Some diseases are latent, dormant, (some types of TB, for instance) and never manifest themselves unless the body’s immune system becomes too weak to control them. I think something like this is happening to America. Since our very childhood as a nation, we have been infected with racism, xenophobia, religious bigotry, know-nothingism. Our immune system (constitutional structures, judicial conventions, general apathy) has mostly contained the worst flareups, with the notable exception of the Civil War. But now, the constitutional T-cells seem truly worn out. So the infections are taking over. Trump is simply the most prominent carbuncle produced by the current resurgence of the systemic illnesses. I hope we will soon lance this particularly disgusting boil. But, even if Trump is excised, a boil is just a symptom. The deeper question is: can the immune system itself ever recover? And can it ever succeed, as it has never before done, in completely eradicating the sometimes dormant, but hitherto always lurking, American Dumbness Disorder?
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