No Body, Anti-Body But You

Until this go-round, the vaccine process was all about growing an inert version of the virus you are trying to prevent, usually in some form of an egg mixture (which takes a lot of time, with repetitious hits and misses), and injecting that into a human body that will develop an immune response that would also work against the live virus if the person is exposed. A long process. Was there a faster possibility? We’ve had some pretty interesting theories based on our recently developed ability to identify signature genetic characteristics of a toxic virus, through a combination of super-microscopic analysis, and then using a computer to build a mirror of the underlying structure.

Based on this information, what genetic virologists have then been able to do is to rewrite the genetic code (e.g., using CRISPR gene editing technology) for the toxic virus, effectively keeping markers that the human immune system can identify, while eliminating the toxic variables… to create a genetically engineered virus surrogate without the ability to harm. We knew that our ability to rewrite genetic codes would change our ability to create vaccines sooner or later, and we were on the verge of being able to roll out a viable and scalable process, when COVID-19 (formally: SARS-CoV-2) hit. As hundreds of thousands, then millions of people were infected, it was clear that if we did not find a cure or a preventative measure relatively quickly, tens of millions of people, maybe even more, would die. A much great number would catch the infection, and many of those would have long-term effects.

With little to lose, and lots of serious work already years in the making, it was time to roll out this new approach to immunization to see if indeed the theories could be put into immediate practice. The US government seeded some of the efforts to develop a viable anti-COVID vaccine (e.g., Moderna), while others (e.g., BionTech-Pfizer) were completely privately funded. Indeed, the first FDA-approved vaccine out of the box, was that totally privately funded vaccine from a joint venture between a German company, where the vaccine was designed by a husband-wife medical research team (BionTech) who had immigrated to Germany from Turkey, but who needed a big pharma to scale the production to levels that they could not achieve. I wonder if the irony that a pair of Muslim immigrants (that married couple) who created that vaccine was lost on anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant Donald Trump? 

BionTech-Pfizer did get a big order from the US government, but even after all the preliminary tests of that vaccine were increasingly positive, and with the clear knowledge that the US government would not have to pay unless the vaccine truly were effective, when given the opportunity to increase the vaccine order size this past summer, the Trump administration, still laboring under the misguided belief that the pandemic was ending on its own, rejected the offer. That excess was quickly snapped up by other countries. Right now, we are getting that vaccine, but not as much as we need. Hopefully, some of the other vaccines in development will come online soon as well.

Both Moderna and the BionTech Pfizer joint venture employ the new technique described above. Let’s define some of the basic terms: “ribonucleic acid [RNA, is] a nucleic acid present in all living cells. Its principal role is to act as a messenger carrying instructions from DNA for controlling the synthesis of proteins, although in some viruses RNA rather than DNA carries the genetic information.” Wikipedia. “Ribosomal RNA (rRNA), molecule in cells that forms part of the protein-synthesizing organelle known as a ribosome and that is exported to the cytoplasm to help translate the information in messenger RNA (mRNA) into protein. The three major types of RNA that occur in cells are rRNA, mRNA, and transfer RNA (tRNA).” Encyclopedia Britannica.  But it is the messenger capacity – mRNA – that attracted the attention of virologists seeking to carry a new code to the human immune cells charged with attacking invading viruses and bacteria. 

So, what are the human immune cells that this reengineered mRNA is trying to reach? “This first [immune] response is called innate immunity. If you think of it like an army, it is your first line of defense. If the virus passes that, that first line has previously coordinated with the second line of defense—the adaptive immunity… The adaptive immunity is a more specific response to this particular invader to try to clear it. B cells generate antibodies, and T cells help B cells make antibodies and can kill viruses themselves. If everything goes well, you will kill the virus and you will develop some immunity to it.” TuftsNow, December 22nd. Essentially, in these two new vaccines, the mRNA is training the B and T cells how to identify and attack a very specific category of invader – the COVID-19 virus. Adaptive immunity. It is still the clinical testing process that takes the most time, since development time is now so much shorter.

So instead of the multiyear effort to develop a traditional vaccine, “An mRNA vaccine, by contrast, can be made by essentially swapping genetic code in the underlying mRNA platform. In January, when researchers at Moderna and the National Institutes of Health first got the genetic code for the new coronavirus, they finished their new vaccine just days later.

