Blog#45- 10/4/20
THE OTHER PANDEMIC
By Richard Davis
When people in power continually lie and rule with bluster and bullying instead of with intelligence and compassion we all suffer. If these kinds of bad apples are in our neighborhood or in the sphere of our daily life we can try to keep away from such a toxic individuals. We know that keeping away from them is the best thing we can do to preserve our mental health.
But when that person is the President of the United States it is nearly impossible not to be affected by the toxic atmosphere that is constantly being created. It seems that when such high level power brokers do so many bad things they create a juggernaut of a unique kind of disease that feeds on itself and that grows in intensity. Their behavior feeds a beast of never-ending chaos.
A new kind of political epidemic is poisoning the entire world. The coronavirus is a physical threat and this new political virus is quickly harming the mental health of people all around the world. Trump is not the only bad player who is spreading this virus, but he has given greater legitimacy to other world leaders who are trying to solidify their power bases by building a world of lies with their own version of bluster and bullying.
It almost as if all of these evil politicians had a secret meeting after Trump got elected and they all formed a pact to keep their power as long as possible by agreeing that any lie was justified and that no inhumane action was off the table.
Of course, one might say that bad politicians have been around forever and that this is nothing new. That may be true, but because of the ever-present media streams and the 21st century connectedness of the world, actions by world leaders affect all of us in harmful ways. Their behavior is magnified and the political pandemic sends out wave after wave of disease to all parts of the globe.
Some of these people include the political leaders of North Korea, Russia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Belarus and Turkey to name only a few. Dictators have always ruled countries, but some of the more enlightened humans have come to believe that evolution would have paved the way for more equitable forms of government by now.
Instead, we have a resurgence of dictators and the continuation of genocide, repression, the murder of minorities and the destruction of opposing forces that do not support the current regime. It’s almost as if there is a political equivalent of global warming.
Humans have destroyed the planet with nearly complete disregard for other species and now we are facing the consequences. Humans have also been on a destructive political course
in too many countries and that has had the effect of eroding the potential for humanity to reach its highest potential.
There are measures we can take to minimize the threat of coronavirus and there are also actions we can take to protect ourselves from the political pandemic. Many of us feel helpless to change the way lying politicians operate so we shut ourselves out from as much media as possible and give up on the political process.
Others are fighting back and that should give all of us hope. I want to believe that protest and that voting in still functional democracies will help to mitigate some of the ill effects of leaders such as Trump. Once he is out of the picture we will all be better off and other world leaders will, perhaps, lose a little bit of their legitimacy. Voting Trump out of office will be good for the entire world, not just America.
