--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, bob_brigante <no_re...@...> wrote: > > The NYT article includes a detail from the Friese Chronicles > showing the 1349 massacre of Erfurt Jews in Germany, who were > blamed for the Black Death > > http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/01/health/01plague.html
Excellent article, Bob, one that links (in my mind, at least) what I was saying last week about the rush to bring an untested flu vaccine to market and shoot everybody up with it, and the gun nuts who store up guns to "be prepared" for when the guvmint comes to take their guns -- and their liberty -- away from them. Both phenomena, IMO, are linked by two things -- the first is FEAR, and the second is the rush to Do Something to reinforce the delusion that one is "in control," that one can *fight* one's FEAR if one just has enough guns or enough vaccines. Vaccines are great, when they have been thoroughly tested. Given the level of FEAR and panic in the air over H1N1, there is *simply no possibility* that the tests on that vaccine are going to be thorough enough. It is going to be rushed to market because 1) the public wants it, to help them believe that they are somehow "in control" and that Bad Things can't happen to them if they just Do Something. And maybe, hope- fully, the vaccine will 1) work, and 2) not kill too many people *as* it works. Reactions to vaccines are *inevitable*; there was a story on HuffPost yesterday about an American GI who was sent into a coma as a result of getting a *smallpox* vaccination, fer chrissakes. And that's a virus that has been around for a long time. Who knows what the unforeseen reac- tions are going to be to rushing an H1N1 vaccine to market are going to be. But it's going to happen, because of humans' tendency to think that if we just Do Something we'll be back in control again, and Bad Things won't happen to us. I see the same tendency at the root of the American obsession with guns. That, and a couple of centuries of mythology that has glorified the lone gun-toter and cast him in the role of hero. The gun-toter is the *emblematic* American hero, the guy who Does Something to save the day, and restores order to Dodge City. And that is part of the myth that the gun nuts are draw- ing upon to justify stocking up on penis substitutes. I've known a few of these gun nuts, and much of the time they seem like normal people. But bring up the subject of their penis substitutes...uh, I mean their guns...and they go bull goose loony. They stop talking rationally and start spouting slogans. MACHO slogans, like, "The guvmint will get my guns when it pries them from my cold, dead fingers." Next time someone -- here or in the media -- trots out these gun nut fantasies about what they're going to DO with their guns to protect themselves from the big, bad guvmint, listen to the slogans they're spouting and compare them to America's mythology as expressed by cowboy movies and war movies. The people spouting the slogans are imagining themselves in the role of hero, Doing Something to save the day, shooting all the Bad Guys <insert name of scapegoat of the day here>, and removing the cause of their FEAR. The only trouble is, it's a fantasy. A *well-tested* vaccine might kill all those Bad Guy H1N1 viruses and save the day, but one rushed to market in a few weeks? A buncha crazed militia types might indulge in their cowboy and war movie fantasies by taking their assault rifles out to fight off the invading guvmint troops. But the reality of modern warfare is that they'd last about 15 minutes doing so. The guvmint troops, if they existed anywhere except in these people's fantasies, would come armed with chemical weapons, sonic weapons, tanks, and other high-tech stuff, and the guys playing with their penis substitutes would be rolling on the ground in agony the first time one of the sonic weapons was aimed at them, *begging* the troops to come and take their penis substitutes away. So is this "link" I perceive in the mindset that is rushing a vaccine to market and the gun nuts' clinging to their penises a bit "stretched?" Probably. But I see it as a viable link, because it's all based on the idea that we can Do Something to fight our FEARS. History has proven otherwise. Vaccines rushed to mar- ket to assuage FEAR have proven to often create as many problems as they solved. Gun nuts rushing into a situation with their penises blazing (think Waco and Ruby Ridge) have often gone down in a hail of bullets unnecessarily, when simple "talking things out" mighthave resolved the situation peacefully. I think that if Americans want to Do Something to fight against what's really bothering them and making them crazy, they have to "man up" and ADMIT what it is that is really bothering them. They're AFRAID. Trying to act all "in control" by rolling out an untested vaccine is in the same ballpark IMO as trying to act all "macho" by posturing with penis substitutes. It's "whistling in the dark," pretending that they aren't afraid. But they are.