“Scientists first tested the underlying concept as long ago as 1990, when studies showed that mice injected with RNA or DNA could produce the proteins that were encoded. But vaccines or other treatments weren’t viable at first; the mRNA degraded quickly after it was injected and could cause an inflammatory response. A later breakthrough modified the technique so it produced more protein and didn’t cause the same negative response. Next, scientists figured out how to make the mRNA last longer by encasing it in tiny bubbles of fat (a ‘lipid nanoparticle’). Researchers eventually began developing mRNA vaccines for Zika, the flu, and other diseases, overcoming other hurdles through that development. Those other vaccines are still in progress, and nothing had made it through final clinical trials until COVID-19.

“In a future pandemic—a scenario that is, unfortunately, likely—scientists could again quickly plug the genetic code of a new virus into the basic mRNA platform. Because mRNA factories now exist, production could also happen much more quickly. ‘Most manufacturing facilities that are built for vaccines are made to produce one specific vaccine—they’re not adaptable,’ says [Jess Atwell, a scientist at the Department of International Health in the Bloomberg School of Public Health]. ‘But with this technology, you could theoretically put any sequence of mRNA inside the lipid nanoparticle. The manufacturing capacity can be switched from a vaccine for one pathogen to a vaccine for another much more easily than traditional vaccine manufacturing facilities.’

“This type of vaccine could also soon be used for the flu; Moderna had a flu vaccine in early clinical trials before the COVID-19 outbreak began. For the seasonal flu vaccine, which has to be reformulated every year, the new type of vaccine could make it more likely that the vaccine works well. ‘That process has to start in February in the Northern Hemisphere in order to have vaccine in September or October, and sometimes the strains that are chosen don’t end up being the predominant one circulating that winter,’ Atwell says. ‘So if there was technology where you could wait longer to make that decision, and still have vaccine in time for the season, that could be really helpful in making sure that there was a good match between the circulating strains and the vaccine.’” Adele Peters writing for the December 23rd FastCompany.com. 

These mRNA factories are now efficiently and commercially able to recode mRNA to defeat a decoded virus’ genetic signature. Wow! But for rare diseases where there is no financial justification for years of expensive research to service a rarified minority of those impaired, the ability to shortcut a messenger, in days, just might save a few million lives. Who knows how far this new medical technology can go?

I’m Peter Dekom, and for those who really want to understand what these new vaccines can do and how they work, I hope I have helped explain why they were developed so fast and why they absolutely cannot infect those inoculated with the actual virus.

America’s Internal Bleeding

Despite zero supporting evidence, about 40% of voters (according to a Quinnipiac University poll) – mostly Trump supporting Republicans – believe that the election was rigged and that Joe Biden somehow stole the vote to become President. Trump followers cheered as the President threatened to overrule government bureaucracies filled with PhDs and MDs to impose his personal and woefully uneducated vision of the cure, prevention, severity and treatment of COVID-19. As a veritable font of unending political, medical and scientific inaccuracies, the President became the “Great Legitimizer” of groundless assertions and toxic conspiracy theories that have ripped at the foundations of our democracy.

Russia, the hacker of our government files and the spreader of election disinformation, is Trump’s buddy, and if anything goes wrong, these days Trump assumes China did it. His advisors have suggested that the election might be reversed by the imposition of martial law, forcing the military to implement a do-over election (the military has said they have no power to do that), asking both GOP state and federally dominated legislatures to ignore electors elected in favor of Biden to force the victory to Trump, although Trump was over 7 million popular votes and 74 electoral votes behind Biden.

Reality tells us that human beings tend to believe information infused with the following variables: whether it is the first information on the subject they receive, when it is repeated frequently, when it comes from a source they respect (e.g., the President of the United States) and when they believe that the proof to the contrary is either unreliable or inadequate. There is also resentment among a once well-paid blue-collar constituency facing permanent job loss by reason of obsolescence, while doctors, lawyer, professors, government experts, financiers and corporate executives seem to be cleaning up (even if many of those “elites” are also in peril). Thus, the credibility of those “elites” is inadequate to negate the disinformation of passionate conspiracy theorists.

It’s bad enough with disinformation from domestic racist extremists becoming mainstream-acceptable (thank you, Mr Trump) – and white supremacy and political domination are very much at the heart of so many of these conspiracy theories – but our enemies (particularly Russia with some contributions from China and Iran) are absolutely delighted. They are quietly ready to turn the First Amendment against us. They have and they do!

