The China Connection

A farmer in China's province of Inner Mongolia was recently diagnosed with Bubonic Plague.

That's shocking to us, but hardly surprising. China has been exporting plagues for millennia.

Of the more than 20 pandemics in recorded history, and even a few prehistoric plagues discovered by science, the great majority have originated in China. The path of contagion into Europe typically followed trade along the Great Silk Road.

Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that causes Plague, is endemic to China. Three major outbreaks, in 541, 1432, and 1855, killed millions. The second, a.k.a. the Black Death, may have killed as much as one half the population of Europe. The 1855 outbreak, which killed at least 12 million people, was finally only declared inactive in 1981, but remnants still pop up from time to time.

Since the 1890s new kinds of zoonotic diseases have come out of China. The newcomers have been associated with swine, birds, and now bats. They generally tend to be types of influenza passed from animals to humans. Because they originate in other species we have no natural immunity to them. Because they mutate often, a vaccine developed one day may not work the next. And because they spread quickly and easily, treatment programs tend to lag a few steps behind the contagion.

So, Diogenes, why this textbook-dry commentary on disease?

Because, dear reader, even though plagues have indeed killed an untold number of people, the "primitive" cultures that dealt with them, having no medicine, no idea of germ theory, and little idea of hygiene, were many times able to slow and even stop the spread of disease. How?

Isolation. The doctors of ancient and medieval times, having no means to cure their patients, watched them closely. They discovered that people who congregated in groups tended to become infected, while non-social individuals did not. They advised families and heads of villages to watch for symptoms and as quickly as possible when a symptom appeared, to close the afflicted person away from others. It took years for the information to get out and for it to spread, but it proved an effective technique.

This is a lesson we have only just relearned; we call it social distancing. There is no indication that medieval doctors suggested wearing masks, but people in the presence of illness frequently covered their mouths and noses against the stench, which may have had some prophylactic effect.

We know about germs, and anyone who has had an 8th-grade health class knows how diseases can be spread. The unpresident clearly missed that lesson.

The Dolt-in-Chief wants schools to open in the fall. He and his Republican minions want to pretend there is no contagion. In the midst of a pandemic that has infected 3 million Americans, he gathers or hires groups of people to sit in close proximity, without masks, to listen to him speak drivel and blather. He continues to deny the reality of this plague.

Someone should sneeze on him.


--- Diogenes, 7/8/2020 

Putting The Hate On Trump (Repost)

(Diogenes is temporarily involved in other pursuits. In his absence we will be reposting some of his more popular pieces.) ---RB

 

I hate Donald Trump because he makes me want to do violence.

I have held to a nonviolent philosophy for my entire adult life. I have never aimed a weapon at anything more threatening than a field target; I was last drawn into a fistfight when I was 17; I have no wish to harm anyone.

And I want to punch Trump's lights out.

I have dreams of throttling him, my hands around his neck, beating his head against the wall while he sings The Beatles' song "I'm A Loser." I want to rip that orange obscenity from his head and shred it with my teeth. I want to throw him into a pool full of crocodiles. I want to wash his lying, profane mouth out with lye soap. I want to tie him to a chair, tape his eyes open, and force him to watch a video loop of President Obama scolding, "Donny, you've been a bad boy." I want the Statue of Liberty to spank him, and the ghosts of Lincoln and Jefferson to haunt him forever. I want a personification of the COVID-19 virus to chase him naked through the streets of Manhattan. I want him to know himself for the fraud and freak show he is, no more worthy to sit in the Oval Office than slime mold. I want him reincarnated to a place where he is the only white person and the rulers are violent, misanthropic women. I want him to know the bone-chilling, knee-collapsing, bladder-emptying fear of authority felt by the oppressed, the disenfranchised, and the marginalized. I want a hundred afarit to drag him into the earth. I want him to know exactly what Putin, Xi Jinping, and Erdoğan actually say about him. I want him tarred and feathered and ridden out of DC on a rail.  I want to tattoo 666 on his ass. I want him to know his biography is full of blank pages. I want him afflicted with boils and unscratchable itches. I want the unspeakable beasts of Chthulu to find him. I want the Holy Bible to burn his blaspheming hands. I want his libelous tongue to cleave to the roof of his mouth. I want him placed among the traitors in the mouth of Satan in the deepest pit of Hell. I want him mute. I want his image expunged from every public place and his portrait never placed in the Gallery of Presidents. I want him forgotten. I want his legacy to be shame. I want him to know just how much he is hated. I want him to be bullied and intimidated. I want him ostracized. I want him humiliated. I want him to cry.

