Late in his life, Dr. Jonas Salk, the pioneering doctor who developed the polio vaccine, commented on the increasing evidence of the environmental causes of cancer in humans. He said that he was convinced that environmental factors were correlated, but not causative:

 

"...we will not cure the cancer in Man until we cure the Cancer of Man..."

— Rothko Chapel Convocation, Houston, Texas (1958)

During the first eight months of the Obama administration, the right wing has scored what gamers call "damage points" against his presidency using tactics that I think mimic the behavior of carcinoma. I worry that it could potentially kill democracy in America.

As most of us know, the nature of a cancerous cell is that it mimics the behavior of a healthy cell so effectively that the blood sugars and beneficial elements intended for the 'normal' cell flow to the cancerous cell and the healthy cells eventually die.

After the inauguration of President Obama, the right declared its destructive intentions. Rush Limbaugh's declared that he hopes that Barack Obama fails. When challenged on this, Limbaugh backed off slightly, saying that he does not hope that the President fails, only that Obama's "left-wing agenda" for America fails. Soon thereafter, Mr. Limbaugh doubled down on the "Hope Obama Fails" approach by stating that he hoped Obama fails "...so others can succeed."

The meme is clear and quite brilliant: Real patriots are the antigen to the diseased (dare I say "black"?) cells now in charge of the body politic.

Since we live in a democracy, our reasoning powers tell us that the "cells" who run the political and policy machinery of the United States are the real, healthy and normal cells of the body politic. But the opposite of a healthy cell is a damaged one; in this case, cancerous. And the etiology of the aggressive disease is to mimic legitimacy and to attack the sources of nutrition to the healthy cell. The mutant mimicry goes first to the cells with the most compatible receptor characteristics -- that is, they are not fully integrated into the healthy cellular structure. For the Limbaugh Right, the immediate recruits for anti-Obama activism were the fringe right. There is actually data that demonstrates the virulence and agitation on the fringe. Organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center and governmental law enforcement agencies like the Secret Service and the FBI noted an early surge in membership of race-based groups and right wing militias. The delivery mechanism of mimetic material to the fringe cells was fear. Fear reduces resistance to control information that provides critical analysis and rationality. Remember the run on guns that occurred right after the inauguration? A doctor might call that a co-indicator of infection. Absent an actual directive from the healthy cells running the body politic, the only cause for such rampant response by the fringe cells was false data to their linked cells.

The next thing that the developing cancer does is compile the cells into a cross-functioning cellular network. Driven by fear, the flow of life-sustaining energy goes to the cancer cells. The term for this is metastasizing. This is the role of the so-called Astroturf groups: metastasizing the troubled cells into a group that gets its orders from the cancer and not the healthy cells of the body politic. "Astroturf" is the shorthand used by the media for companies who specialize in "creating" grassroots-appearing movements, usually in support of corporate or right-wing initiatives. The stimulus saw the formation of the Tea Party, under the organizational support of Freedomworks, among others, who received their seed funding through corporate-sponsored Astroturfing.