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  • From: "Wade Riddick" <wriddick AT usa.net>
  • To: "Percy-L: Literary and Philosophical Discussion" <percy-l AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [percy-l] Our plague year
  • Date: Sat, 08 Aug 2020 02:27:38 -0400

I realize this is an inappropriate forum for discussing this, but sometimes
you have to transgress in an "interest group" to save the community.

While the food you eat is clearly a private good, its nutritional content is
not. Just as you require vitamins and calories - or you die - you also
require healthy intestinal flora and fiber to feed it. We've stripped that
fiber out of our food supply and added the wrong, inflammatory fats to our
diet resulting in the epidemic of diabetes and obesity that has left us
vulnerable to Covid-19.

We did this to the food supply because the inflammation (via an LPS/fatty acid
synthase/TLR4 pathway, if you must know) made us overeat (hypothalamic
inflammation) and made us addicted (via a TLR4/mu opioid channel shared with
heroin addicts - among numerous pathways I could cite). Addiction results in
repeat business and overeating jacks up food purchases - two big juicers of
corporate food profits.

Oh, yeah. It just so happens diabetes, obesity, cancer and viral infections
make use of the same fatty acid/palmitate pathway.

We will never fortify ourselves if we can't deal with these industries.

The result of privatizing our nutrition has been food that doesn't nourish
you; it actually programs you to be hungrier. It doesn't promote
independence; it robs you of personal autonomy, roping you back into a feudal
world of fealty, now with a high tech, biochemical (or sometimes digital)
twist.

The privatization of public goods results in extortion for profit. If we paid
firefighters a bonus for each fire they put out, entire cities would burn to
the ground.

You think it's a coincidence we have more military contractors in Iraq and
Afghanistan that U.S. military and we've had the two longest, most expensive
and least determinant wars ever? It's not a mistake. It's by design. These
guys go to war for profit. If the war ends, there's no more profit. They
don't want to win it or lose it. Car companies naturally want more car
buyers. Why is it so hard to believe that for-profit treaments of sickness
economically incentivizes more sickness?

There are some very cheap treatments and approaches to Covid-19 that, while
not curative, would certainly diminish its devastation. BCG vaccines, for
instance - but not one of the ad revenue supported TV channels discusses it.
We could vaccinate every kid in the country with it for pennies on the dollar
compared to some of the treatments they're working on.

Yes, the data on hydroxychloroquine looks good too, but only for early stage
infection. I really wish to God Trump and Bolsinaro would stop talking about
it.

You don't even hear about the effectiveness of the protocol developed in Texas
using vitamin C, low-dose corticosteroids and blood thinners - which is cheap,
cheap, cheap too.

I grew up with what I now know is a form of arthritis set in motion by
exposure to second-hand smoke (ubiquitous in the 1970s) and antibiotics for
the infections. My freshman year of high school, I took TV and film
production from a chain smoker named Marti Wagner. She made sure before we
ever got into Baton Rouge High's three camera studio - the only one of its
kind in the country at the time - we understood the history of the medium.
She made us watch doctors on TV advertising cigarettes in the '40s and '50s as
healthy. Then we watched Yul Brenner dying of lung cancer telling us not to
smoke. Then we watched Leni Reifenstahl Nazi propaganda.

And I just happened to be reading _The Diary of Anne Frank_ around the same
time.

I remember Walker Percy talking about his troubles with tuberculosis and the
way he wove euthanasia and Nazi history into his narratives, but I swear I
never expected to be living through it, either personally or as a bystander to
national suffering.

What would the existentialists make of our plague year?

Wade Riddick


------ Original Message ------
Received: Fri, 07 Aug 2020 08:16:17 PM EDT
From: Karey Perkins <kareyperkins AT gmail.com>
To: "Percy-L: Literary and Philosophical Discussion"
<percy-l AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: Re: [percy-l] Pluralism or community? A response to Wade Riddick.

America’s horrendous and failed response to the pandemic, worse than any
other country in the entire world, developed and developing, making America
“first” at being “worst,” (is this Making America Great Again?), is
entirely and totally due to "the rest” — the incompetence and corruption
of our political leaders.