Unfortunately, to most of the rest of the world, the last few years have generated a rising opinion that the United States is not only in precipitous decline at every level, but it is unraveling by reason of polarization with irreconcilable differences. And as bad as those toxic democracy-destroying conspiracy theories, denigration of science and political reality might be from the inside, those conspiracy theories are increasingly the way foreigners are viewing the United States. 

For immigrants to this country with roots with their families elsewhere, those toxic messages are increasingly finding traction that is emanating from foreign contamination. Overseas families, hearing and believing those conspiracy theories in local reportage and social media communications, are thrusting those false premises as gospel truth back to their American relatives. This only serves to add credibility to those forces seeking to undermine the United States and its elections. 

Writing for the December 20th New York Times, Cathy Park Hong tells us: “While it’s well established that fake news is spiraling out of control, we must pay attention to the disinformation rapidly hatching in nonwhite immigrant communities as well. Asian-Americans are the fastest growing electorate in the nation and are becoming a powerful voter bloc as more and more live in swing states. Polls have so far shown that Asian-Americans voted for Mr. Biden by a smaller margin than they did for Hillary Clinton in 2016, a rightward trend that Christine Chen, executive director of the nonpartisan civic organization APIAVote, said could be partly because of an influx of disinformation. With the upcoming U.S. Senate elections in Georgia, Democrats cannot afford much slippage…

“Right-wing conspiracy theories have infiltrated Asian and Latino communities through social media platforms like WeChat, WhatsApp, Facebook, KakaoTalk and YouTube. Organizers say that older immigrants who don’t consume mainstream English-language media can be more susceptible to disinformation about American politics. ‘Disinformation is really hard to track because it isn’t just contained in the continental U.S. but being lobbied from friends and family from, let’s say, Colombia,’ María Teresa Kumar, chief executive of Voto Latino, said. ‘Democrats don’t understand how deep it is.’

“Nonwhite voters are the Democratic Party’s base, but the party has ignored them, assuming that the Republican Party’s racist and nativist politics would be enough to mobilize them. An APIAVote survey conducted this past summer found that half of Asian-Americans had not been contacted by either party. This is typical. Asian-Americans have historically been left out of voter outreach efforts because they make up just under 6 percent of the nation and cluster in blue coastal states. Trying to engage an atomized demographic that speaks dozens of different languages can also pose a challenge to political organizers.

“Asian-Americans and Latinos both comprise dozens of different nationalities, making it difficult to draw broad conclusions about their voting patterns. But anti-communism has traditionally been part of the Republican Party’s appeal to older immigrants, and disinformation that paints the Democratic Party’s platform as socialist has reinforced that appeal, especially among some older Korean, Chinese, Taiwanese and Vietnamese immigrants who fear anything left-of-center teeters too close to the Chinese Communist Party. Right-wing groups have also used WhatsApp and WeChat to smear the goals of Black Lives Matter, warning that mass riots were to occur on Election Day, to deter Asian and Latino immigrants from going out to vote.

“It’s nearly impossible to chase down all the disinformation scattered across the globe. It’s spread by former Trump aides, foreign governments and a Falun Gong-backed media empire determined to take down the Chinese government. Steve Bannon partnered with the exiled Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui to plant bogus stories of hidden business dealings by the Biden family in China, which then went viral among the Chinese diaspora. Nguyen Dinh Thang, president of the civil society organization Boat People SOS, has noticed many Vietnamese-language Facebook pages, some with tens of thousands of followers, spreading falsehoods about the U.S. elections to Vietnamese nationals and immigrants.”

Corruption and manipulation by powerful elites is a way of life for many in select Asian and Latin American nations. They do not trust their power elites or their governments, so they are particularly vulnerable to rumors and reports that suggest something massive and untoward is rippling beneath the surface of what they can see. But with so many of these falsehoods now legitimized by none other than the President of the United States, an outsider who challenged the nation’s elites with fake populist pablum, these foreign relatives feeling perfectly comfortable telling their US relatives the “truth.” If there is one overriding threat to the sustainability of Western-style democracy, it is how deeply false narratives have seeped in to replace that “truth,” and nowhere more than the United States under the aegis of Donald Trump.

I’m Peter Dekom, and all roads to reunifying the United States and reinvigorating democratic representation everywhere rest with the ability to contain and negate the tsunami of conspiracy theories and fake news.

