Trumpism and Alzheimer’s Disease in the United States
The fairest comparison to make from US Politics to physiology is not a favorable one: Alzheimer’s Disease.
Starting long before 2016, Donald Trump aligned some of the worst elements of American society to oppose the presidency of Barack Obama. From his blatant hypocrisy since his election, we can infer that the reason for this opposition was essentially based upon racism and not a difference of opinion regarding how to run the nation. Trump doesn’t care what happens to the nation. But how on earth did this happen to a nation which was steadily pushing itself forward, fighting against its racist past? As a black friend of mine yelled in disgust and surprise after a racial slur was hurled at him in public for no reason, “It’s 2014! What are you even saying?”
We thought we had progressed so far, and yet a few short years later the truth was revealed: the progressive party had dominated national discourse for years, and yet it had failed to completely destroy the racist components of society. Healthcare, war, and America’s role as the “world police” were all concessions that had been made to appease the right wing of politics in the United States, a wing which was founded by racists and which had, until recently, been forced to play nice by power dynamics which dated back to Reconstruction and the Civil War.
The pragmatists on the right finally aligned with their more extreme brethren from the far right and the alt right. A reality TV star and outspoken critic of Barack Obama fractured the nation’s false sense of security by shocking Hillary Clinton, a milquetoast centrist who would have probably done very well during the COVID-19 crisis, during the 2016 election. Almost immediately, reality turned upside down. People make jokes about how earth took the wrong turn and we need to get back to the real timeline. The entire period has been utterly surreal.
The oppression of the racists and the Christians at the hands of people who believed all men were created equal, people who thought that the United States was made stronger by its diversity, people who disregarded the plight of the “white trash” which lined the space of “flyover country” came to an end in 2016, when Donald Trump became the first president to represent the values system of racism and corruption explicitly since Herbert Hoover.
Do not misread this essay: things have never been okay in America. They were not okay under Obama, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Reagan, Carter, Ford, or especially Nixon. During those halcyon days we all so fondly remember, racism was rampant. The police brutally murdered Black Americans for selling single cigarettes on the streets of New York City and nobody did a damned thing about it. Emmett Till’s memorial in Louisiana had to be bulletproofed.
But perhaps it could be said that the media was not so divided as it is today. And today, it is unerringly clear that one group of power brokers owns CNN and MSNBC, whose mission it is to stoke liberal rage and prevent a coherent uprising against the establishment; and the a remarkably similar group of people own the other wing of partisan news, Fox News and its smaller rivals such as Breitbart. Fox News has become the mouthpiece of the Trump administration, owned and operated by power brokers who suddenly find themselves in the unfamiliar position of holding the upper hand in the American political discourse.
The Symptoms Of The Disease
For years, Americans have hated one another over politics. Perhaps always. And yet, politics was not so front-and-center in the past. Surely, during the union riots, there were moments in which everything was decided with blood and along party lines — which side are you on, boy? — but in general, the average American was either plugged directly into a street-level power broker who safeguarded job and pension in return for blood spilled if necessary; or was completely divorced from the need to think about such untidy things in the first place (welcome to Suburbia, est. 1950).
These days, Americans sit, fat and comfortable, expected to die of nothing aside from heart disease (even COVID-19 disproportionately attacks and kills upon this basis), eating their fast food and drinking mass-produced beer and generally stewing in a propaganda stream so wide that the Mississippi River looks like a puddle by comparison.
And gone are the responses to globalization exhibited by previous generations. There is no more Rosie the Riveter and there are no more good boys, going off to fight and die to preserve a way of life. Instead, we’ve got a nation which is increasingly impoverished both in terms of culture and infrastructure. Few among us would truly be willing to die for this nation at all. Fat, lazy, avaricious people whose top natural predator is diabetes stalk the online forums and Facebook pages of the rich and powerful, hoping to glean inspiration, as opioid-addicted zombies recover from their bodily injuries but never receive healing of the soul.
