in the attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election: “a systematic effort to nullify the election results and then reverse them.” This plot—and it must be called a plot, in light of the revelations that have now surfaced about specific plans by Trump and his advisers (the scenario for this election overturn came from adviser John Eastman, an arch-conservative lawyer, who wrote a detailed 6-point memo outlining how it would work, with VP Pence playing the main role) on how to nullify Biden’s victory. Indeed, one of these plans is now known to have emerged on Nov. 4 before the results were known! (“Why can't [sic] the states of GA NC PENN and other R controlled state houses declare this is BS and just send their own electors to vote and have it go to the SCOTUS”)—a plot that would require “GOP legislatures in at least three states to repudiate the election results and substitute presidential electors for Trump.” That is, the pro-Trump plotters needed a mere 38 electors to reverse the election results, and they carefully selected six states—Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—where they might get those electors. Why? once again, because the state legislatures in those states are controlled by Republicans. And this very plot was actively promoted by the conspirators we now know had gathered at the Willard Hotel in DC (Eastman, Giuliani, Bernard Kerik, Bannon, and others), and were in constant communication with Trump and his White House.

            Fortunately, these efforts, including the appeal/command to VP Mike Pence to delay the counting of the votes, alleging that there was fraud in some state results, did NOT work. But it was not for lack of trying. Those attempts included an appeal to Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito to stop the count and throw the issue into the Supreme Court, as in Bush v Gore. But even Alito did not respond to this desperate attempt. Neither did Pence, who was threatened with  lynching as he tried to fulfill his Constitutional duty to certify the electoral votes. And, as it became clear that neither Alito nor Pence would stop or even delay certification of Biden as the winner (and Trump as the loser—a position that is akin to death for him), Steve Bannon on his podcast played the only card left. On January 5, he summoned his troops: 

“Tomorrow morning, look, what’s going to happen, we’re going to have at the Ellipse—President Trump speaks at 11.” 

This last-ditch effort, advanced at the Ellipse on Jan. 6, would comprise an invasion of the Capitol by Trump supporters to stop or delay, by violence if necessary, the dreaded count and certification of the electoral vote. This invasion was not just a tour of the Capitol as some have claimed. Its purpose has been clearly outlined a number of times, as for instance in the words of one of the rioters, Ali Alexander:

“I was the person who came up with the January 6 idea with Congressman Gosar” and two other Republican House members. “We four schemed up putting maximum pressure on Congress while they were voting.” 

We all know what happened on that certification day, Jan. 6. Except, that is, for the right-wing version, which has raised the issue of rioter Ashli Babbitt’s shooting death by an officer (as she attempted to enter the Capitol through a window she had broken) as evidence that yet another deep-state, left-wing plot was at work. Enrique Tarrio, leader of the violent Proud Boys militia, claimed that the shooter was a black man: “This black man was waiting to execute someone on January 6th. He chose Ashli Babbitt.” Another crazy has alleged that making the police officer who stopped Babbitt a hero was yet another example of the “only injustice in America today—anti-whiteism.” Though the accusation is totally false, it fits the narrative that the rioters feel comfortable with: that the white race is being sacrificed and replaced by people of color.

            This is the situation we now face. Gelman makes the point that 2020 and the subsequent Capitol riot were attempts (that nearly succeeded) to stop the electoral count and declare Trump the winner—when he had clearly lost. Trump, his millions of supporters (all believers in his “fraud theory”) and the entire Republican Party do not intend to allow their scheme to fail again. They are, according to Gelman, “fine-tuning a constitutional argument that is pitched to appeal to a five-justice majority if the 2024 election reaches the Supreme Court.” Their scheme involves one they have been implementing for years—cementing Republican majorities in the legislatures of several key states (they now have legislative majorities in 30 states, and hope for more in 2022). With these majorities, they will promote the independent state legislature doctrine. This doctrine, very much like the one the Confederates used prior to the Civil War, “holds that statehouses have ‘plenary,’ or exclusive, control of the rules for choosing presidential electors.” This differs from the current Constitutional system, in which each party chooses its electors; and whichever party candidate wins the popular vote gets ALL the electoral votes of that state. But if any state legislature can substitute its own slate of electors, discarding the popular vote for a bogus reason like fraud, “it could provide a legal basis for any state legislature to throw out an election result it dislikes and appoint its preferred electors instead.” Alarmingly, Gelman points out, there are already four justices—Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Clarence Thomas—who “have already signaled support for a doctrine that disallows any such deviation from the election rules passed by a state legislature.” In other words, the “independent state legislature” doctrine. 

            The end game, then, is that the stage is set for the 2024 election, in which Donald Trump, or whoever the Republican nominee happens to be, will not be allowed to lose. If the electoral college vote, determined by the popular vote, does not go his way, several state legislatures (already busy passing voting rules that disenfranchise millions of normally Democratic Party voters), can simply claim fraud, substitute their preferred slate of electors, and appeal to the Supreme Court to sanction their theft. And if, as often happens, Republicans win control of the House of Representatives in the 2022 elections, and  take control of the entire U.S. Congress, they will be in full control, at the national level as well, of the vote count and certification. 

            Gelman adds this statement by Nate Persily, an election law expert at Stanford: 

“If a legislature can effectively overrule the popular vote, it turns democracy on its head.” 

Indeed it does. So we must again wait, as during the Civil War, to see if, in these United States, a government ‘of the people, by the people, and for the people,’ can long endure the assaults upon it—not, this time, by southern secessionists, but by the millions of loonies whom  Robert Pape has called “insurrectionists,” and who have been unleashed and driven on to battle by their recently-found Messiah, Donald Trump.  

And very much related to that is this critical question: do enough Americans care whether Democracy— that is, their electoral decision about who governs them—survives? Or are they more concerned, as some recent polls suggest, about the price of gasoline, or eggs, or where they can be “free” to go without a mask or a vaccination? 

 

Lawrence DiStasi  

Vultures

 

The other morning on my daily walk, I encountered a dead skunk on Elm Road in Bolinas. At first, I couldn’t identify it, but then the black fur and large white tuft (and the stench) told me it was a skunk. I held my breath as I passed and warned several cars and bikes not to hit it—remembering what I had heard, that once you hit a skunk with your car, you can never get the smell out. 

The next day, on the same walk, the skunk was no longer in the center of the road, but on the roadside amidst browned eucalyptus leaves and road detritus. And hovering over it was a large black buzzard—aka a turkey vulture, of the order Cathartidae, from Greek cathartes, which means “purifier”—tugging at what I took to be a long trail of crimson innards. “Ugh” was my first reaction: ugly carrion eater going about its grisly work, adding to the disgusting smell with a disgusting sight. And as I continued walking, I began to reflect on my reaction. And the question arose, “Why do we view carrion eaters as the lowest of the low?” As not noble like the great predators (including us), or even raptors like hawks to whom they’re related, but as nature’s bottom feeders: eaters of putrescent flesh. But then I also remembered reading that humans, when they first began to prowl the open savannahs, were also scavengers, of necessity—not equipped by nature with the teeth and claws of lions or leopards, or even dogs or hyenas, to bring down their own prey. So who are we to condemn scavengers, when that’s probably how we humans began our flesh-eating journey? 