Fishin’ for Chips

While we might not understand exactly how they are made, and most of us do not actually appreciate what they do, “contracted semiconductor microchips” are among the most significant drivers of modern technology, from smart phones to cruise missiles. They’re the tiny little microprocessors – literally microscopic – that enable exceptionally powerful computing, implement artificial intelligence, create tiny command and control systems, that enable everything from the mundane to the super-sophisticated. A nation seeking military supremacy and technological superiority without access to volumes of these chips is exceptionally vulnerable.

These chips are also at heart of the trade war between China and the United States. But China covets the island next door. That makes it tough for that little island nation – the Republic of China (“Taiwan”) – that may be in a whole heap of trouble as a result. Why? Specifically, because “Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., or TSMC, makes more than half the world’s contracted semiconductor chips and lies at the center of the technology supply chain, churning out circuitry found in iPhones, Amazon cloud computers, graphics processors that power video games and even military drones and fighter jets such as Lockheed Martin’s F-35…

“TSMC is confronting problems it had never anticipated when a Taiwanese American engineer [Morris Chang, a Harvard- and MIT-educated engineer], who spent 25 years at Texas Instruments and is revered here like a hometown Bill Gates, founded it in the late 1980s… The company has been drawn into an increasingly bitter — and at times dangerous — rivalry between the U.S. and China that is forcing nations and corporations to choose sides in an era that is redefining the global order.” David Pierson and Michelle Yun writing for the December 18th Los Angeles Times.

Taiwan stares across the Taiwan Straits at the behemoth – the massive People’s Republic of China – that claims Taiwan as part of its territory. The PRC has gone so far as to threaten the possibility of an invasion someday. The PRC’s Xi Jinping has been amping up his nationalist rhetoric, making claims to a man-made island in the nearby Spratly chain and challenging the United States both regionally and around the world.

“Beijing’s suggestion that it might invade Taiwan and return it to Chinese dominion could further imperil TSMC’s freedom. China has long yearned for a company as advanced as TSMC. It has invested billions of dollars and poached hundreds of Taiwanese engineers in a national Manhattan Project-like bid to catch up to Taiwan, South Korea and the United States. Despite those efforts, China remains years behind and must import all but 15% of its semiconductors, spending more on the technology than on foreign crude oil each year…

“TSMC’s technical prowess is virtually unrivaled. It specializes in manufacturing the industry’s smallest chips — transistors with parts measuring 5 nanometers, the equivalent of two strands of human DNA. Work has already begun on 2-nanometer chips, which also require one of the most complex feats in engineering, an interplay of lasers, molten tin plasma and mirrors known as extreme ultraviolet lithography that a TSMC executive described as ‘close to black magic.’

“Once viewed benignly as an electronic commodity, semiconductors are now vital national security assets in the global race for tech supremacy. Last month, TSMC’s board approved a plan to open a $12-billion foundry in Arizona by 2024, a move seen as a way to placate Trump administration and Pentagon officials uneasy over TSMC’s trade relationship with China.” LA Times.

The PRC has made it a point not to give in to Donald Trump’s punitive tariffs, his bully tactics to force China into a trade agreement that has eluded the self-proclaimed dealmaker to this day. Trump has gone out of his way to blame China for what he calls the “Wuhan Virus,” even as the United States is suffering the worst outbreak of the coronavirus since the beginning of the outbreak and as China is almost back to normal with serious GDP growth forecast by the IMF. Indeed, China views the rise of Trump, even though he was not reelected, as a clear sign that the United States will continue to fall in global influence and economic power. But China feels the pain.

“U.S. restrictions on exports shattered Chinese-owned Huawei’s plans to roll out 5G networks worldwide and hobbled its once-thriving smartphone business… Whoever wins access to the leading semiconductors gains a critical advantage in technologies that will define the coming age including A.I., quantum computing and the ‘internet of things.’ These will affect everything from missiles to autonomous vehicles to cybersecurity to the development of new drugs.

“‘Semiconductors underpin all the ‘must win’ technologies of the 21st century,’ said Ashley Feng, a China and Taiwan expert formerly at the Center for a New American Security. ‘To both the United States and China, being able to dominate in the semiconductor space is crucial to winning the next generation of technology.’

“TSMC is entangled in this escalating struggle at a time when China, propelled by rising nationalism at home, regards the U.S. and other Western nations as in decline. The Trump administration has seized on semiconductors as a choke point to slow China’s progress. This year, it announced licenses would be required to export chips that contain American intellectual property, which most silicon wafers do, to Huawei and China’s top chipmaker, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp.” LA Times. China is convinced that they can wait us out, unless Joe Biden is willing to deal more pragmatically. But this complex, incredibly difficult to manufacture, technology sits like the Holy Grail, waiting for superpowers to come to terms or come to blows.

