The Enemy Within

If America were some unruly, amorphous, organism, the one Whitman heard singing, one might say a chunk of our multitude suffers from an auto-immune disease. Sort of like myself. Something went wrong with both our body politic. We are attacking ourselves. Exhibit A: January 6^th, 2021. Exhibit B: all the sycophants and their mindless acts since then.

Somebody once told me I was my own worst enemy. I forget why but how did he know? A couple of years ago I was diagnosed with exhibit C: Undifferentiated Connective Tissue Disease. Apparently, there are a nefarious cluster of cells up to no good, out to topple my ambulation.

I’ve always suspected my liver was phobic about becoming chopped and appearing under lamination on a menu at Fromin’s Deli. Good thing I have two kidneys in case one is part of a coup. Will my pancreas insurrect? Have a piece of fruit.

Who knew a third of the country would become a lynch mob directed by a miscreant in the control booth at Mar-a Lago? We are witness to America metastasizing against America, our defense subverting itself.

It could be that my connectivity is not really on the attack but merely stretching into unknown regions, misbehaving beyond its prescribed mission. I enjoy reaching for threads even if I fall on my face in the reach. And I even embrace that word, undifferentiated. My connectivity carries with it the possibility of astonishment

Just as I have an excess of antibodies who don’t know what to do with themselves and became inflammatory trouble-makers so, too, this country carries a swollen Pentagon budget ripe for foreign misadventures. Many of the rioters were ex-soldiers trained to follow orders without questioning along with an appetite for violence.

As for these domestic terrorists, our nation needs some sort of immunosuppressant, a massive dose of good sense, for redressing grievances and the fright behind the loathing. One might hope there would be a wish to reclaim one’s autonomy and reverse their abdication to a pseudo authority with self-serving sociopathic ambitions. 

We have met the enemy and they are us.