            Then I began to recall that carrion eaters are actually a key part of the eco-system, clearing away the disease that resides in rotting flesh. So these ugly, ungainly birds (there were two more perched on a wire, eagerly awaiting—I imagined them salivating—their turn to dig into that skunky, putrescent flesh) did have a critical function. And that led to reflections on why we are so eager to bury our dead—clearly, at least in part, to keep our precious flesh from becoming a meal for one of these vile creatures whose tiny, raw-looking, red heads seemed to symbolize their lowly, repugnant status. And that in turn led to reflections about why, in fact, we are so anxious to embalm and then entomb our dead; which must come from the notion that the material body is really all we are, and keeping it inviolate is key to something—our hoped-for survival as everlasting beings, perhaps. 

            Then I discovered some fascinating facts about vultures. When vultures feed in a group, as they did on my skunk, they are called a “wake.” Again, this name evokes the idea of death, or perhaps more precisely, a death watch. There are also biological reasons for some of their most revolting  traits: that un-feathered bald head, for example, helps keep their heads clean while feeding, and also helps prevent overheating. Peeing on themselves is yet another somewhat-disgusting (to us) means they use to keep themselves cool. And while Old World vultures locate their prey using their keen avian vision, many of our New World species do not, but rather employ a keen sense of smell, unusual for raptors, to locate carrion. They can smell a good meal from heights of a mile and more—which explains why we see them most often gliding and circling effortlessly on air currents, always signifying to us that a dead carcass must be nearby. 

            Their close relationship to humans goes deeper than that, however. First, they seem to know about us and our wars, and what a great opportunity are our battlefields, where large numbers of eager vultures have regularly been seen feeding on the numerous dead (again, ugh). We also have learned, via scientific investigation, how valuable vultures are to humans, particularly in hotter regions. For we now know that the stomach acid of vultures is exceptionally corrosive—which is what allows them to detoxify and digest carcasses infected with such poisons as botulinum, cholera bacteria, and even the bacteria that causes anthrax. In this way, they help remove these lethal (to us) bacteria from our environment. 

            This helpful function must be what has led to the adoption and near-worship of vultures in ancient cultures. The ancient Egyptians, for example, believed that all vultures were female, and were spontaneously born from eggs, with no need for male fertilization. It was for this reason that they linked vultures to purity. Perhaps more important, the vulture’s ability to “transform” the dead matter on which they feed into life, made them symbols of the recurrent cycle of death and rebirth so important to Egyptians. It is probably for this reason, too, that many of the great royal wives in Egypt actually wore vulture crowns, said to signify the protection of the goddess Nekhbet, a tutelary (patron) deity of Upper Egypt depicted as a vulture. Nekhbet thereby became the symbol of the rulers in ancient Egypt, progressing from that to become the protector of mothers and children throughout the land, worshipped as a goddess. Nekhbet’s headdress always boasted the image of the vulture. 

            In India and Nepal, too, vultures have always been highly valued, but the species has declined dramatically in recent years. The cause has been found to be the presence of the veterinary drug Diclofenac in animal carcasses. The government of India has finally recognized this toxic effect on vultures and banned the drug for use in animals, but it could take many years for vultures to return to their earlier population levels. And without vultures to pick corpses clean, rabid dogs have multiplied, feeding on the carcasses instead of the vultures, and multiplying the prevalence of rabies—thus demonstrating once more the crucial role vultures play in keeping the environment clean and the human population healthy.  

            Perhaps most dramatic are the so-called “sky burials” of the Himalayan region, particularly Tibet and the northern-Chinese province of Qinghai. Sky-burial practice is very old (in Tibetan it is called bya gator, meaning “bird-scattered”), and was also practiced among the Parsees of India. In sky burial, a human corpse is placed on a mountaintop to be disposed of—either by natural decomposition, or through consumption by animals, especially carrion-eating birds like vultures. It is part of a practice called excarnation—that is, removing the flesh and organs of the dead before burial. Its function is to dispose of human remains in as generous and practical a way as possible—practical because in much of the Tibetan plateau, the hard and rocky ground makes it nearly impossible to dig a grave, and with so little timber for fuel, difficult to use the traditional Buddhist method of cremation to dispose of the dead. 

            Buddhism is also key in my final reference to vultures, Vulture Peak, also known as Holy Eagle Peak (apparently because of its shape). Gadhrakuta (Sanskrit for Vulture Peak) is said to have been one of the Buddha’s favorite retreat and training sites. It is located in Rajagaha, in Bihar, India. It is often mentioned in Buddhist texts as the place where the Buddha gave sermons—such as the key one in the Heart Sutra, and the equally-critical sermon in the Lotus Sutra (specifically chapter 16). Again, the link to vultures and purity is reinforced in this latter sutra, with mention of the pure land. 

            In sum, though we moderns tend to link vultures to revulsion, filth and disease, many cultures before us linked them to just the opposite—to purity, to the indispensable function of maintaining the health of human society by keeping it free of deadly pollution from rotting flesh. Perhaps, more generally, that should lead us to become more aware of our modern fetish for cleanliness, our quick response to that in nature which seems disgusting to us, but which functions, rather, to help preserve our health and our lives.

 

Lawrence DiStasi 

 

Donald Trump, Traitor

 

Not to put too fine a point on it, Donald Trump, the 45^th President of the United States, is a traitor. As president, he swore to uphold the Constitution of the United States by faithfully executing its laws. These are his publicly-recorded words:

 

I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.

 

And yet, in at least two major ways, he has violated that oath. First, he has perpetrated the Big Lie that he actually won the Presidency in the 2020 election, and that he was deprived of his victory by fraud. In pursuit of that claim—rejected by every court and every state that heard it, including Arizona—he and his cohort organized and instigated the January 6 assault on the nation’s Capitol. This resulted in five deaths, with 140 more wounded, and endangered the lives of hundreds of Senators and Representatives, all in the brazen, violent attempt to prevent the assembled Congress from doing its Constitutional duty—e.g. to certify the election. Perilously for our democracy, this attempt to overturn the 2020 election has never quite abated, nor has Trump’s insistence that he is the legitimate president who should be re-instated in place of the “fraudulently-elected” Joseph Biden. 

Second, the migrant conflict on the border of Poland, created by the dictatorial president of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, is a blatant attempt to cause a crisis in NATO by weaponizing migrants. Both Russian President Putin and Pres. Lukashenko know full well that migrants incite right-wing opposition: Viktor Orban took power in Hungary by inflaming popular fears of migrants, and Donald Trump followed the same playbook to take the U.S. presidency in 2016.  Nor is this mere speculation: Lukashenko has publicly promised to “flood the EU with migrants and drugs”— this in response to international sanctions following his downing of a plane that was crossing Belarusian territory carrying dissident journalist Roman Protasevich (see Heather Cox Richardson, “Letter from an American,” Nov. 10, 2021). This, of course, follows the many signs of fealty that Trump gave to Putin, both before and after his election—not least by criticizing and denigrating NATO members and leaders nearly every time he had the opportunity. He is the first US president in memory to have done this, and many critics consider this cozying up to our avowed adversary, while denigrating our perennial allies, as tantamount to treason. Lukashenko’s current move with migrants plays this same game. 