I’m Peter Dekom, and sometimes it is indeed the “little things” that count the most.

What is All This Fuss About Bats?

“To some, it might seem too soon to contemplate the next global outbreak, with the world still grappling with the devastation of COVID-19. But scientists say it’s highly likely that, without savvy intervention, another novel virus will jump from animal to human host and find the conditions to spread like wildfire… As this pandemic has shown, modern transport can disperse a pathogen to all corners of the globe in a matter of hours and can help it spread easily in densely populated cities.

“As for the next pandemic, it’s not a question of if but when, according to Dr. Gagandeep Kang, an infectious disease expert at Christian Medical College at Vellore in southern India… She pointed to previous research that found India was among the most likely places in the world for such a ‘spillover’ event to occur, due to population density and increasing human and livestock incursion into dense tropical forests teeming with wildlife.” Associated Press, December 19th. 

While the exact level of tolerance for sustainable number of human inhabitants on earth is subject to a number of variables – from the rate of resource exploitation and food production to environmental policies – there are few academic metrics that say the earth is “comfortable” with the current global population – 7.8 billion as of November – and expected growth rates (projections show that we will cross 10 billion by 2083). This explosive Malthusian horror show seems to have stimulated nature to cull the herd. We’re the herd! Most estimates put “ideal” and “sustainable” at current consumption rates at half the current population. Or less.

According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, God’s tools to contain humanity are represented by “Four horsemen of the apocalypse… [In] Christianity, the four horsemen who, according to the book of Revelation (6:1–8), appear with the opening of the first four of the seven seals that bring forth the cataclysm of the apocalypse. The first horseman, a conqueror with a bow and crown, rides a white horse, which scholars sometimes interpret to symbolize Christ or the Antichrist; the second horseman is given a great sword and rides a red horse, symbolizing war and bloodshed; the third carries a balance scale, rides a black horse, and symbolizes famine; and the fourth horseman rides a pale horse and is identified as Death.” A simpler interpretation of this force labels the Horsemen as war, famine, pestilence and plague. Plague? Bubonic? SARS? Ebola? COVID-19? But what are the red flags for that spillover?

“A zoonosis (plural zoonoses, or zoonotic diseases) is an infectious disease caused by a pathogen (an infectious agent, such as a bacterium, virus, parasite or prion) that has jumped from a non-human animal (usually a vertebrate) to a human. Typically, the first infected human transmits the infectious agent to at least one other human, who, in turn, infects others.” Wikipedia. The Spanish Flu, misnamed because of press censorship in 1918, purportedly began in a pig farm in Kansas. Were the Chinese “wet markets” to blame for the current pandemic? Or, as many scientists believe, could bats be responsible for the initial zoonotic transmission of many of such plague-like diseases? One way or another, understanding zoonosis seems to center on bats, whether or not they are the originator of any particular infection. But bats are mammals with unique mobility: they can fly. They also have other unique markers that just may be essential for mankind to identify risk areas that might be contained before a viral pandemic explodes once again.

“Bats are thought to be the original or intermediary hosts for multiple viruses that have spawned recent epidemics, including COVID-19, SARS, MERS, Ebola, Nipah virus, Hendra virus and Marburg virus. A 2019 study found that of viruses originating from the five most common mammalian sources — primates, rodents, carnivores, ungulates and bats — those from bats are the most virulent in humans.

“Bats are a diverse group, with more than 1,400 species flitting across every continent except Antarctica. But what many have in common are adaptations that allow them to carry viruses that are deadly in humans and livestock while exhibiting minimal symptoms themselves — meaning they are able to travel and shed those viruses, instead of being quickly hobbled… ‘The secret is that bats have unusual immune systems, and that’s related to their ability to fly,’ said Raina Plowright, an epidemiologist who studies bats at Montana State University.

“To get off the ground and sustain flight requires an incredible amount of energy, with bats’ metabolic rate increasing 16-fold, Plowright said. ‘You’d expect them to get cell damage from all that metabolic exertion,’ she said… But that doesn’t happen. Instead, bats are remarkably resilient, with many species living more than 30 years — highly unusual for such small mammals… Plowright and other scientists believe evolutionary tweaks that help bats recover from the stress of flying also give them extra protection against pathogens.

