What the Measles Epidemic
Really Says About America
Atlantic,
by
Peter Beinart
Original Article
Posted By: Pluperfect,
7/14/2019 5:51:34 AM
In two essays, “Illness as Metaphor” in 1978 and “AIDS and Its Metaphors” in 1988, the critic Susan Sontag observed that you can learn a lot about a society from the metaphors it uses to describe disease. She also suggested that disease itself can serve as a metaphor—a reflection of the society through which it travels. In other words, the way certain illnesses spread reveals something not just about a nation’s physiological health but also about its cultural and political health. For instance, AIDS would not have ravaged America as fully as it did without institutionalized homophobia, which inclined many Americans to see the disease as retribution for gay sex.
That's a lot of words instead of saying because we have uncontrolled illegal immigration bringing diseases we had eradicated across the border and Congress condoning it, un-vaccinated children will suffer. When the Marielitos came to Miami from Cuba, there was a measles epidemic so bad schools closed in Dade County.
The media has forgotten about the summer Obola let those poor "unaccompanied children' cross the border and scatter to the winds without any quarantine or vaccinations.
22 people like this.
Reply 2 - Posted by:
abuela10 7/14/2019 6:18:44 AM (No. 122935)
Bogus. Measles epidemic only started with uncontrolled illegal immigration.
31 people like this.
Reply 3 - Posted by:
Texas Tillie 7/14/2019 6:27:58 AM (No. 122940)
It really doesn't matter where the initial disease may have entered the population (the illegals), the problem is that it is spreading because there are idiots out there (as the article says, conservatives and liberals) who aren't vaccinating their kids. Had all these children been vaccinated, it would not have spread like it has.
11 people like this.
Reply 4 - Posted by:
winnie1 7/14/2019 6:33:37 AM (No. 122947)
What it is saying is the next illness is going to be a doozy. Like Ebola which is already here.
10 people like this.
Reply 5 - Posted by:
Upright2 7/14/2019 6:36:20 AM (No. 122949)
Likewise "polyamory" (which is now being promoted as the new normal) will cause the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. My father, an M.D., had each of his sons circumcised for "hygiene" reasons. His parents were immigrants from Poland and Lithuania. In eastern Europe, only Jews were circumcised in a religious ceremony. Polyamory flies in the face God's commandment prohibiting adultery.
10 people like this.
Reply 6 - Posted by:
Paperpuncher 7/14/2019 7:16:19 AM (No. 122992)
Our schools are no longer teaching history. We are doomed to repeat it.
16 people like this.
Reply 7 - Posted by:
GO3 7/14/2019 7:59:57 AM (No. 123011)
Right off the bat this piece is garbage. AIDS didn't "ravage" America; only certain small percentages of the population, and it wasn't because of institutionalized homophobia. It was because standard public health practices, like shutting down the sources of infection (gay bath houses), were tossed aside because of militant homosexual political pressure. And then, the Great Depression? Election of Adolph Hitler? Beinart is just a loony propagandist.
38 people like this.
Reply 8 - Posted by:
seamusm 7/14/2019 9:16:09 AM (No. 123081)
Maybe we SHOULD end mandatory vaccinations and in its place allow insurance companies to deny coverage for illnesses which could have been prevented......just a thought. Clearly our current model is failing for all the above reasons. The carrot has imploded - maybe its time to raise a stick. Again, just spit-balling.
3 people like this.
Reply 9 - Posted by:
LadyVet 7/14/2019 9:19:10 AM (No. 123084)
In his rush to blame conservatives like Ronald Reagan, he forgets how liberals have been demonizing corporations and "drug companies" as being only out for profits. Hillary Clinton was one of the worst. Michelle Obama and Barack were constantly demonizing drug companies. Do not forget how Hillary took over the immunization supplies, put them in warehouses without A/C so that massive amounts spoiled, causing shortages that probably led to many kids missing their vaccinations.
And then he almost completely ignores the impact of illegal immigrants bringing in disease.
If our culture is to blame, then look at the way liberals cannot be honest about the negative impacts of their own rhetoric and policies.
6 people like this.
Reply 10 - Posted by:
frew 7/14/2019 9:23:20 AM (No. 123091)
AIDS spread because some gays refused to modify their lifestyle of extreme promiscuity. What tells you something about American society is that in a few years we had developed effective and specific treatments for the disease, only the second time in history that has been done for a virus, which was something of a miracle.
15 people like this.
Reply 11 - Posted by:
BarryNo 7/14/2019 9:33:05 AM (No. 123101)
What... Bull-pucky!!