            It is hard to think of more that any president could do to qualify him for treason. In spite of this, Trump retains millions of die-hard supporters throughout this nation. Not only are they supporters, but many of them seem ready and eager to foment a revolt to overthrow the legitimate and now-certified election of Joe Biden, and install their great leader in his place. It is, for me at least, impossible to imagine that most of them are fully aware of what his means. Perhaps they consider the similar attempt to fight a war with the Lincoln-led Union in 1861 as a good precedent for their plans. But that secession-driven attempt, which caused the death of more Americans than all our other wars combined (until the War in Vietnam), was clearly treason. This little detail seems not to matter to Trump’s supporters. Some of the latest evidence for this comes from the now-notorious memos from John Eastman, conservative lawyer (one of Trump’s senior advisers to promote and validate the Big Lie), outlining how VP Pence, acting to supposedly count the votes, could recognize that several states have alternate slates of electors, and thence turn the electoral decision either over to the Congress, where Republican senators could use the filibuster rule to prevail, or to the state legislatures, where Republicans control a majority of state delegations. Either way, Pence, if he went along with the plan (which praise be, he did NOT), could, “without asking for permission,” declare Trump the winner. Subsequently, Subsequently, Eastman also “co-wrote a blueprint for how Trump could use the military, the police, and criminal gangs to hold onto power after a disputed election” (Lindsay Beverstein, “The Evidence We now Have is Utterly Damning,” Raw Story, Nov. 18.) The Jan. 6 insurrection followed. 

Even more astonishing than the collusion of Trumpistas, is the collusion of almost the entire Republican Party. Every member of that party in the current Congress, with a few glaring exceptions like Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, as well as thirteen outliers who took the risky step of voting recently for the Infrastructure package sponsored by the hated Democrats (earning them vilification and death threats), has genuflected at the altar of Trump to follow his lead. This includes that arch-hypocrite, Senate majority leader McConnell, and House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy. How is this possible? What of the party of Lincoln? What of the alleged conservative commitment to Constitutional originalism? It’s as if we’re in the topsy-turvy world of Alice in Wonderland, and makes one wonder:  Have any of these people ever read the Constitution, or the Declaration of Independence? 

            Let’s quickly review those two revered documents. The Declaration has these words in its second paragraph:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal… 

 

This does not say “some men” or “only men of noble birth or white skin color.” It says all. Jefferson goes on to enumerate all the violations committed by the British King as reasons why “these sovereign states” are cutting their bond with him—essentially because of his behavior as a  dictator who considers himself superior to common settlers, e.g. the people of America. In other words, the polar opposite of a leader in a democracy.   

As to Amendment XII of the Constitution, reflecting Article II, Section 1, Paragraph 3, it says:

The President of the Senate shall, in the Presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the Certificates, and the Votes shall then be counted. The Person having the greatest Number of Votes shall be the President, if such Number be a Majority of the whole Number of Electors appointed… 

 

That is about as clear as it gets, and means exactly what it says: the president of the Senate, that is, the then-sitting Vice-President, Mike Pence, must open the votes from the Electors of each state, and count them. The entire Congress—not the president, he is not a King—then certifies the election. This is its Constitutional duty, as it was Mike Pence’s duty, which he faithfully carried out on Jan. 6. 

But, the Constitution notwithstanding, Trump has continued to express his rage at Pence, the same rage that his minions expressed by screaming “Hang Mike Pence” as they invaded the Capitol on January 6. Though he was protected by the Secret Service, and escaped lynching that day, it was clear that the Vice-President of the United States was shaken. Trump, meanwhile, has continued to complain (as if he were King) about this alleged betrayal by his Vice-President and supposed ally in not following John Eastman’s script. The latest twist in this nearly-unbelievable episode of a president turning on his own vice president, is his expression of approval of the insurrectionist behavior in an interview conducted in March by Jonathan Karl of ABC news. In Karl’s rendering of that interview, to appear in his forthcoming book, Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show, he quotes the former president as follows:

“It’s common sense, Jon. It’s common sense that you’re supposed to protect…How can you, if you know a vote is fraudulent, right, how can you pass on a fraudulent vote to Congress?”

 

What this means is that Donald Trump defended the invaders’ chants of “Hang Mike Pence” during the Jan. 6  attack, saying it was “understandable” because they were angry that the legitimately-conducted election hadn’t been overturned(quoted by Jesse Rodriguez and Rebecca Shabad, “Trump Defends Jan. 6 rioters’ ‘hang Mike Pence” chant in new audio,” nbcnews.com, Nov. 12, 2021.) One comment about this, among many, is that of CNN legal analyst Elie Honig, who said on Nov. 12:

"Big picture: first of all, this is a constitutional nightmare. This is a constitutional worst-case scenario. The utter madness of a president… who is endorsing, supporting these people who are attacking his vice president.” 

 

As if the unhinged behavior and comments of the former President were not enough, one of his former principal advisers, Steve Bannon, has added to the fire. Bannon, like many of Trump’s inner circle, refused to honor a subpoena from the House Committee Investigating the Jan. 6 Assault on the Capitol (the committee had asked Bannon for documents and testimony). Charged with criminal contempt for defying the subpoena, he was taken into custody by the FBI, defiantly alleging that his people would take action. But even before being charged, Bannon had clearly stated, on his War Room podcast (the war room is what the Willard Hotel meeting on the eve of Jan. 6 among Trump conspirators, including Giuliani, Bannon, and Eastman, is also called), what he and the right-wing Trump minions were trying to do: do away with democracy to reverse the results of the Trump loss in 2020:

“‘We’re taking action. We’re taking over school boards. We’re taking over the Republican Party with the precinct committee strategy. We’re taking over all the elections,’ Bannon said.” (Peter Wade, Rolling Stone, Nov. 12, 2021)

 

Not content with that, Bannon added to this defiance when he was taken into custody by the FBI: 

 

"I'm telling you right now, this is going to be the misdemeanor from hell for Merrick Garland, Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden," Bannon told reporters after the hearing, swearing his team is "going to go on the offense." (cnn.com, Nov. 15, 2021)

 

How much more offensive the Trumpers can get is not immediately clear. But it is clear that Donald Trump and his minions have little regard for either the law, or democracy itself. 

