Unraveling of American society: Public health and COVID tear Americans apart

Radical, enraged, ignorant people savaging and threatening public health officials 

for crimes against humanity, imposing communist tyranny, etc., for the crime 

of trying to mitigate illness, deaths and damage from COVID

I have frequently asserted here that, for the most part, the polarization and unraveling of American society and decreased social trust reflects a fundamentally but intentionally anti-democratic effect of dark free speech (DFS).[1] This poison has been flowing copiously from America's authoritarian radical right for decades. Toxic, divisive DFS has effectively fomented extreme political polarization and massive distrust in, among other things, the MSM, government, now including the Supreme Court, democracy and fellow citizens. The New York Times writes on the loss of fact-based reason and degeneration of public trust in sincere efforts to protect public health in the face of COVID:

PORT ANGELES, Wash. — As she leaves work, Dr. Allison Berry keeps a vigilant eye on her rearview mirror, watching the vehicles around her, weighing if she needs to take a more circuitous route home. She must make sure nobody finds out where she lives.

When the pandemic first hit the northern edge of Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, Dr. Berry was a popular family physician and local health officer, trained in biostatistics and epidemiology at Johns Hopkins University. She processed Covid-19 test kits in her garage and delivered supplies to people in quarantine, leading a mobilization that kept her counties with some of the fewest deaths in the nation.

But this summer, as a Delta variant wave pushed case numbers to alarming levels, Dr. Berry announced a mask mandate. In September, she ordered vaccination requirements for indoor dining.

By then, to many in the community, the enemy was not the virus. It was her.

Dr. Berry should be attacked “on sight,” one resident wrote online. Someone else suggested bringing back public hangings. “Dr. Berry, we are coming for you,” a man warned at a public meeting. An angry crowd swarmed into the courthouse during a briefing on the Covid-19 response one day, looking for her, and protesters also showed up at her house, until they learned that Dr. Berry was no longer living there.

“The places where it is most needed to put in more stringent measures, it’s the least possible to do it,” Dr. Berry said. “Either because you’re afraid you’re going to get fired, or you’re afraid you’re going to get killed. Or both.”

State and local public health departments across the country have endured not only the public’s fury, but widespread staff defections, burnout, firings, unpredictable funding and a significant erosion in their authority to impose the health orders that were critical to America’s early response to the pandemic.  

The Times interviewed more than 140 local health officials, public health experts and lawmakers, reviewed new state laws, analyzed local government documents and sent a survey to every county health department in the country. Almost 300 departments responded, discussing their concerns over long-term funding, staffing, authority and community support. The examination showed that:

• Public health agencies have seen a staggering exodus of personnel, many exhausted and demoralized, in part because of abuse and threats. Dozens of departments reported that they had not staffed up at all, but actually lost employees. About 130 said they did not have enough people to do contact tracing, one of the most important tools for limiting the spread of a virus. The Times identified more than 500 top health officials who left their jobs in the past 19 months.

• Legislators have approved more than 100 new laws — with hundreds more under consideration — that limit state and local health powers. That overhaul of public health gives governors, lawmakers and county commissioners more power to undo health decisions and undermines everything from flu vaccination campaigns to quarantine protocols for measles. 

• Large segments of the public have also turned against agencies, voting in new local government leaders who ran on pledges to rein in public health departments. In Idaho, commissioners last month appointed a new physician representative to the health board in the Boise region who advocates unapproved treatments for Covid-19 and refers to coronavirus vaccinations as “needle rape.” “We have heard from the voters,” Ryan Davidson, one of the commissioners, said.

More than 220 departments told The Times they had to temporarily or permanently abandon other public health functions to respond to the pandemic, leading to a spike in drug overdoses and a disturbing drop in reports of child abuse. Several health officials pointed to runaway infections of sexually transmitted diseases, with gonorrhea cases doubling and syphilis on pace to triple in one county in Pennsylvania. Oswego County, N.Y., recorded a surge in lead poisoning. In Texas, requests for exemptions to the usual suite of required childhood immunizations have risen sharply.  

Many, particularly in conservative circles, have increasingly embraced individual rights over collective responsibilities, a trend that Dr. Rosner said is undercutting the notion of a social contract in which people work together to achieve a greater good.

“It’s a depressing moment,” he said. “What makes a society if you can’t even get together around keeping your people healthy?” (emphasis added)

Is this really about needle rape, medical tyranny or something about like that? Most or nearly all of this crackpottery, lies, hate and threats of violence is explicitly or tacitly supported by America's toxic, fascist Republican Party, its supporters and the gigantic propaganda and lies DFS machine that keeps stupidity like this alive. 

Experts who study democracy and tyranny uniformly assert that public trust in democracy, a free press, fellow citizens, government and the like is what helps keep democracy alive and vibrant.[2] When trust significantly fades, as has happened in America, a real and significant opportunity arises for demagogic dictators, autocrats, fascists, kleptocrats, crooks, liars and the like. That is where America is today. 

In my opinion, the evidence is now overwhelming to the point that debating matters like this COVID backlash is futile. It amounts to false balancing or bothsidesism, which is arguably more detrimental than helpful to society and democracy. A significant slice of our society has degenerated to the point that reasonable debate about COVID is akin to trying to rationally debate with climate science deniers, anti-vaxx crackpots, QAnon freaks, radical fundamentalist Christian nationalist ideologues and elites, or laissez faire capitalist ideologues, elites and plutocrats. 

Rational, evidence-based debate is no longer possible. Irrational fear, rage, hate, distrust and etc., have poisoned the minds of tens of millions of deceived, manipulated and betrayed American citizens. That state of affairs is intentionally and knowingly fomented by radical right elites and their propaganda Leviathan whose main goals are building an anti-democratic authoritarian government and accumulating more power and wealth than they already have.

Questions: 

1. Is there enough evidence to argue that for a significant plurality of Americans, rational, evidence-based debate is no longer possible? For example, look at the anger and hate on the faces of the people in the image at the top of this blog post -- can they be rational? 

2. Are experts wrong to look to trust or lack thereof as a key indicator of the health or sickness of a democracy?

3. Is it unreasonable or inaccurate to argue that radical right elites rely heavily on DFS to (i) divide Americans to help them to build an anti-democratic authoritarian government, and/or (ii) accumulate more power and wealth than they already have?

Footnote: 

1. Dark free speech: Constitutionally or legally protected (1) lies and deceit to distract, misinform, confuse, polarize and/or demoralize, (2) unwarranted opacity to hide inconvenient truths, facts and corruption (lies and deceit of omission), (3) unwarranted emotional manipulation (i) to obscure the truth and blind the mind to lies and deceit, and (ii) to provoke irrational, reason-killing emotions and feelings, including fear, hate, anger, disgust, distrust, intolerance, cynicism, pessimism and all kinds of bigotry including racism, and (4) ideologically-driven motivated reasoning and other ideologically-driven biases that unreasonably distort reality and reason. (my label, my definition)

2. One expert, Timothy Snyder, wrote in 2020:

Health care is always political, but the politics can confirm or deny democratic norms and practices. A democratic country that handles a pandemic well generates trust in government, and even national pride. If care is not universal, then the political equation, especially during a pandemic, is entirely different. When citizens cannot imagine security, politics becomes the distribution of insecurity, the allocation of fears and anxieties that push us away from an idea of common citizenship and toward authoritarianism. What is lethal for Americans is also lethal for our democracy.

They stay strong unless they get infected and sick or die

Their concern for the welfare of fellow citizens is apparently low to zero