“‘Bats seem to have evolved a collateral benefit of flight — resistance to deal with some of the nastiest viruses known to science,’ said Arinjay Banerjee , a virologist at McMaster University in Canada… Although scientists are still untangling the mystery, two leading theories are that bats may have evolved what Banerjee calls ‘an efficient DNA repair mechanism’ or that their bodies may tightly regulate inflammation triggers so they don’t overreact to viral infections.

“Probing the secrets of bat immune systems may help scientists understand more about when bats do shed viruses, as well as provide hints for possible future medical treatment strategies, he said… Bats and other animals that carry pathogens don’t pose a risk to humans — unless conditions are right for a spillover event… ‘The virus has to come out of the host for us to get infected,’ said Cara Brook , a disease ecologist at UC Berkeley… ‘The bad news: Increasing destruction and fragmentation of habitats worldwide — especially biodiverse areas like tropical forests — mean ‘we are seeing higher rates of contact between wildlife and humans,’ Brook said, ‘creating more opportunities for spillover.’…

“Scientists and governments would stand a better chance of containing future outbreaks if they had faster notice of when and where they begin, according to Ian Mackay , a virologist at Australia’s University of Queensland… ‘Ongoing, constant, nonstop surveillance’ — along the lines of the flu labs set up across the globe by the World Health Organization — could help researchers be better prepared, he said. He suggests that labs for virus discovery could regularly sample wastewater or materials from hospitals…

“Whether the goal is to curb the spread of known zoonotic diseases or to reduce the risk of new ones emerging as pandemics, the strategy is the same: reduce contact between humans and wild animals… ‘In the history of COVID-19, bats have been more victim than victim-izer,’ said Ricardo Moratelli , coordinator of the Fiocruz project in Brazil. ‘Bats host a large number of parasites, and they deal with these parasites well. The problem is when human beings enter into contact with them.’” Associated Press. But it is so much more than just bats.

That Donald Trump pulled us out of the World Health Organization – clearly an international body in need of upgrading and restructuring – as part of his anti-China tirade makes global prevention and coordination that much more difficult. I suspect that lapse of judgment will be repaired in the immediate future. Our lives just might depend on it.

I’m Peter Dekom, and its crystal clear that waiting for a deadly outbreak and then reacting to it is not effective; anti-science budget cutting needs to stop!

When Lying Went Mainstream

Misinformation, conspiracy theories, science denial, and out-and-out lying are probably responsible for two thirds of the COVID-19 infections and deaths in this country. The polarization of a medical reality, prevention and treatment, became a test of party loyalty… and to a president who absolutely placed his avarice and quest for personal power above any semblance of genuine concern for the American people. Fact-checkers have noted Donald Trump’s presidential reign has been marked by over 23 thousand discrete Trump falsehoods. But utter that factual reality in any super red enclave and you might get punched in the face or get your tires slashed. The feelings are that strong. Having strong feelings based on lies and mythology has become toxic if not deadly.

Facts and nature are implacable. You cannot force them out with bombs, slogans, votes or political mandates. They just are. Their most powerful and destructive forces do best (read: worst) when they are ignored or denied. Reacting to their destructive impacts, rather than preparing for their inevitability or preventing what is possible, is the least efficient and most costly way to deal with the consequences. We have lied our way against preparedness. To those who are examining the underlying philosophy of purposely planting falsehoods as the gospel truth are often stunned at the effectiveness of this technique. We once believed that only undemocratic societies could be built and maintained on an autocrat’s bed of lies. We were wrong.

Strangely, the newly configured Trump-dominated Republican Party is no longer the party of balanced budgets, business, free trade, efficient and well-trained government bureaucrats and fiscal responsibility. Just looking at the corporate tax reform passed in 2017, we saw exploding and unsustainable budget deficits that will continue as long as these tax rates remain in effect… without any other serious economic benefit to the nation. No massive new well-paying jobs. No huge new investments in productivity and new industries. Just humongous borrowings to benefit the rarified air of only the richest in the land.

We continue to see GOP governors in hard core states, where COVID infections and death are worse on a per capita basis than even the worst urban crises and where hospital capacity has long since run out, continue to tout “open everything” and “masks are a personal choice.” The constant minimalization of the horrific consequences of a COVID infection (even for those who survive) has become immutable doctrine. Goaded by their leaders, there continue to be idiots, and I do mean idiots, who believe that they have a constitutional right to walk around, ignore safe distancing and mask requirements, whether or not they are carriers of the disease. There are even some ready to kidnap and kill a governor who was fighting to impose safe practices on her terrified public. It’s still a “hoax” to too many.