            One more element has recently surfaced. Tom Boggioni writes that Max Boot, the conservative military expert, referenced a memo to Donald Trump “making the case to fire Defense Secretary Mike Esper” as evidence that Trump wanted to find some other head of the military whom he could control. The said memo, written by Trump’s director of personnel, Johnny McEntee (formerly his baggage handler) was “both sinister and ludicrous.” It made the case for getting rid of a Cabinet officer because of “insufficient loyalty to the president.” Boot goes on to say that Trump “appears determined to turn the military into his personal goon squad.” Further, if he manages to get another term as president,  “Trump would want to ensure that the ‘guys with guns’ are on his side” (Raw Story, Nov. 15, 2021). In short, Donald Trump has had no compunctions in the past, and certainly would not in the future, about using the U.S. military (before him, mostly kept from use as a political actor) to compel domestic compliance with his dictates—very much like the kings and dictators he admires most. 

            Enough said. The former president seems to take pride in breaking with America’s most hallowed traditions, up to and including behavior that seems, and, in my opinion is, treasonous. That he has been able to get away with this, so far, is an indication of how far the United States has strayed from the democratic republic that was once the envy of the world. And also, how huge portions of the public seem totally unaware of the danger that inheres in that departure, and/or how little they seem to care. Let us hope that the danger is forestalled before it is too late—before, that is, a real dictator steps on stage. 

 

Lawrence DiStasi

When Things Collapse

 

Wednesday was a trying day for me. First off, I was working on my new book, having recently put it into an Indesign“Book”—a very powerful app on Adobe’s Indesign program that paginates all chapters consecutively and makes them ready for delivery to the printer. I had just finished the chapter I was proofing (for the nth time), the second-to-last one in my novel, and closed it with some satisfaction: I was very nearly done. Then I went to close the “Book,” and suddenly—it disappeared. A little panicky, I went to my documents, found the “Book” file, and clicked to open it. Nothing. It would not open. Now I got really panicky. Where the hell was it? I kept trying to open it in different ways (on the  task bar, on the Indesign home page), and each time came up empty. Then I went to my backup hard drive, and it wasn’t there either, nor was it available on Mac’s Time Machine—supposedly backing up everything automatically. Now I was beside myself. All my work on the damn novel gone? Then I decided to create another “Book”  file, and re-enter all the chapters that I had earlier formatted with Indesign. It was laborious, but I thought I had to do it, though I knew I’d have to go over each one again to make sure it was formatted with the new corrections. 

And then, something happened. I tried opening the “Book” one more time (like a dog going back again and again to an empty dish), and it opened. I had no idea why, or whether it was the new one, or the one that disappeared, but I didn’t care. It was back, and after trying it several more times, I was satisfied that the “Book” had somehow returned—with all the crucial changes I had made. Whew. 

Then I ate and got ready to go to my doctor’s appointment at the local clinic, scheduled for 2:45 pm. After some errands (rushed), my helper got me to the clinic a bit early, left, and I told the desk attendant who I was and sat down to wait. Then came the second blow: the attendant said he couldn’t find an appointment for me with my doctor for today. He said the only one he saw was the one on September 21, next Tuesday, at the Point Reyes clinic. ‘Yes, I said, I know about that one, it’s in Point Reyes because they have the frozen nitrogen there to take care of the blemish I want removed. But the advice nurse had previously made an appointment for today for the follow-up my doctor wanted.’ No dice. There had been a glitch somewhere, I was not on the computer’s calendar, and I could not see my doctor today. Perhaps on Tuesday, he said, you can make an appointment for the follow up. 

I won’t go into further details, but want to emphasize what this really brought home with a vengeance: How the world, our world, can suddenly collapse when our expectations about how  things will work are suddenly dashed. In the one case, it was expectations about how computers and reliable design programs can suddenly fail or abort; in the other, how what we are sure some human has scheduled turns out not to have been. In short, we are totally dependent on millions, trillions of little automaticities, both human-created and natural, continuing to work as we expect, in order for our lives to continue to function. And when one or more do not, then we suddenly lose our certainty, our bearings, our faith that the world, the universe will, on its own, continue to support us, but instead seems determined to crush us. I did indeed lose faith yesterday, worried that it was the beginning of another of those periods in my life when nothing goes my way (especially worrisome at this time, when my crowd-funding campaign to publish my novel was hitting its stride), and braced myself for the coming shit-storm. 

As it turned out, my loss of faith was exaggerated and somewhat premature. But again, that isn’t the important thing. The issue I’m pointing to here is, again, the myriad of silent operations that we depend on, utterly, and must have faith in, to keep going. Take our blood circulation, wherein it, the heart, has to keep doing its taken-for-granted task of steadily pumping blood through our arteries and veins to keep us oxygenated and alive. If it fails, or slows too much because of age-hardened arteries, we can have a stroke that impairs our brain, or a heart attack that can kill us. Or the uptake of glucose into our bloodstream, the one that manufactures energy in each of our 724 trillion cells. Interruption in that complex process can spell loss of energy, and even death. Or the billions of bacteria in our gut that process and break down our food to provide that glucose, without whose indispensable work, again, we would be doomed. And that’s just a tiny glimpse of what goes on in the body, automatically, all beneath our consciousness, some well-understood by scientists, some not. We also depend on the planet rotating at the same speed for night and day to appear. And for the planet to keep traveling in its orbit around the sun (I have never understood what keeps these two circular motions going—some sort of inertia that’s left over from the original Big Bang 13 billion years ago? it seems preposterous), so the seasons keep succeeding each other, according to our calendars. And for gravity and angular momentum to keep us at just the  right distance from the sun so we don’t either burn up or freeze. And for the climate to maintain its “goldilocks” balance so that we don’t, as now, suddenly find ourselves struggling with global warming because of too much fossil-fuel-burning by humans over the last centuries. Or for winter rains to fall so that the grasses and trees and plants don’t dry out for lack of water (as is now happening in the Western U.S.) and our whole way of life, our very lives, are threatened. And on and on. We rarely, except in a crisis, think about these  things. But these and a gazillion more events (traffic lights working, drivers observing the rules of the road or pilots the airways) and regularities and conditions are absolutely necessary for our continuing functioning as human beings. 

In short, we humans like to think we’re independent, sovereign creatures who keep ourselves going, and the world under control with hard work and self-discipline and intelligence. Mostly on our own. And those qualities are important, yes. But the larger truth is that we depend on countless other beings and actions, both organic and purely physical, to maintain the vital conditions that keep us moving and growing and nourished and healthy. And it is only when one of those actions falters or fails that we truly notice our utter dependency. 

That is why there may actually be hope in the massive failure that is global warming. Yes, we are all in peril. Yes, the planet, or more specifically, life on the planet—especially human life—is going to change drastically and suffer enormously, and perhaps die off in horrifying numbers. But the one element that is going to be gained, is already being gained, is human awareness of our dependency, our interdependence with all other life, with all of creation. We will all find out, through bitter experience, that we humans cannot act with impunity, cannot disregard the well-being of other humans no matter where they live or what they look like, and more, cannot disregard the well-being of other animals, or the oceans—and the sea creatures that inhabit them, or the plants and soil we depend on for food, or the trees that provide most of the oxygen we need to breathe, or the countless other beings and non-beings throughout the universe, including even black holes, that must continue to circulate and procreate and self-destruct and energize the whole thing. For if we continue to do so, we do it at our peril, which means all of us. 