During the Thug-in-Chief's first campaign I sometimes asked rhetorically, "Will someone take this bastard out and shoot him?" I was advised by cooler heads to tone it down, and I did. No more. There are not enough denunciatory, damning, condemnatory, insulting, judgmental, censorious, reproaching, disparaging, derogatory words in all the English language sufficiently to describe him, nor any punishment he does not deserve.

He has defiled, flouted, soiled, profaned, fouled, besmirched, sullied and dishonored the office of President, the laws of this country, the Constitution, the legacy of the Framers, and the idea of democracy itself.

He is a cancer and a plague on freedom and on our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

He must be stopped, deposed, and extirpated.


--- Diogenes, 7/6/2020

One Angry Man

Here we are in the silly season, when political campaigns begin ramping up and candidates strive to present their best sides and demonstrate their good qualities.

Alas for unpresident Donald Trump, who has neither a good side nor any good qualities. He lacks jollity, folkishness, charm, and he sure as hell lacks presidentialness.

All evidence suggests he has only one emotion: anger. He seems incapable of responding to anything positively. He can bring anger out of an audience like a camp meeting preacher can bring out the spirit.

The problem is, you can't build on anger. Anger builds on itself with no mitigation, manifests as hate, and will ultimately always end in violence, the last resort of the incompetent.¹

We should be concerned about where that anger goes. It obviously gets poured out on those around him--the press, his staff, even COVID-19, which he hates because he can't control it. He carries so much anger that he radiates it.

Some of that anger must surely be turned inward, and that is Freud's definition of depression. If Trump is angry with himself and has become depressed he is far more dangerous than your everyday angry man.

On July 3 and 4 he delivered similar speeches at gatherings meant to observe Independence Day. They were, of course, campaign speeches and were of such hyperbolic demagoguery as to stagger the mind.²

Both presentations were belligerent in nature, effectively declaring war on his newest shadow enemy, the "Fascist Left." In both speeches he reached astounding new heights of hypocrisy, reflecting his acts and policies back on this ghost entity, shamelessly blaming the left for his own bad deeds, and attributing the effects of his policies, his racism, and his xenophobia to this phantom fifth column.

The Hypocrite-in-Chief has finally found a speechwriter who can make him sound almost knowledgeable about American history. He merged bellicose harangues with attempts to show his understanding of American history and diversity, peppering both addresses with names of African Americans and women, gracing a few with his only adjective, "great." 

Military power was a major focus of both speeches, as he read off lists of America's increasing military arsenal. All that was missing was a parade of weapons, à la Soviet May Day parades.

Lacking the intellectual capacity to channel his anger into something non-destructive, a depressed Trump is likely to strike out at virtually no provocation, and he has lots of weapons to play with.

We should be very concerned indeed.


--- Diogenes, July 5, 2020


¹ Attributed to Isaac Asimov.
² July 3 transcript: https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/donald-trump-speech-transcript-at-mount-rushmore-4th-of-july-event
   July 4 transcript: https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/donald-trump-salute-to-america-speech-transcript

Celebrate treason! Redux

Reposted due to the Great Pretender's outrageous acts of militarism and tyranny. 
Originally published July 4, 2020

Today we celebrate a unique and momentous act of treason. Two hundred and forty-four years ago today representatives of thirteen upstart American colonies approved and adopted a document announcing their secession from the world's most powerful empire.

When the signers of the Declaration of Independence gathered in Philadelphia to take their historic action, they did so pledging "our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor." In a time when one's honor was everything, that was a mighty oath, which they knew would cost their lives if their uprising failed.

At the time of the signing, hostilities between Great Britain and the colonies had been underway for more than a year. In a letter dated July 1, 1775, King George III wrote: "I am of the opinion that once these rebels have felt a smart blow, they will submit."

Well, Your Majesty, here we still are, and your rebels and traitors are our Patriots.

It would be fitting if, on this day when we honor our patriot forebears, we forcefully declare our own independence, forsaking and forswearing any link or allegiance whatsoever to unpresident Donald Trump, and pledge to do everything in our power to bring about his fall, to remove him from office, and to assign him to the dustbin of history.

Let us be traitors; let us be patriots; let us be Americans, speaking truth to lies, concord to divisiveness, and denouncing Trump to the world.


---Diogenes, Independence Day, 2020

Apologies

Diogenes regrets his extended silence. He expects to be back soon.

Of, By, and For, Part 2

I needn't tell you the adversary I spoke of in Part 1 is the unpresident, Donald Trump.

