opportunistic infections
The body politic — all of us, together, as one — is a wonderful metaphor because it doesn’t struggle to convey what is obvious:
each one of us emerges from another human being, a chain of tissue that is unbroken since the beginning of life.
Even those among us with untrained imagination, who choose to view the body as a machine, must acknowledge that the code for our bodies is the product of a… merging of branches.
Everywhere all around, life is fusion.
(Starting with the sun.)
To be a single body may sound like a reduction but when we lift the veil of our natural ignorance, the body is revealed to be the most complex thing imaginable.
A collection of organisms living and working together.
For example, there are 39 trillion microbial cells in your body. Talking, negotiating. Collaborating.
One body is a Platonic ideal! If only we could be more like our bodies.
As a body politic, whether we like it or not, whether we know it or not, we are subject to the conditions of all other bodies.
Like opportunistic infections.
Yes, most of us would like for the USA not to be plunged back to the status quo ante of the Civil War in a few weeks.
Most of us do not believe the political innovations of Reconstruction were a mistake.
Most of us do not want kings and nobility.
But our body politic is weak. And so opportunistic infections can kill us, at first slowly and then all of the sudden.
Our body politic is sick with all manner of “autoimmune” disorders – when we fail to recognize ourselves.
Our body politic is sick with misogyny. There is no MAGA movement if women are equal. Full stop.
Our body politic is sick with racism. There is no MAGA movement (no Tea Party, no War on Drugs, etc and so on.) if we have healed from the near-mortal wound of chattel slavery. (The data are clear: we have not healed.)
Our body politic is sick with greed. There is no degradation of our information systems (the disappearance of local news, the hollowing out of the Internet), no deterioration of our electoral systems (Citizens United), no destruction of our ecosystem (!), if our appetite was in line with what we can digest.
Every billionaire, like every morbidly obese person, is a body at war with itself.
We are far from healing. Far from healthy.
And the worst thing we can do is take an aspirin for cancer or put a Band-Aid® on gangrene.
Old people, like young people, can be quite stubborn when it comes to getting help for their bodies. But life demands that we care for our bodies, ourselves. Honestly.
Black lives matter. Migration is a right. Greed is destructive. Kindness is righteous. Every body counts.
I could go on but if you’re reading this, you already know the score.
This opportunistic infection will either kill us, or keep coming back until such time as we have addressed our underlying conditions and healed as one.