And what makes this even more difficult is that the more we know, the more we don’t know (which is probably a good thing, our not knowing, because if we really knew about all of it, we’d be paralyzed with indecision)—about the amazing, incomprehensibly-complex inter-relations among all the single bits of existence with whom we are engaged in this thing we call “life.” But we are learning; and, as I found out recently, those happenings that seem like bitter failures are often blessings in disguise; for they teach us in the only way we seem willing to learn, that we are all floating on this precarious, nebulous, but miraculously-dependable-and-balanced web, that does support us, whether we deserve it or not. And all of us probably need to be more thankful and aware than we usually are that it is there, that it is always changing well beyond our puny attempts to control it, but that it still always operates because we need it, and thus need to respect it more than we will ever know. 

 

Lawrence DiStasi

It Is to Laugh

With the plethora of bad news these days—global warming accelerating and whole portions of the globe on fire; the Covid-19 Delta variant running rampant through the population of anti-vax states and overwhelming hospitals; Afghanistan being overrun by the Taliban, and threatening to become another Vietnam-evacuation fiasco (today’s news confirms this); Congress mostly in gridlock and unable to address most of the crises besetting the nation, including the rampant inequality keeping whole sectors of the public in poverty (to mention only the major calamities besetting us)—it is easy to sink into despair and outrage. But it’s also easy, and far more preferable for one’s health, to see the humor in all this; not that tragedy is laughable, but that the idiocy emanating from politicians making these tragedies worse, is nothing if not hilarious. We have major figures who might qualify as standup comics if they weren’t so serious, so oblivious of the absurd nature of what they’re saying—which only makes their pronouncements that much funnier. So let’s just start listing some of the commentary by these buffoons; or perhaps begin by listing the buffoons themselves. Beginning, of course, with the Buffoon-in-Chief, ex-President Donald Trump. Then the governor of Florida, Ron De Santis. Then the women who have come to the fore in numbers in recent years: Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, and Governor Kristi Noem of South Dakota. And other idiots too numerous to name, but including stars like Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama, and Rep. Louie Gohmert of Texas, and even the minority leader in the House, Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California. But enough of the lists. Let’s get to the humor. 

            Pride of place must go to Gohmert, who recently tried to warn about Democrats’ attempts to pass the bipartisan infrastructure bill, which, he said, would fund “dangerous” solar power plants. And wherefore dangerous? Because, said Gohmert in an interview on One America News, “when the birds fly through, if they survive the windmills, then they hit that magnified sun, explode in flame, and down they go, bird guts all over the mirrors.” An epidemic of exploding birds! Proving, vowed Gohmert, that this “green stuff is out of control” (rawstory.com, Aug. 12). The mind reels. 

Next up must be MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, an avid Trump supporter, who famously predicted that Donald Trump would soon be reinstated as President, because Americans would realize that he did win the 2020 election. Lindell actually predicted the glorious date of this ‘second coming’: (“By the morning of August 13, it will be the talk of the world”), though he tried to hedge his bets when August 13 came and went with Biden still President. Still, Lindell happily urged supporters not to despair, Reinstatement Day would surely happen sometime in September, once he finally submitted his (nonexistent) proof that the 2020 election was rigged to the U. S. Supreme Court! The people would thereupon be ecstatic, urging the government to “Hurry up! Let’s  get this election pulled down, let’s right the right. Let’s get these communists out.” One has to ask: Who are these people? Who opened the Nut House? 

It appears that someone with connections to the Republican Party did it, because a recent survey reveals that nearly half (49%) of all Republican voters believe, bizarrely and dangerously, that: “a time will come when patriotic Americans have to take the law into their own hands.” The same poll found that an even bigger group of Republicans (55%) say  that “the traditional American way of life is disappearing so fast we may have to use force to save it.” And the same poll (by George Washington University’s School of Media and Public Affairs) found that Republicans don’t trust elections, 82% of whom said it's “hard to trust the results of elections when so many people will vote for anyone who offers a handout.”  In other words, those damn people of color! Such results are nothing but ominous in any polity, but in a so-called “democracy,” they seem near-fatal. As does, by the by, the apparent determination of Republican state legislatures to pass laws limiting the opportunities and rights of Americans, people of color mainly, to vote. Wasn’t that supposed to be the point of this republic—to abide by the will of the people, which requires as many as possible to actually vote? Gee, I guess not. 

But I digress. Let’s get back to the idiot parade. I particularly like the humor, macabre though it may be, of official responses to Covid-19 and the mask mandates and vaccines associated with it. Masks (along with social distancing) have proved to be remarkably effective at limiting the spread of this killer virus. So have vaccines, the best of which have been tested rigorously to be 90% to 95% effective at either protecting the vaccinated from getting the virus at all, or rendering its seriousness and lethality minimal. And yet, the response to attempts to mandate mask-wearing in enclosed places like school classrooms has been absolutely mind-boggling. Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida is probably the type case. In a NY Times Magazine article on Aug. 10, Gov. DeSantis’ rulings on mask wearing were summarized—to wit, that any school administrator or even school board that orders mask-wearing in his/their school, stands in violation of the Gov’s Executive Order of July 30, 2021 banning any such rules, and can and will have his/her salary withheld. While there are multiple lawsuits challenging the Gov’s order, he remained defiant, saying, “We can either have a free society or we can have a biomedical security state…And I can tell you, Florida, we’re a free state.” A ‘biomedical security state,’ and worse, one that seeks to save lives? Hilarious. His Executive Order is equally hilarious (and dangerous, especially in view of the fact that Florida is experiencing a surge in Covid cases, particularly from the lethally-transmissible Delta variant), insisting that masks have not been proven effective, and that they can cause serious breathing problems in children, not to mention “violating Floridians’ constitutional freedoms,” and “parents right under Florida law to make health care decisions of their minor children.” The stupidity and arrogance of this order is breathtaking, particularly in view of the Delta surge causing, in Florida, upwards of 20,000 cases a day and record numbers of hospitalizations and deaths, including among children. In short, this is hilarious but definitely not funny, constituting as it does a death sentence for many. 

Now let’s look at that champion of morons, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia (whom I call Mrs. Pruneface, of Dick Tracy fame). On July 19, she tweeted this:   

“The controversial #COVID19 vaccines should not be forced on our military for a virus that is not dangerous for non-obese people and those under 65. With 6,000 vax related deaths and many concerning side effects reported, the vax should be a choice not a mandate for everyone.” 