He has declared war on absentee voting, because he rightly sees it as a threat to his re-election. Between now and November 3 he will be trying every dirty trick imaginable to win the election. Trump is amoral, and will see this fight as business as usual in his twisted universe.

We are fighting for control of our government. Lincoln said the American government is Of, By, and For the American people, and Trump wants to take it away from us any way he can.

Voting is the single most important thing we do as Americans, and any attempt to tamper with any citizen's ability to vote freely must be met with extreme resistance.

Trump, his allies and his minions may have means to cause trouble with in-person voting systems, but absentee voting is beyond their filthy grasp. It must remain so. The number of absentee voters will no doubt be much higher than usual this year due to the isolation and quarantines resulting from the threat of COVID-19. And that has the Criminal-in-Chief terrified.

The man has no shame, no sense, and is willing to destroy the very fabric of the nation if it could get him re-elected. His overinflated ego could bring about the collapse of democracy, and that's not hyperbole.

Absentee voting has been around a long time, beginning during the Civil War when it was offered to soldiers stationed far away from their home states. Military personnel have continued to be major users of absentee voting. Would Trump disenfranchise those in uniform who he calls "great people?" You bet. To him they're just cannon fodder.

Who else votes by mail? The elderly and disabled and others with mobility limitations; people isolated by the pandemic, which is likely to be most of us; and potentially all 13 million voters in the states of Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Utah, and Washington, where voting by mail is the primary means of casting ballots.

Finally, the supreme hypocrisy, the most shameless mockery, the most sickening casuistry: The Hypocrite-in-Chief and members of his family routinely vote by absentee ballot.

Donald Trump is more dangerous to this country than Russia, China and North Korea combined. He must be stopped by any means available before "Of the people, by the people, for the people" becomes an odd, empty phrase uttered by an unremembered Republican politician.


--- Diogenes, 6/26/20


Bonus link to an important defender of free elections: https://www.brennancenter.org/

Of, By, and For, Part 1

When Abraham Lincoln succinctly defined American democracy as "of the people, by the people, for the people," he was indirectly referring to the one great power Americans had, that no other people at the time could claim: the power freely to elect their leaders.

We the people still have that power, and there has seldom been a time in the history of this nation that we have had more need to use it confidently and wisely.

We now face a ruthless adversary who would reduce our power by denying it to as many of us as possible. He seeks to accomplish this foul act covertly and subtly by targeting communities of voters who are already marginally disenfranchised.

He believes, and there is reason to fear, that he has the means to suppress in-person voting in communities and regions known to be inimical to him.*

There are several ways such an action could be engineered. Intimidation and misinformation about voting requirements and polling places and hours are blatant examples, but voting machine tampering, system hacking, and poll worker espionage are his more likely tools.

The unexpected spread of COVID-19 threw the country into chaos, and had a dire effect on election planning. One outcome of the confusion was the reduction in polling places, which played right into the foe's hands. As an example, consider Kentucky, the home of Archdemon Mitch McConnell, which cut its number of polling places statewide by 80%. That's not a typo. 80%.

One result of such reductions is that some voters may have to travel to vote, creating a barrier to voting for those who lack transportation. Kentucky's Jefferson and Fayette counties, two of the state's most populous, and with the largest African-American populations, were reduced to one polling place each in the June 23 primary.

As if in response to the threat of suppression both counties saw record voter turnout, a sign of hope that the American people understand the importance of voting in a crisis.

Another sign of hope is the increased use of absentee voting. No ballot box, no waiting. Just fill in the ballot, put it in the provided envelope and send it via U. S. Mail to the elections department.

The adversary hates this. He fears absentee balloting because he cannot control it. We must guard it assiduously.

Continued tomorrow.


---Diogenes, 6/25/20


*Several books and articles discuss this threat. I suggest One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy, by Carol Anderson: The Bloomsbury Press, 2018.

The Trump Sickness

There are times when I approach writing this blog with the same sense of avoidance many of us feel when we're tired and not in the mood to work out but lace up our trainers and go to the gym anyway.

It's not that I lack for subject matter or ideas. The daunting factor that strikes me every time I sit down to write is the knowledge that I am going to have to read something that Trump, or worse, a member of his family or a follower, has said.

Just looking at their words on a screen makes me feel ill with what I have come to think of as the Trump sickness.

Trump is all the things I hate and despise, not only in politicians, but in anyone: racist, dishonest, corrupt, unethical, intolerant, xenophobic, cruel, mean, misogynist, bully, threatening, megalomaniac, demagogue, irascible, disrespectful, champion of violence and inciter of unrest, and I'll stop there; it's a very long list.