As the media increases the pressure to stress about national politics in a way which is entirely unfamiliar to American culture, or at least was, before WWII, it seems the average American is becoming increasingly difficult to locate. Does this person go to church? Does this person vote? Does this person attend school, work a trade, possess a college degree? What are this person’s addictions and vices?
The schizophrenia of our political atmosphere is entirely derivative of the chaos of our economy — we have drug dealers with mandates from the FDA selling more antidepressants and life-destroying pain medications than they ever have before, while perfectly legal fast food restaurants poison us with the approval of the institutions we fund with our tax dollars, ostensibly to safeguard us and to ensure we stay healthy. And always, the over-inflated biotechnology industry overpromises and underdelivers its “innovation” to the people of this nation, whose primary affliction is and always has been their inability to run their government in a way that benefits them.
The Disease
The disease which stalks American streets today has a wide variety of symptoms and indeed, if “We The People” were to be treated as a singular person in a doctor’s office, even a great one would be hard-pressed to come up with the correct treatment. I’m an ethicist — this entails the study of moral problems, which could probably be accurately called the most complex subject in the universe, as it relates all of the most complex behaviors of the most complex organisms to one another.
However, it’s possible to study ethics effectively. You just look for someone who does ethical things and work to understand these behaviors. It is easy to observe the disease we have in the United States. By comparison with healthier nations, perhaps we can arrive at a diagnosis.
The Trump Virus is perhaps the most popular speculation of the day, and indeed it has arisen fairly recently. It is likely a product of the poor state of health, the utter lack of discipline exercised upon the body for so many long decades, but it would appear that the mind of our nation is now as afflicted as its body.
Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disorder which is thought to be closely related to diabetes mellitus, in fact some researchers believe it could be a third form of diabetes. Generally, the elderly are more likely to be afflicted by AD than younger people, but it is not unheard-of for someone in their forties to end up contracting it.
The symptoms of AD are simple enough: misfolded proteins in the brain (beta amyloid) lead to the formation of plaques which build up and accumulate over time. The “tangles” associated with AD are the accumulations of Tau protein — Tau normally helps to form microtubules which allow neurons to pass nutrients and so on between each other, but which collapse during AD progression and function to prevent sharing of nutrition and chemical signals.
Beta amyloid protein accumulates on the surface of affected neurons, disrupting communication and possibly playing a role in the hypometabolism associated with the disease. This phenomenon goes on for some time before ultimately resulting in immune system activation as the cut-off cells cry for help by releasing chemical signaling molecules to call in the lymphocytes, which then attack them.
Unfortunately for America, both of these symptoms are taking place right now, at the social level. Neighbors who previously got along have become entangled in different toxic political narratives which have little or nothing to do with how the nation should act and much if not everything to do with what the other side is wrong about.
Throughout the earlier stages of the disease, America was able to unify against a common threat to some great effect — but lately, there is little or no communication between affected parties. Worse, people are unlikely to be helpful to one another and many resort to online aggression and/or in-person violence to settle their disputes.
The Prognosis
In a healthy country, there are criminals and con-men just as there are law-abiding citizens and faithful civil servants. These people generally share some amount of common identity and understand why it is best for people to work together to produce an overall healthy organism. Many of the best examples of this sort of communicative interaction come from Northern Europe, where some nations even hold Sovereign Wealth Funds which pay dividends to taxpayers every year.
The general attitudes within these nations are more related to states of affairs the nation as a whole confronts, and though it is certainly possible for a nation to do much better, the general attitude is more oriented toward progress than attrition. This is most vehemently not the case within the United States, where the President has repeatedly been scolded about seeking assistance from foreign powers to win elections and has been credibly accused of being a Russian asset.
No, in the United States there are multiple major power channels which fuel narratives that American Citizens are then essentially forced to choose between. Choose neither option, and you’re less likely to be employed. And unemployment is particularly tough in the United States, which has perhaps the developed world’s most significant homelessness problem.
It is a difficult diagnosis to make, but were the United States a single human being, the prevailing psychological summations of the current state of affairs would likely be some form of neurodegenerative disease, coupled with some level of schizophrenia and perhaps diabetes. It would also likely suffer from frontal lobe lesions which specifically impair its enjoyment and decisionmaking faculties. The richest nation in the world has, perhaps predictably, become the most corrupt — or perhaps it became the richest precisely due to this seemingly bottomless corruption.