Controversial vaccines? A virus  that is not dangerous? 6,000 vax-related deaths? Where do these people come from? Twitter apparently wondered  the same thing, and promptly banned Greene from its platform for 12 hours for “misleading statements.” Not long afterwards, in an August interview on the right-wing “Real America’s Voice,” as reported in Rolling Stone on August 13, Greene went full-on wackadoo. She predicted that “Once the vaccines are approved by the FDA, we’re going to see the mandates for vaccines ramp up far more than they are right now,” and, “I fear they’ll become law in some cities and some states. Biden would love to make it the law of the land.” Not content with this paranoid idiocy, she went on to claim that if hospital waiting rooms were full, it was not because of Covid but also because the waiting rooms are full of all kinds of other things like “car accidents” and “cancer,” as if somehow the government had an interest in hyping up fear of this harmless virus (over 600,00 deaths in the U.S. alone). And anyway, she ended, “we all have to die sometime.” Ah such wisdom.  

One could go on citing Greene’s moron-isms—In May, she claimed that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s decision to maintain the mask mandate on the House floor was “exactly the type of abuse” that Nazis inflicted on Jews; exactly, saith the prophet. And she later compared the President’s campaign to encourage all Americans to get vaccinated to “brownshirts.” Our Mrs. Pruneface seems to have a liking for Hitlerian imagery. Her attack on Nancy Pelosi started much earlier, as well, when she ‘liked’ a Facebook post that suggested taking out Pelosi with a “bullet to her head.” And finally (the mind wearies of this madness), in arguing against what she called “the Anti-Police bill” she tweeted in January that “The FBI won’t be able to tweet pics like this or of teenagers they are pursuing, who walked through the Capitol on 1/6.” Oh, so that’s all it was: the January 6 invasion was really just a bunch of teenagers walking through the Capitol. On a school tour, no doubt. 

Does anyone actually take such ridiculous statements seriously? Are there real people who actually vote for such a moron? Apparently, in Georgia, there are. Again, the mind reels. 

I will end this tour with that great Representative from Colorado, Lauren Boebert, she of the gun-lovers lobby (who has tried several times to enter Congress with her pistol; pistol-packin’ mama indeed.) In  that regard, Newsweek on August 15 reported that Boebert, on Twitter, had written—just hours before a shooting in Orange County, CA that resulted in four people dead, including a child—that Gun control was ‘anti-woman.’ She wrote, among other things: “The only way I'm safe to walk around any dangerous liberal city is with an equalizer. Gun control is anti-woman.” Oh, those gun-toting, woman-hating liberals! And Boebert, who mouths off every chance she gets, started supporting gun-toters even before she formally entered Congress this year. The Congresswoman-elect actually led a tour of the Congress Building (she said it was to show her family where she worked), which some believe was a reconnaissance tour in preparation for the Jan. 6 invasion. The tour actually happened (as videotape proves) on December 12, 2020, in conjunction with a “Stop the Steal” rally in DC which Boebert attended. She is also seen with her mother in another video taken the morning of Jan. 6, beforethe invasion. According to Zachary Petrizzo of salon.com, January 6 organizer Ali Alexander can be “seen directly behind Boebert in the clip.” Moreover, at about 8:30 a.m. on that fateful day, Boebert went on Twitter to announce: “Today is 1776.” Did she actually think, and does she still think, that the January 6 invasion was some sort of Independence Day? i.e. the day to re-impose on America, by force of the arms she so loves, its rightful president, Donald Trump? And I keep having to ask: where do these people come from? And who in their right mind votes for them? 

The un-funny fact is that these sample cases (which by no means exhausts a very large list) indicate something very serious going on, something as serious as death. Which brings me to just one more example. CNN reported on August 13, that the very week before school opens, three educators “have died within about 24 hours of each other from Covid-19 complications.” Not surprisingly, all three were unvaccinated. All three were teachers in elementary schools, where large numbers of parents and teachers are still unvaccinated. This in a district where the school board, trying to prevent exactly this (to no avail it seems), had voted to maintain its mask mandate, approved last month. School board chair Rosalind Osgood said, about the Board’s reasons for defying Gov. DeSantis’ executive order banning such mandates, that “the eight of us on our board are adamant that we cannot have people in school without masks, because we are living a backlash of people dying of Covid.” She added, “We strongly feel  that the lives of our students and staff are invaluable, and we’re not willing to play Russian roulette with their lives.” 

That a governor could see this stance as violating some bizarre concept of freedom is laughable, on one level, but ultimately deadly serious. Because this is actually about elected officials in this nation playing “Russian roulette” with the lives of children. As Greta Thunberg is fond of asking, “How dare they?”

 

Lawrence DiStasi 

Vaccines and Resistance

Like many others, I have been fascinated, and often horrified, by the resistance of large percentages of Americans to being vaccinated against the Covid-19 virus. Though this resistance seems to be most widespread in rural areas—especially in the South and Midwest, so-called ‘Trump country’ dominated by white, rural conservatives and Fundamentalist Christians—it is by no means limited to those areas. I have family members living in Vermont and Colorado who have so far refused to get the vaccine. There are pockets of resistance in urban areas as well, especially in minority communities. As for me, I am in the high-risk age group, and was vaccinated with the Moderna vaccine as soon as I could get it in late January. The decision seemed elementary to me, and even to most people I know, including my children. After all, this virus is deadly, especially to older people, but it has also begun to infect and kill younger Americans, including some children, once thought to be essentially immune. Now, with the spread of the very dangerous and highly transmissible Delta variant, the danger is even greater for the pandemic to become a “pandemic of the unvaccinated.” So why would anyone fortunate enough to live in America, where the vaccine is readily available, refuse this protection?

My sense is that too many people have no idea what the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines consist of, and so are wary of getting infected from the very medication meant to protect them. That is, they think that the mRNA vaccines used against Covid-19 employ the same technology as the original vaccine developed in the nineteenth century to immunize people against smallpox, or later against polio. That is, those vaccines normally inserted a weakened or inactivated disease germ into our bodies to stimulate the immune system, which then created antibodies to fight off the invader. Effective, yes, but for some people, the idea of actually injecting the germ into their bodies conjured up terrifying images and fears of getting diseased by the very injection meant to protect them. 

However, a quick research hunt on the web would reveal that mRNA vaccines do NOT use this method—that’s why they are considered much safer. That is, the mRNA vaccines actually “teach” our cells to make a protein (teaching cells to make proteins is the basic function of mRNA, where the “m” stands for messenger) that mimics the so-called ‘spike’ on the surface of the Covid-19 virus. That harmless protein, or piece of protein, then triggers your immune system (which recognizes that the protein is an invader that does not belong) to create specific antibodies to fight the virus. And those antibodies protect you from getting the virus if it later enters your body. Importantly, after the protein piece is made, the cells break down the instructions and discard the spike protein. 

The vaccinated body, its cells, in this way are taught how to make antibodies to fight off future infections from Covid-19. And these vaccines have been proven to be very effective—not 100% to be sure, but close—against the virus, especially against the dire outcomes and deaths typical of Covid-19, and its new variants as well. And again, the great advantage of mRNA vaccines is that no potentially harmful germs need be injected into the body. This last advantage should be of critical importance to those who oppose vaccinations in general. This is because one key and historical objection to vaccines is that, by using a deactivated portion of the actual germ, there is a perceived risk of mistakenly infecting the vaccinated body, rather than protecting it. This is simply not an issue with mRNA vaccines. Nor is the objection about mixing animal and human bodily ‘fluids,’ that once formed the basis of objections to the smallpox vaccine (which was made from deactivated cowpox from cattle.)