How did we get here? There has been a core constituency of about 25-30% of the electorate who, for the last 50 years, believed in conspiracy theories, the existence of a deep state aimed to dismantle white dominance, while embracing pioneer values even in a modern urban-centric nation, and who simply resist inconvenient facts. They’ve have been silent and on the periphery. They kept their opinions, their voices, within their communities, knowing that the modern world was moving in a different direction. Where science and technology, often invented and developed by immigrants of color, were the new power and value creators. 

Donald John Trump saw what few politicians saw: the voiceless passion of this constituency… that if they were given a powerful leader who enabled their voice, they could perhaps impose their will on the entire nation. Untapped populist voters. They may be on the wrong side of history, but they now seem to be willing to take the entire system down if they cannot now continue imposing their misdirected views, fully legitimized by the President. Trump may have ended his term as president, unlikely ever to regain that powerful position, but that populist smoke has left the bottle and, with or without a vocal Trump going forward, his now loud-voice deniers will not be easily silenced. 

How did this happen? Trump needed to control that constituency’s entire belief system, a seemingly unlikely possibility given a constantly inquiring and vocal press. But mainstream television, journals and radio were easy targets to the new platforms of social media, where short resonant soundbites, repeated frequently enough, could stultify truth and journalistic integrity simply by reinforcing what this once-excluded constituency wanted to hear.

“COVID-19 and Donald Trump’s election loss will dominate the history books about 2020, but the story connecting those two things and nearly everything else this year was the Republican Party’s adoption of disinformation as one of its primary political strategies.

“It was the culmination of a years-long effort by Trump to pit himself, relentlessly, against the press. He has always sought to entrench the news media as his ‘opposition party,’ ABC News White House correspondent Jonathan Karl wrote in his book on Trump, adding that too often the press has fallen into the trap.

“Trump sought out an ever-escalating war against reality, starting the day he sent his spokesman to the White House Briefing Room to brazenly lie about the size of his inauguration crowd. His attack on the truth has aimed to separate his supporters entirely from an independent press that could hold him accountable.

“The offensive was two-pronged. The frontal assault was to label the media ‘fake news’ and even to label it the ‘enemy of the people,’ a phrase with a history of being used by genocidal dictators. And then there was a broader pattern of provoking — maybe even inviting and welcoming — fact checks and criticism by sending out an ongoing cascade of mistruths, outright lies and controversies.

“The endgame was to shatter any trust in mainstream news outlets among his supporters, building on decades of complaints about a liberal bias in the media. Republicans have always portrayed themselves as the victims of media bias, sometimes for good reason, and sometimes because they need a scapegoat to excuse their own shortcomings.

“Trump’s innovation was to say the press was part of a grand conspiracy against him, that it is always lying, that its members work for a shadowy cabal of elites looking to sell out the country… He aimed for total control of what his supporters believed. By the end of 2019 he largely had it, and in 2020 he proved it…

“This was the year of the infodemic as much as it was the year of the pandemic, and the biggest superspreader of disinformation was the sitting president. It’s not just that Trump lied or misled more than 23,000 times since taking office. It’s that he made such behavior acceptable, leading right-wing media to create a permanent unreality echo chamber and showing the GOP it can win elections by catering to this.” John Ward writing for Yahoo! News, December 17th.

Under Trump, it became socially acceptable to make fun of and denigrate minorities, from racial and ethnic groups to those with disabilities. Overt racism became acceptable too. How many teachers and parents fought with their miscreant children charges, when those young voices justified totally unacceptable behavior by simply saying, “Well, the President does it.” We have made this bed, and there remains a very large body of voters hellbent on continuing what they believe is a righteous war. They use words they do not truly understand – usually references to “patriotism” and “battling socialism” – to decide which laws they will follow and which sections of the Bible apply to them. Ah, the New Testament as a “menu,” without regard to the overall vector of true Christianity.

I’m Peter Dekom, and as we face a new year, our nation has reached a crossroads between continuing as unified democracy (with differing voices) or eschewing truth and compromise, a reality that will plunge the nation into an unraveling and continuing fall in power, influence and success; we cannot succeed until truth matters again.