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A Cancer on the Body Politic: Metastasis [1]
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Date: 2025-07-17
On November 23rd, 2020, as Trump was busy attempting to overturn an election that he had lost, I wrote a letter to the Washington Post. Rather than describing what I wrote, I’ll just re-print it here:
“As anyone who has personally had cancer or watched a loved one deal with the disease can tell you, the most frightening thing about the disease is how sneaky it is. A lump or mole that you ignored for too long, some symptom that by itself wasn’t worrying, and suddenly you were dealing with a cancer that, if left untreated, will eventually kill you.
A malignant tumor is totally self-involved, and serves no purpose other than its own continued existence. The tumor kills nearby healthy tissue while stealing nutrients to continue its own unrestrained growth.
Cancer spreads because it disguises itself as “self”. Our immune systems are programmed to not attack “self”, and so our best defenses are often useless against the disease.
My premise isn’t particularly metaphorical. Trump has already destroyed the GOP, using its own worst impulses against itself. Principled conservatives have left the party in droves, and he has fired or muted any political appointee who respects facts over lies and rumors. What is left of the GOP and Trump administration has become a creepy amalgam of all of the worst things about America, our “self”. Our laws and customs, our immune system, have been unable to stop this malignancy. The current efforts by Trump to de-legitimize the results of an election that was undertaken under difficult conditions by thousands of honest and diligent election workers, postal workers and millions of voters is obscene, and is made more so by the silence, or worse, the active collaboration of GOP members who almost certainly know better. Those cowards should remember that Hitler came to power by legitimate means, and only a costly world war, with millions of dead, finally ended his regime. It can’t happen here, of course. Right?”
Let us return to the present (July 15th, 2025). The MAGA cancer is now metastatic, usurping the traditional roles of the US government in ways that would have been inconceivable only a few short months ago. Indeed, those of us aware of the invasive and destructive nature of the self-serving malignancy that sits in the Oval Office are being forced into ever-eroding defensive postures. With a few brave exceptions, the “free press” has been virtually useless in protecting our fragile institutions; just a new administration, nothing to see here. Trump is not running an administration, and we should stop referring to it as such. He is presiding over a criminal enterprise, a regime.
One of the clearest divides between corrupt regimes and benign government is how wealthy those in power become. Trump’s finances, almost flat-lined prior to his re-election, are now flush. Those who kowtow to him are rewarded with tax breaks and favors. The USA is now on a par with Russia, with Putin and his oligarchs: Power is used only for personal gain, and those without power must either suffer silently or endure worse if they protest.
The USA has ceased to be a meritocracy, where what is valued is that which promotes the common good. Our premiership in science and technology is withering and our standing in the world plummeting. I just returned from a scientific conference in Europe. The common opinion I encountered there was that the USA is no longer important, other than as something to be feared. European and Asian countries are looking for more reliable partners than us. US scientists who came to the meeting (many cancelled, fearing that their return would be difficult or impossible) were united by a numbing realization that our once-benign federal agencies were now being run, not just by incompetents, but anti-competent Trump sycophants. Those in charge of NIH and NSF aren’t interested in the validity of science, or even it’s importance. RFK Jr. is busy funding research into autism, while those doing vital vaccine research or predicting the next pandemic are fired, unfunded or ignored. Research budgets have been slashed in order to swell the ranks of ICE and build a concentration camp in the Florida swamps.
Cancer victims, towards the end, are wasted and drawn, as the spreading tumor drains vital nutrients from other tissues for its own growth. The wasting of our once-great nation has begun, as resources vital to what we are as a nation are sucked away to feed the MAGA cancer. One only has to look at the corpse of Russia after years of looting by Putin and his cronies to see where we are headed.
At a recent protest, I heard a song with a line in it that has stuck with me. “Where is your red line? Does it change with the times?” My red line was crossed some time ago, and if you have read this far, yours should be as well. Do not go quiet, hoping not to be noticed. Make noise. Protest. Fight back. We must be the immune response to the cancer destroying us from within.
Note added in postscript: This was posted on my Substack and WordPress pages, if you want to read more of my thoughts, you can follow me there.
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