So then, why, in the United States, are we nowhere close to ending this pandemic (though whether pandemics are ever truly over, is another question; apparently, the 1918 flu continued to infect people for years after it disappeared from most people’s consciousness)? And even less so the effects of so-called “long covid,” or “post-acute sequelae of COVID-19,”—a condition that most often affects younger people, and can  involve long term damage to the heart (increased chance of heart failure), the lungs (breathing difficulties), the brain (strokes etc.), and usually involves persistent symptoms or new symptoms that develop, generally speaking, at least four to eight weeks after the initial infection with COVID-19.  The truth is that, even in the face of such critical outcomes, vast numbers of people resist vaccination. So, with large pockets of resistance to the vaccine, achieving ‘herd immunity’ with 75 or 80 percent of Americans vaccinated, will be extremely difficult since, at this point, we are perhaps at 60 percent, and worse, large areas of the nation have concluded that the crisis is over, and they can get back to “normal.” Hence crowds of people are again gathering in crowded bars, restaurants, and other enclosed areas. But the crisis, driven anew by the Delta variant, seems to be revving up for another round, another huge surge—especially in states like Missouri and Florida where resistance to any measures, especially vaccines, to stop the spread is very high. So the question becomes, what is the basis of that vaccine resistance? 

A look at why people have been resisting shots is both hilarious, and deeply disturbing about what Americans of all sorts will believe. Much of the vaccine resistance seems to come from posts on Internet sites like Facebook and Twitter and TikTok, or right-wing media outlets like Fox News, Newsmax and others. This is not to say that reasonable concerns about the gross profit motives of pharmaceutical companies aren’t at issue; nor concerns about the rush to certify vaccines without time to properly test outcomes. But more resistance, it seems, derives from lunatic beliefs and social pressures. An article from the July 31 Washington Post, for example, notes that in Arkansas, Governor Asa Hutchinson “has traveled the state to combat the widespread idea that the shots are a “bioweapon.” A bioweapon! Even more specifically, 12-year old Shanuana Alcantar of Los Angeles, when interviewed, said her hesitancy about the vaccine had to do with reports she saw online that “it would make her arm magnetic: ‘I was really scared seeing all of those TikToks of the metal spoons and the magnets hanging from people’s arms, she said.’ Good grief! If this kind of nonsense weren’t so dangerous, it would be the stuff of laugh-out-loud comedy. Then there’s 25-year-old Chelsah Skaggs of Arkansas, who said she feared reports that the vaccine would make her infertile. And 18-year-old Tyler Sprenkle, who worried, once he got the vaccine, that his friends “would look down on me, say I was turning into a liberal or a raging Democrat” (this illustrates the widespread community-approval type of resistance.) Not to be outdone, 57-year-old welder Tim Boover, hesitated for months both about Facebook posts claiming that the vaccines had “bad side effects,” and also reports that “vaccines contained microchips that could be used to track people.”  Vaccines with microchips? I suppose all these might be considered within the realm of possibility, but really? People actually believe this nonsense?

The good news, however, is that all of these people eventually decided to get the vaccine. The above-mentioned Chelsah Skaggs finally decided to do her own research, and concluded that though “skepticism is a good thing…to be ignorant is a different issue.”  Well, thank god. For Boover, it was the Delta variant, which killed his childhood friend, that has scared him, like many others, into getting the shot’s protection. In Boover’s case, too, designing and forging the urn for his friend’s ashes, helped turn the tide for him: “This morning, I had to seal her in a box, weld that shut over her ashes,” he said. “It was rough. Then I made my mind up: I’m gonna get that shot.” 

That fear-driven action pattern seems to be a major hope now. Vaccine resisters, who have been virtually impervious to reason or evidence or appeals from government officials, or public health and contagious-disease experts, are now responding to death—the possible death of their parents or grandparents, or even themselves. Accordingly, the same July 31 Washington Post report noted that “More than 856,000 doses were administered Friday, the highest daily figure since July 3” and that “This was the third week that states with the highest numbers of coronavirus cases also had the highest vaccination numbers.” 

Though we would prefer it if people came to see that getting vaccinated actually helps everyone (because without “herd immunity,” the virus simply keeps finding new bodies to infect, and hence the numbers to evolve new variants, meaning no one is safe until everyone is), death will do. When all else fails, that is, good old Dr. Death can and does do the trick. And though it is terrifying to reflect that this—people dying in large numbers—is the only way to convince skeptics that they may be wrong, it at least comforts us to know that something can cut through the long trail of bullshit that has prevailed in right-wing enclaves up till now. Perhaps it will even succeed in saving a few lives, and, ultimately, the lives of us all. 

Lawrence DiStasi

On Belief

 

Most of us have to make decisions almost daily about what to believe. This is due to the fact that our modern world is too complex and multi-faceted to allow each of us to rely on personal experience or what happened in the past to support most of our beliefs. We cannot be everywhere, nor experience everything that requires us to make decisions—such as whether a virus is lethal, or whether the universe is really as big or particles as small as physicists say they are, or whether the evidence for global warming is really conclusive, or that human use of fossil fuels is really the cause, or whether government officials are right about a country that threatens us, and on and on. And so we, most of us, have to trust those who seem to have the credentials, the expertise, and/or the moral authority to inspire our trust. If they say something is true, we are inclined to believe that they are telling us the truth based on the best facts available. 

In most eras before ours, this problem of trust did not constantly arise. Most people believed that their past experiences could guide them in the future: that government representatives generally but not always told the truth, that scientists had no motive to misrepresent their discoveries, or that church officials like the Pope would prevaricate or could even be fallible. Now, however, we have all had to become more skeptical. I am of the opinion that papal infallibility is a joke. That when government officials swear that another government has threatened us—as in the alleged attack on our warships in the Gulf of Tonkin, or the possession of nuclear capability by Saddam Hussein—these officials often engage in elaborate lies to justify our pre-planned aggression. I am also personally skeptical of allegations about UFO sightings, or government collusion with the Arab terrorists who blew up the World Trade Center in 2001, or a host of other conspiracy theories. But that said, I, for the most part, do not believe that all government assertions are thereby false. That Covid-19 is a deadly and contagious virus seems beyond question to me, given the 600,000 deaths from it in this country, and the more than 4 million dead worldwide. Indeed, it seems to me that many governments, such as the one in India, have more reason to undercount the deaths from Covid than to exaggerate them. 

Why, then, do so many people vehemently disagree with the science, especially  as conveyed by government officials, and disagree with the idea that a vaccine could protect them against the worst outcomes from Covid-19? Why do so many Americans refuse to take recommended protective measures like wearing a mask? Why do nearly as many believe that global warming is a hoax cooked up by Democrats or by scientists looking for grants from government? Or that the moon landing in 1969 was not real but staged here on earth? 