I find most of the same behaviors among many of his followers and family members, plus stupidity, moral blindness, slavish acceptance of lies, bigotry, violent urges, lack of imagination, inability to distinguish between fact and fiction, and between right and wrong.

Trump spends a lot of time insulting people by running them down and calling them names, which only means he's inviting others to do the same to him. Most of us like to think we're above such behavior, and if you are you're a better person than I, as this rant demonstrates.

The United States is a government of laws, and its society is based on that of Great Britain--arguably the most civilized nation of its time. Even before Trump became president he has been spreading hate and division, defying the laws that govern us, flouting the norms by which we live, and sending the country into a downward spiral toward third-world brutality.

This need not be a death spiral, but every one of us needs to rise up and take political action to save the nation. Be righteously angry. Be Proud. Be American.


--Diogenes, 6/24/2020

Words Acting Badly

Some of the biggest words in the English language actually have relatively few letters. Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis is undeniably a big word in terms of letters, but the "big" thing I'm talking about is meaning. 

Many words in our culture are overused, misused, and misunderstood. Being something of a logophile, I thought I would attempt to rescue a couple of the more persecuted ones.

Hero: We sometimes say a person is "our hero" because they have done something nice for us, perhaps getting our broken-down car started, or finding a lost dog.
   The term rightly refers to a person who displays exceptional courage, especially in a dangerous situation. Today the term is frequently, and wrongly, applied generally to police officers, firefighters, and military personnel. Anyone in any of those professions could be thrust into a situation requiring genuine heroism, but not everyone who dons a uniform is a hero.
   In the United States military the highest award is the Medal of Honor, awarded for conspicuous "gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty." During WWII 473 military personnel were awarded the medal out of some 16 million who served. That's how rare true heroes are.

Desecration: This is a terribly misused and misapplied word. It means "to make unsacred," and usually pops up in reference to a flag or other national symbol. 
   The problem is, you can't desecrate something that wasn't sacred in the first place. "Sacred" and its related words have very narrow definitions, all related to religion. Neither the flag nor any national emblem nor the Constitution is sacred because they were not created for the purpose of worship. The Founders would be horrified by the thought that someone might venerate the flag as a sacred, that is to say, holy, object.
   Owing allegiance is far different from expressing reverence. This nation was created "in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty" for those who live here, whom the not-very-religious Founders believed deserved "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." 
   We salute the flag. We do not bow to it. We pledge allegiance to it as the primary emblem of our country. We do not pray to it. It is a symbol; nothing more.


--- Diogenes, 6/23/2020

 

  

A Tale Of Two Tyrants

Listed below, from the Declaration of Independence, is a handful of the 27 grievances the representatives of the 13 American colonies made in their case to dissolve the ties that held the colonies to the British Empire. The original spelling and style are retained. "He" is King George III.

• "He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
• He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
• He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
• He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
• He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us. 

"In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people."

The 18th-century prose, vocabulary, and style of argument may seem foreign, but are applicable to our 21st-century situation if reduced to their simplest terms.

How might these grievances relate to the actions of unpresident Trump?

He has consistently vetoed Congressional resolutions that would remove American military personnel from harm's way in war zones in the Middle East; that would block the exportation of arms and military services to other nations including some potential adversaries; that would relieve closed and/or bankrupt postsecondary schools of the burden of repaying student loan debt; and that would lift his emergency declaration to provide funding for a border wall between the United States and Mexico.

He has repeatedly sought ways to close the country off to immigrants and to deport many individuals and families who have lived in the United States for years but who have not sought naturalization.

His actions clearly show that he has no interest in the welfare of the American people--only in furthering his own agenda, which includes suppressing rights and freedom. The clearest and most-witnessed recent abridgment of rights was the arrest in violation of First Amendment rights of Sheila Buck on June 20, 2020, in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

He has several times threatened to bring the U. S. military forces to bear against Americans, contravening the wishes of governors. He has urged the National Guard to ever-increasing offenses and police forces to barbaric acts.

He has divided the nation by glorifying combat and violence, setting those who believe violence to be the answer to everything against those who would seek peaceful conflict resolution. He spews hate and racism at every opportunity, vilifying people of color and those who differ with him.

And, as the Founders stated, "We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury."

King George III was a tyrant whose military forces fell to a force lesser in arms but greater in the belief of their cause. Donald Trump is of the same ilk.

We the people must demonstrate our belief in our cause: to dethrone Trump. We have the ultimate political weapon in a democracy: the vote; we need to work to be sure all our brothers and sisters whose voices could be suppressed have the opportunity to join us at the ballot box.


--- Diogenes, 6/21/2020