Alzheimer’s Disease is a terminal diagnosis, and patients rarely even manage to prevent their own cognitive decline from progressing at a frightening, accelerating rate. To call the present state of affairs unfortunate would be perhaps the greatest understatement in the history of humanity, but only if you’re an American. The rest of the world will go on after the US has ceased to exist as a superpower or been engulfed by a second civil war. Unless the nukes fly. Then the whole world will end.
Experimental Treatment Options: Use At Your Own Risk
We are in uncharted waters here, as a nation, as a culture, and as a civilization. However, it is still possible to restore your own ability to communicate to and provide nutrition for your fellow cells in America’s brain. You have to start with the basics — you need to control your own blood pressure, and seek immediate distance from any situation in which someone else tries to take that from you.
The most immediate relief you can grant yourself is to focus upon alternative news sources and work hard to limit your consumption of this potential toxin. The state of affairs here is very bad and unlikely to get much better soon, but the milquetoast narratives offered by MSNBC and CNN are not going to get you back into touch with your community any more than Fox News will. The media profit from your fear, which drives your consumption. In order to break this cycle, the only thing you can do is to voluntarily limit said consumption.
The second-most immediate source of relief is to avoid anything which involves a picture of Donald Trump. The man is neither good for you nor for your country. His ignorance of basic virology is killing thousands of American citizens every day and even Republicans are airing ads about how little that matters to him. If you wish to be involved in politics, run for office, or make a difference, please attempt to do so locally. You’ll be more likely to make a positive difference at that level, and the national politics won’t drive you so crazy.
The third and final source of relief is perhaps also the least effective. Recognize that your media-addicted friends and family are not the people they once were. If they wish to talk at you about politics, make sure that you do not start an argument with them. That’s what they want — their only desire is to break the spell of the cognitive dissonance which their media addiction fosters in their minds. The only thing you can do for them is to try to treat them like people, but in order to do so you must remain unaffected. They will say absurd things to you, and they will act as if they are capable of addressing the nation’s problems personally. They are not. The media tricks them into believing that they are so as to manipulate them by making them feel responsible for the events which take place. This emotional investment is the root of the addiction which has broken them — in order to prevent becoming infected yourself, you must at all costs prevent yourself from reacting emotionally to the things they will say to you.
Unfortunately, there are no known cures for national-level Alzheimer’s Disease, also known as the Trump Virus. It is conceivable that, if enough like-minded people begin ignoring the show, that it could possibly go away. However, the political arena is a moral obligation of citizenship. Good people need to run for office and succeed to undo the damage the present era is causing. Support politicians who say unique things, who maintain a coherent narrative, and who are not racist whenever possible and perhaps we can end up with a sensible batch of leaders.
The odds are, we’re all doomed regardless of what happens next. The more gullible half of the nation’s voters have placed a drum stick into the spokes of our collective bicycle and we are in the process of flying over the handlebars as a result. Whatever comes next is likely to hurt — you personally, me personally, all of us — a lot. The best we can do is try to relax and roll into the fall to minimize the injury.
Good luck, and please stay home.
PS: A month or so after writing this piece, it seems more relevant somehow. A few corrections are necessary: Trump does not cause the disease of American racism and systemic cruelty to American Citizens including war crimes committed against them during the recent protests and utterly inappropriate brutalization with the sanction of the Trump White House. Trump is perhaps a symptom of this disease, and to cure it he must certainly be opposed, but we have suffered from it since before my birth, much less Trump’s election. We must own that, moving forward.
It is better to protest than to stay home but COVID-19 has not disappeared as a major threat to the safety of our communities.
Please, feel free to protest and by all means DO SO SAFELY. Wear a mask, be good to other protestors, and thank you for standing up so bravely against oppression in the United States. The people making these demonstrations possible are heroes fighting for an important cause and if you are one of them, thank you.