America’s failure at handling the pandemic is not an accident, but due to
decades of dismantling of our democracy, culminating in the present
particularly incompetent and corrupt administration. Cause and effect.
It’s basic science, as Peirce would say. Pragmaticism.

THAT is worth talking about. "Speak out," as the poem says. Read and learn:
https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/07/inside-the-us-pandemic-incompetence-it-starts-at-the-top/
<https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/07/inside-the-us-pandemic-incompetence-it-starts-at-the-top/>
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/09/coronavirus-american-failure/614191/
<https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/09/coronavirus-american-failure/614191/>
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2006740
<https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2006740>

Karey Perkins, M.A., M.A.T., Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Department of English
296A Turner Hall, South Carolina State University
Orangeburg, SC 29117
kperkin1 AT scsu.edu <mailto:kperkin1 AT scsu.edu> | 803-536-7016
www.scsu.edu <http://www.scsu.edu/>
Member, Institute for Studies in Pragmaticism
Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX 79409-0002
kareperk AT ttu.edu <mailto:kareperk AT ttu.edu> | http://www.pragmaticism.net
<http://www.pragmaticism.net/>




> On Aug 7, 2020, at 2:44 PM, RHONDA MCDONNELL <rhonda_mcdonnell AT msn.com>
wrote:
>
> Well, yes, in response to the pandemic. But the rest ... ;-)
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
>> On Aug 7, 2020, at 2:24 PM, Karey Perkins <kareyperkins AT gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>  According to Charles Sanders Peirce (paraphrased badly):
>>
>> There is a reality out there. It’s not a matter of opinion; reality
exists quite separately from any human opinion. While no human has a 100%
grasp on reality, some human views are more close to that real reality out
there than others. Those whose views of reality most closely coincide with
reality itself are most successful; those whose views deviate more from what
reality actually is — will fail.
>>
>> I may believe I can fly, but if I jump off of tall buildings in order to
practice that belief, it won’t bode well for me.
>>
>> If I believe in gravity, I’ll not be jumping out of buildings. I’ll
fare far better than my compatriot who IS jumping off of buildings.
>>
>> That’s pragmaticism.
>>
>> We as humans have a profound responsibility to seek the truth and propagate
the truth — not as an abstraction, but as a flesh-and blood physical
reality.
>>
>> Because dying in a pandemic is a flesh and blood reality. Being unemployed
(by some estimates, 47.2% of Americans) and evicted from your home is a flesh
and blood reality with real physical consequences.
>>
>> This is no longer about abstracted religious “belief” or political
“belief.” This is not about silly political arguments. This is life and
death.
>>
>> This is not an abstraction for hundreds of thousands of Americans.
>>
>> Karey
>>
>>
>> Karey Perkins, M.A., M.A.T., Ph.D.
>> Assistant Professor, Department of English
>> 296A Turner Hall, South Carolina State University
>> Orangeburg, SC 29117
>> kperkin1 AT scsu.edu <mailto:kperkin1 AT scsu.edu> | 803-536-7016
>> www.scsu.edu <http://www.scsu.edu/>
>> Member, Institute for Studies in Pragmaticism
>> Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX 79409-0002
>> kareperk AT ttu.edu <mailto:kareperk AT ttu.edu> | http://www.pragmaticism.net
<http://www.pragmaticism.net/>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>> On Aug 7, 2020, at 1:31 PM, RHONDA MCDONNELL <rhonda_mcdonnell AT msn.com
<mailto:rhonda_mcdonnell AT msn.com>> wrote:
>>>
>>> In just the last few posts, where we see some polarization, I am reminded
of Tom More reflecting on the arguments among his fellow prisoners in THE
THANATOS SYNDROME — can’t help but smile.
>>>
>>> Wishing y’all well,
>>>
>>> Rhonda
>>>
>>> Sent from my iPhone
>>>
>>>> On Aug 7, 2020, at 6:36 AM, janetcantor37--- via Percy-L
<percy-l AT lists.ibiblio.org <mailto:percy-l AT lists.ibiblio.org>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>
>>> ----------------------------------
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>>
>>
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>
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  • Re: [percy-l] Our plague year, Wade Riddick, 08/08/2020

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