Disorder has turned universal. Armed hospital invasions are common in blue states, red states, border states, states of anxiety, hopeless states. Is the State itself in danger?
It’s our fault. We didn’t prepare. Sucks, doesn’t it?
Who wants to read that?
MY EXPERT WITNESS WHEN THEY COME FOR ME: SIGMUND FREUD (Max Halberstadt)No wonder politicians hate this and other blogs. Since bloggers are the ones calling them liars and presenting the truth about our national mess, it must be our fault that no one believes anything they say.
But I wasn’t uptown last night when people broke into Lenox Hill Hospital looking for vaccine. I didn’t shoot it out with anyone along Park Avenue. I can’t even tell you how many people got killed—or how many patients were scared to death—because the city won’t say and the press won’t demand answers. Anyway, I was here, working to inform my fellow Americans about peaceful ways to survive.
Which can include what to guard against. I’m hearing stories of flu survivors making trouble—gangs of toughs who endured H5N1 robbing those who still cower from it. One report said they look for targets in masks. (Never let it be said that my need to sell things prevents me from sabotaging sales.)
According to some DC speechmakers, I’m the real problem: They are willfully misinterpreting my fanciful discussion about H5N1 antibodies and genomic subtype cycles. Why? They want to justify barring anyone who’s not medically trained and/or institutionally certified (connected, in other words) from criticizing the government’s failure to function properly during this oft-forecast emergency. Holding poor Hope-Simpson and his New Concept up for public scorn, they propose a bipartisan bill to outlaw “any effort to spread panic, conscious or otherwise.”
In other words: Shut up! I call this bipartisan authoritarianism. It’s been brewing for a long time, but it picked up speed and mass on Sept. 11, 2001. Few politicians of any stripe bother to stand against it.
Any such repressive statute would benefit only lawyers who can’t find work after the pandemic subsides. I’ve got better things to do than give Congress a free consultation, but that thing needs a rewrite. What constitutes—a loaded word these days—criminal unconscious effort? Are Freudian slips to be criminalized?
Fortunately, I’ve been trying to help avert panic for six months. It’s all documented, right here. Click, click, click: Case closed!
Blame the Lame
So I have nothing to ‘retract.’ I’ll go back to watching these demagogues grind their gums about immigrants—wretched, maskless, jobless people who are dying like bugs. Who dare not shout back like us natives when big taxpaid boots kick their doors in.
This is what scapegoating is about. When the Black Death came to Europe in the 14th Century, Christians murdered Jews for allegedly poisoning the water supply. The god-fearing majority stole Jewish property, sacked the ghettoes, incinerated babies.
Blaming a weak element of the populace still satisfies man’s dumb need for the illusion of control. If we can believe that our problems derive from certain people, we can pretend to solve things by punishing the culprits—even liquidating them. That was Adolf Hitler’s appeal.
If today’s enemy is us—the poor fools who failed to prepare for a pandemic despite years of warnings—we’ve simply got to find a better adversary. We can’t punish ourselves. Things are bad enough. But someone must pay.
I don’t want to argue the merits of immigration. I moved to a city that celebrates it with every beat and every screech. Our country is founded on it—voluntary (“Give me your tired, your poor…”) or not (“This most rotten branch of human shame…”). Americans can certainly burn the welcome mat if they choose.
But foreigners did not invent this plague and Americans haven’t figured out how to end it. Nature is taking its course. Human nature isn’t helping. Don’t make things worse. Save the rhetoric for the next election, whenever that might be.
Scapegoating: If you’re not against it, you’re with it.