Posted on 01/16/2006 7:24:14 AM PST by Natty Bumppo@frontier.net
Slow Death
My Two Cents on Becoming Immune
By David J. Aland [12 January 2006]
Roman historian Pliny tells us of Mithridates, the King of Pontus, who arrived upon a unique solution to the never-ending palace intrigues and threats on his life in Greece. He took daily sub-lethal doses of various poisons in order to build up immunity to them. Legend has it that he was so successful in this program that, years later, when he tried to take his own life, no poison would work.
This fascinating notion has shown up in literature such as A. E. Housemans Shropshire Lad, to Alexandre Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo, and the fairy-tale satire The Princess Bride. The expression “what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger” seems to sum up this assumption that building up an immune system requires us to expose ourselves to those very things from which we wish to be immune.
But the analogy is false. Certainly, an immunity to poison would be useful if we were in constant danger of poisoning, just as an immunity to influenza would be useful in an environment rife with flu. But one of the lessons of the 20th Century is that there is no complete immunity to the flu –the disease tends to adapt and work around our immunities, requiring ever-new and ever-constant inoculations against each new strain.
In fact, it has been argued that this modern pattern of recurrent inoculation is gradually weakening the capacity of our bodies to engage in their own defense and generate natural immunities. Conversely, it has also been documented that people who over-use antibiotics eventually reap no benefit from them, having become immune to the drugs.
Immunity, therefore, cuts both ways, as the Grecian King learned to his own dismay, and not everything harmful makes us stronger, even if it makes us more immune. Such is the case of the lies, spin, and propaganda so prevalent in the Washington DC environment. As Goebbels, the modern patron … well, something … of the art asserted, a lie told often enough becomes the truth.
We are all guilty of drinking some of our own bathwater from time to time, creating our own version of history and coming to believe it. For most, this is merely a minor character flaw, but for some it is a full-blown pathology.
Take, for example, the recent fuss over the Oprah-endorsed memoir by James Frey. According to a blog investigation, large parts of this now-fashionable author’s account of his criminal past have been either exaggerated or manufactured altogether. Frey has responded to these charges by insisting he really is as scummy as his book contends.
Think about that – how invested to you have to be in your own mythology to claim you have been slandered when someone says you are not as twisted as you claim? How many sub-lethal doses of lies and spin does it take to believe your own negative propaganda?
It is no different with the political Left these days, as they race daily to the microphones to demonstrate how deeply craven they can behave. From chants of “Bush lied” ( a lie), to the alleged brokenness of our Armed Forces (another lie), to the claimed moral ascendancy of people leaking classified information (a damn lie) to Ted Kennedy’s apparent inability to read either Judge Alito’s name or judicial record accurately, the Left seems determined to wallow in lies, spin, and propaganda. It is a daily dose of poison that the Left does not, as it is said Mithridates did, “take with a grain of salt.”
Somehow the Left has become addicted to a toxic mythology that seems to hold that America is always wrong, and that only through defeat, either in Iraq or at the polls, can the Republic be redeemed (and, of course, the Democratic Party restored). Like James Frey, the Left has become so invested in these ideas that they can no longer accept the possibility that they are wrong, but like the ancient King of Pontus, these regular doses are feeding an immunity that will ultimately undo them.
This does not make anyone stronger, and it’s about time that Howard Dean, John Murtha, Ted Kennedy, Tina Brown, Joe Biden, Al Franken, Tim Robbins, and all of the rest of the voices on the Left recognize that the bathwater they are drinking is already toxic enough, they are only poisoning the body politic, and it is only making them immune to the truth.
It’s the kind of slow death that no society should have to endure.
David J. Aland is a retired Naval Officer with a graduate degree in National Security Affairs from the U. S. Naval War College.
Actually, from what is being stated, that is what modern medicine is based on.
A lot of medicines are poisonous taken in large doses. Even aspirin is harmful in large quantities.
The roaring chorus of dissent and objection to America within the Democratic Party is always strangely silent whenever there's a Democrat- any Democrat- in the White House. If the exact same series of events and actions that have transpired since Bush took office had happened on Clinton's watch, exactly the same things- the Left would be completely supportive of it. Iraq, Afghanistan, counterterrorist surveillance, all of it.
Washington politics ought to be about what is right and wrong. It isn't of course. It is about who is right or wrong.
What the left is really carping on is the fact that they're not in power. That is the sum total message.
"But one of the lessons of the 20th Century is that there is no complete immunity to the flu –the disease tends to adapt and work around our immunities, requiring ever-new and ever-constant inoculations against each new strain."
That can't be true, that would require evolution!
The left sure is a twisted bunch.
I have never seen so irresponsible... about anything, abortion, science, you name it
It is the most racist hate filled bunch with quite an almost unassuming air of righteous glamour and well spun distinguishness as a facade.
interesting take, thx 4 posting
Factually inaccurate; the people aren't immune to the drugs, the bacteria, if constantly and needlessly exposed to antibiotics, eventually ends up with the variety with the greatest resistance to those antibiotics to which it has been exposed becoming dominant.
The scary part is that they would rather destroy this nation than let the Republicans run it.
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