Aids ravaged because LIBERAL politicians MADE it an issue due to their perception of it being a homosexual issue. They refused to let the CDC establish testing or containment at a time when we weren't even sure HOW it was spread. Only that it was considered invariably lethal. The current disease crisis is because LIBERAL politicians are giving illegal aliens access to America without proper medical screening.
You know what this says about America? It says we'd be a lot better off without LIBERALS who create dangers for regular people while they hide behind their walls and armed guards while we suffer.
Marie Antoinette may not have actually said, "...let them eat cake...", but these elite LIBERALS live it - while we die from it!!!
16 people like this.
Reply 12 - Posted by:
curious1 7/14/2019 9:40:43 AM (No. 123109)
#11 is right. Side note, the term that sounds like cake, I've been told, was the blackened edges/parts of the bread loaf that were cut off before selling.
3 people like this.
Reply 13 - Posted by:
Strike3 7/14/2019 9:57:02 AM (No. 123136)
Institutional gobblygook to explain government and medical industry propaganda. Like the FBI, these institutions have lost their mystique and our trust. Had your flu shot yet?
3 people like this.
Reply 14 - Posted by:
MDConservative 7/14/2019 10:00:45 AM (No. 123141)
The AIDS epidemic was the best thing that could have happened to the Gay communicate. It provided them widespread compassion and a moonshot effort to "find a cure". And here we are.
2 people like this.
Reply 15 - Posted by:
Terry_tr6 7/14/2019 10:24:27 AM (No. 123170)
aids spread of 2 reasons. having large numbers of casual sexual partners and anal sex which gives you the best chance or transmitting the virus outside of IV drug use and blood transfusions with high risk blood donors. but the rest of society be damned, we cannot identify the carriers
4 people like this.
Reply 16 - Posted by:
JackBurton 7/14/2019 10:41:52 AM (No. 123190)
Got as far as "For instance, AIDS would not have ravaged America as fully as it did without institutionalized homophobia, which inclined many Americans to see the disease as retribution for gay sex." and cried B.S. I remember when the CDC was trying to get gays to use condoms because of the rampant gonnorehea and syphlis and they rioted in the streets in Scat Francisco. They were vehemently opposed to doing anything to take responsibility for their bodies. It was oppression by the straights to suggest that ANY restrictions on gay sex should be suggested. And then, once AIDS was recognized, it was everyone else's fault and, BTW, Don't-ya-know, EVERYone was susceptible. Except they weren't. I spoke with a researcher at the big government medical research center at the beginning of the Clinton administration about AIDS research. She said every promising line of study was fully funded. Every sort of reasonable line of study was fully funded. Every possible line of study was funded. Every off the wall but proposed study was funded. If you came up with an idea, they would fund that. So, I ask... What does it say about a society that wacky articles like this are written by otherwise acceptable authors in publications of seeming repute.
7 people like this.
Reply 17 - Posted by:
jorgecito 7/14/2019 11:46:53 AM (No. 123255)
"... AIDS would not have ravaged America as fully as it did without institutionalized homophobia, which inclined many Americans to see the disease as retribution for gay sex..."
Whoa! How does that work? So AIDS "ravaged" America – and it's whose fault?
Reminds me of the '80s, when militant activists blamed Ronald Reagan –personally– for the spread of AIDS.
No, Leftists, it doesn't work that way, and you know it. High risk behavior causes AIDS, not "Americans' homophobia."
4 people like this.
Reply 18 - Posted by:
Catherine 7/14/2019 12:34:55 PM (No. 123304)
AIDS was contained among the gay community, for a while. Then there was the dentist who had it and purposely exposed an old lady and a teenage young woman by putting his own blood cells into the syringe with novacane. He said the only way to get the government to find a cure was to have the 'regular' people in the country coming down with it. He killed all his patients he did this to. I also remember Reagan closing down the bath houses and the yelling and screaming from the gay community got them reopened.
2 people like this.
Reply 19 - Posted by:
JHHolliday 7/14/2019 2:23:56 PM (No. 123404)
" For instance, AIDS would not have ravaged America as fully as it did without institutionalized homophobia".
BS. The epidemic would not have been near as bad if the disease had not been politicized by the left and the gay lobby. Common sense rules that we use for other diseases would have cut down the rapid spread of the disease....quarantine, etc. But no, the gays wanted the rest of the country to think heterosexuals were as much at risk as they were. We were not and they managed to bring thousands of unnecessary deaths on themselves and their 'partners'. People like the great Arthur Ashe died because of a blood transfusion during heart surgery as did many other innocents. All because of politics. They can go to hell as far as I am concerned.
3 people like this.
Reply 20 - Posted by:
watashiyo 7/14/2019 9:05:56 PM (No. 123704)
We kill pigs, cows, and chickens to stop the spread of epidemic diseases. Should we do the same, since humans evolved from apes?
0 people like this.
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