Personally, I am mystified by this tendency to disbelieve almost everything emanating from government. On the other hand, there is a history to which we can attribute much of this skepticism, especially from the right side of the political spectrum. Though anti-government-ism actually started earlier, Ronald Reagan’s inaugural address in 1981 certainly cemented this conservative position when he famously said, “In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” One presumes that he did not mean, nor did people take it to mean, that all government activity was problematic (especially that which provides for corporate welfare); but his attack on government attempts to level the playing field through progressive taxation, or to regulate industries to prevent them from harming masses of people, or to provide a helping hand to those in need or those traditionally shut out of government largesse (like alleged “welfare queens”), was unmistakable. And the effects of this attack on government’s alleged “interference” and/or infringement on Americans’ so-called “freedoms” have had long-term effects. Nor would all this have had so lasting an effect without the underlying American ethic which holds that each individual is solely responsible for his/her own welfare, and that government’s only legitimate role is to protect the nation from harm originating outside our borders. In other words, to create a military that is so strong that no nation would even contemplate an attack (which position is, by its very nature, extremely profitable to the industries supplying weapons to that military). 

Of course, this is a position that ignores the mandate in the U.S. Constitution that government is also to see to the general welfare. Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution states:

“The Congress shall have Power to lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide forthe common Defence and general Welfare of the United States”… 

 

This would seem to imply that the “general welfare” of  the United States could include anything that would be beyond the ability of individual citizens to afford or undertake, but is definitely in their best interests—from building roads and bridges and transit systems, to regulating industries with a monetary incentive to engage in harmful activities, to warning the public about broad dangers such as global warming, to making sure that buildings are built to withstand fire or sea rise, to helping sections of the country devastated by natural disasters like hurricanes or earthquakes, to maintaining public order on the roads and highways (with traffic lights and speed limits) and in cases of insurrection (such as the invasion of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021), and to more contentious tasks like making sure that every individual has the right to adequate healthcare, or adequate housing, or many more provisions that other nations take for granted as government mandates. Including writing a tax code that assesses citizens based not on the influence their wealth gives them in government, but with an eye to ensuring some level of equality of opportunity. 

And yet, we now have millions of citizens who refuse to abide by almost all government mandates that allegedly infringe on their “freedom.” The position goes as follows: ‘I am a free American and therefore no government can tell me to a) protect myself by getting a vaccination or b) protect myself and others by wearing a mask and staying away from large indoor gatherings, or c) credit the contention of government agencies that Covid-19, and its more transmissible variants, is really any more dangerous than the common flu.’ Despite current information that cases of the disease are rapidly increasing in places with low vaccination rates, that the pandemic is now a pandemic of the unvaccinated, these opinions have only hardened as cases spike and more people die. And as increasing infection rates from those refusing vaccination threaten to prolong the pandemic and infect far more Americans and people worldwide than ever before—in short, threaten the general welfare for which the government is indeed responsible, but which individuals, prating about their “freedom,” about their scorn for “government interference,” seem quite content to ignore. The idea seems to be: ‘To hell with others; no government can keep me from doing whatever I please.’ 

Why is this so? One would almost think that life itself were at stake for those who cling so stubbornly to such beliefs. And indeed it is, for if one’s belief that Covid-19 is not serious, or that vaccines have dangerous side effects and are the result of government plots, that belief literally puts one at risk of long-term debility or death. Similarly, if people believe that global warming is a hoax, despite the increasing occurrence of heat waves or storms that threaten our very existence as a species, then they will simply scorn government attempts to induce them to curtail their use of fossil fuels. How can we understand this? Psychology helps. For what seems to be the case is that beliefs literally become “impervious to the facts in a process psychologists call cognitive immunization” (Psychology Today, “A mind convinced is immune to logic,” Ekua Hagan, March 28, 2016.) Part of this process is that “our minds automatically neutralize clashing information” (ibid.) They also “avoid any information that contradicts a strongly held belief, while seeking out information that strengthens it” (ibid.). There are several other techniques that serve mainly to protect believers from outside challenges to their beliefs, including isolating themselves from those with different beliefs, anchoring one’s beliefs to powerful emotions, either negative (roasting in hell) or positive (bliss in heaven), and repeating one’s beliefs over and over. 

The question is, how or why did such elaborate techniques come about? Presumably through evolution. As psychologists now explain it, 

…minds did not evolve to evaluate what is or is not the truth. Our minds were equipped through evolution with an impulsion [impulse? compulsion? ed.] to create, transmit, and defend beliefs that are useful, whether true or not (ibid.).

 

That is to say, if a belief is useful to us, whether psychically or emotionally, it matters little whether it can stand up to the scrutiny of facts, or the opinion of others, or major authority figures. Or even, it seems, whether such a belief is helpful to our own health, or even deadly to the point of killing us. If we have somehow become convinced of such a belief, of its usefulness, it becomes literally “immune to logic,” or accuracy, or fact. 

So this is the serious situation we now find ourselves in. Most people now have all kinds of “alternative facts” about any issue or policy, conveniently available on the internet with the click of a key. They can also find allies on web sites to confirm their beliefs, often public figures who reinforce those beliefs, no matter how aberrant. We need only think of Donald Trump, the President of the United States, encouraging people who believed that the election was stolen to storm the Capitol on January 6, and stop the Congress from doing its Constitutional duty to certify Joe Biden as the winner. The horde of supporters then did exactly that (though they did not stop the certification process), breaking in and creating mayhem and death in the temple of democracy—all based on their delusional belief that the election had been stolen. That is to say, not even death or the threat of death can stop aroused people from acting on a cherished belief. It is one reason that governments at war try to instill in their troops the belief, often manufactured, that the enemy is the devil incarnate. Those who believe in the evil of the enemy and the righteousness of their cause can be led easily to suspend any civilized behaviors that would normally prevent them from the mass killing of strangers that war requires. Their beliefs insulate them from normal inhibitions. 

In sum, beliefs are powerful drivers of behavior, to put it mildly. And what we are learning more and more each day is that, contrary to what we might have thought, beliefs are not necessarily anchored in truth, or in fact, or in logic, or in the sought-out opinions of the best and brightest. On the contrary, they are often anchored in the flimsiest and most laughable assertions (think of the QAnon conspiracy theories about Hollywood stars sexually abusing and eating little children; or the recent rant by Britisher Kate Shemirani about Nuremberg-like trials where doctors and nurses could be hanged for administering the coronavirus vaccines), and/or in comforting emotions that, though useful to the believer, remain impervious to fact or logic or proof. And the saddest part is that we are all susceptible to these convenient and reassuring shortcuts because, again, no one in our time can test every belief in the annealing flame of personal experience. All of us, in the end, have to test our beliefs against whatever logic and research we can muster, and then rest them in whatever standard we have learned to trust. Or, in the final analysis, to whether we survive or perish because of them. 

 

Lawrence DiStasi