In the past week the papers had a writeup about leprosy and its unorthodox connection to armadillos. They discovered a link between leprosy cases here in the United States and armadillos, noting the ability of man and beast to transmit it back and forth.
Using genetic sequencing machines, researchers were able to confirm that about a third of the leprosy cases that arise each year in the United States almost certainly result from contact with infected armadillos. The cases are concentrated in Louisiana and Texas, where some people hunt, skin and eat armadillos.(N.Y. Times)
Along with SARS and HIV, this demonstrates the ability of many modern diseases to be carried and transmitted across species, though leprosy seems like the last one we might imagine to function in this manner. My primary knowledge of "lepers" came from my father's mandatory Saturday morning Bible studies, and for a while I feared picking up the disease in some unimaginable New York way. A few of those Biblical epic dramas from the fifties and sixties also reinforced my general fear that leprosy was the be all and end all of disease and suffering. I believe it was the epic 1959 movie "Ben-Hur," where Charlton Heston's mom and sis end up in a leper colony, that really put the fear of unlikely things into my little soul. Eventually they get healed of their sickness in a supernatural way, but their plight freaked me out and had me worried about my own future health. Thank God for Jesus, I often thought to myself.
In the movies, Jesus heals, and faith goes a long way.
That was back when Heston was busy living out the Bible on screen, and before we had people like Trump on scene to help stir the pot of life. Today some people are fighting healthcare reform after many years of ignoring rising costs and the structural faults in the delivery of services and coverage. But mostly, we have people fighting Obama. His critics on the right tend to mock those on the left, who they feel idolize this president as some type of Messiah who can fix all wrongs.
Of course with the help of people like Trump (and Palin, and Beck, and Bachmann, and silent others), we have discovered that the true point being made is that a man so black, so foreign sounding, so different, could not possibly be any sort of savior. If you think he might actually do something, a morally challenged Republican political class will be on hand to play Pharisee to the Christ of their own imagination. Obama might talk of fixing things, or saving this or that, but just in case he can, they will do all in their power to nail him down, and mock the failure while he bleeds for their sins.
He can be anything except what he is. He can be anything but a hard working, accomplished fellow American citizen. Trump has seen to that. He talked of birth certificates and once provided, he moved the marker, for who is this fraud in the top job trying to lead us? Obama is a fraud until proven otherwise. He plays basketball. He is a community organizer. He comes from monkeys (or so some Orange Country Republicans imply).
People today are amazed at the level of hate and try their best not to reduce it down to mere racism. We applaud that instinct to protect people's high opinions of their own motivations, however inaccurate an approach that may be. When a man has done so much, and when critics have spent so much time ignoring what he has done in order to focus on imaginary failings, and while ignoring the real failings of others, well then, there is disease in the mind at play. There is bias and hate at the foundation, but artfully masked as concern for the Constitution or for the American way of life.
Trump, vile in his desire to play the armadillo and spread disease across the land, came out of nowhere bearing his false witness. Indeed his past support leaned toward Democrats and his lifestyle would not be the type that would generally lead to enthusiastic support from conservatives, religious conservatives, Tea Partites and others. In fact Trump represents the opposite of principal when matched up against those giving him the vocal support. The only thing that links him together with his supporters is their disease, and his willingness to be an unexpected carrier spreading it.
You always knew the leprosy was there, and that treatment was necessary. You thought it might be too late for many though. You never imagined a self aggrandizing pseudo billionaire from a cosmopolitan city would take up the disease and become a carrier. I mean, we saw Trump on television, and with blacks. We mentioned earlier that a black contestant won Trump's Apprentice in one of the early seasons, though perhaps we should have wondered what was up when Trump suggested out of the blue that the second place finisher share the award. It was a humiliating request, and unasked of any other contestant. The winner, MIT educated and black, was supposed to be happy just to be there and worthy of only 50% of the attention and reward, in Trump's bent frame of thinking.
Who knew that little armadillo was carrying so much more than mere animal magnetism? In the end you never know the source of potential doom or mayhem. It creeps and sneaks, or kabooms down. Eyes must be open.
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