LookingNWords at N-Sidious
An insidious disease is a condition that develops gradually and without obvious symptoms in its early stages. It progresses stealthily, making it difficult to detect until it has advanced significantly. Examples of insidious diseases include: Cancer, Heart disease, High blood pressure, Diabetes, and Dementia. Oddly enough, the current “US” president likely suffers from all of the aforementioned.
But I digress, sort of.
Trumpsidious: The Insidious Disease in the American Body
An insidious disease does not arrive ringing the doorbell. It does not burst through the door of the body with nausea, fever or broken bone. It clandestinely creeps into an open window. It settles into the body quietly, often undetected, until the damage is irreversible. It does not scream as it decimates the host, it whispers, infiltrates and metastasizes until the host wakes up dead.
From the time the United States was conceived, it was diseased. Diseased with genocide. Diseased with violence. Diseased with slavery. Diseased with sexism of both women and men. Diseased with greed. Diseased with human exploitation. Diseased with entitlement and “exceptionalism.” Most importantly it is, and was, diseased with the European (aka “white”) concept of race-ism along with its hideously malformed sibling named white supremacy/inferiority.
Donald “Smitty” Trump is a virulently deadly component and symptom of this disease..
Trump is not a politician. Trump is not a populist. Trump is not a disruptor. Trump is a goddamned pathogen. One that has entered the American body politic and begun its slow, corrosive work. His presence is not confined to rallies or tweets, it is now systemic. It has seeped into the judiciary, the media, the classroom, the grocery store, the bank, the dinner table. And like any insidious disease, it thrives on denial as its diseased patients proclaim: “Ain’t nothing wrong with me…I feel fine.”
Trumpox Symptomatology: A Personal Encounter
I am a Black Man in the United States, a writer, and a citizenless citizen navigating a system that claims impartiality but knows it is anything but. However ignoble, I do what I was put here to do. And, believe me, I wish it were not so because I know where I am at. Thusly, this is unlikely to end well. Black Men in the United States that assert themselves as men and thinkers tend to have peculiar results. Just ask them.
Oh shit, you can’t, they’re all dead or imprisoned.
From the dis-ease.
For the past several weeks I have been involved in litigation. I am not a lawyer but I have significant legal training, as well as a modicum of talent. Long ago I was taught to perform what I call a “judicial profile” before appearing in the presiding judge, magistrate or referee’s courtroom.
Unlike racial profiling, my brand of “judicial profiling” goes beyond the ignorance, silliness and buffoonery of assumptions based on physical appearance. This type of profiling is a reconnaissance of the judge’s background: place of birth, age, education, political affiliation and even election results, or appointment history. Additionally, I can often review how the judge has ruled in prior cases which generally reveals a pattern of judicial temperament. The judge and juris in the instant matter of which I reference, and am a participant, is a Trump supporter.
That fact alone shouldn’t matter. But in Trump’s Amerika, it does.
Trump has taught his followers—some of whom wear black robes and wield gavels—that dissent is treason. That critique is attack. That Blackness is threat. As a writer known for sociopolitical prose critical of Trump, I entered that courtroom not just as a litigant, but as a potential target. The fear wasn’t just legal, it was ideological. Would this judge see me, or see an enemy?
N-N=ME.
This is the quiet terror of insidious influence: it doesn’t need to declare itself. It simply alters the air. The prince of the power of the air. After all, the Devil’s greatest trick was convincing people he/she did not exist.
The Spread Through the Body, The “Corps,” The Corpse
Trump’s metastasized influence is not limited to the judiciary. In the media he has branded truth as “fake news” and “fake news” into truth. The media, its constituents and contingents have been complicit in turning journalism into a battlefield where facts are casualties and loyalty is currency. He has emboldened attacks on intellectualism, diversity, and historical accuracy, reducing education to indoctrination and scholarship to suspicion while academia has shamelessly bowed to his assault on intellect. In public policy he has weaponized bureaucracy against the vulnerable—immigrants, LGBTQ+ communities, the poor—treating compassionate empathy as weakness and cruelty as strength.
This is not politics. It is pathology. Symptomological of a diseased, ruthless, entitled and cowardly entity. Trump’s tactics—intimidation, bullying, retaliation—mirror the behavior of a disease that suppresses the immune system. Institutions meant to protect and serve now hesitate, falter, or collapse under the weight of his influence. The American body is sick, and many do not even know it.
Immunity: The Body Fights Back
19 years ago, I was diagnosed with SLE. Essentially, my body is constantly fighting. Unlike a person with an illness whereas their body can’t or won’t fight, my body sees everything as an enemy. The end result is the same; how poetically fitting.
As activists, journalists, educators, and everyday people have to become antibodies. We must resist, we must expose and we must endure. The resistance is not always loud, but it is persistent. It is the protester in the street, the teacher in the classroom, the voter at the ballot box. It is the writer penning this essay.
Yet the challenge remains: insidious diseases are hard to treat. They require vigilance, early detection, and systemic intervention. They demand that we recognize symptoms not as isolated incidents, but as signs of a deeper malaise. And they require honesty. Brutal, unfuckingflinching honesty.
Prognosis
Stop pretending that Trump is merely a controversial figure. He is a condition. A syndrome. A set of symptoms that point to a larger diagnosis: a nation vulnerable to authoritarianism, racism, and decay.
Healing will not come from silence. It will not come from compromise. It will come from confrontation of truth, of history, of power. The disease is congenital and has always been here. The question is whether the body will fight, or succumb. It does not look good because the symptoms are worsening, as evidenced by the current state of the body and its affairs. Insidious diseases are challenging to treat because they may not be diagnosed until they have caused significant damage.
It is important to be aware of the potential symptoms of insidious diseases and to seek medical attention if you notice any changes in your health, even if they seem minor.
Rinse and repeat.
And of course.
I have to admit I am immediately deleting all posts and articles about winning the next election. I submit there is absolutely no evidence from our History with Trump that such an election to overturn his desires will Occur.
Stop it and open your minds to Mr. Kenyatta's words...those who want to "return to the normalcy" of "our" democracy (whose our?????) not the Americans who are voting for people they don't know, corrupted only by a choice of two people and winner take all majority. I don't understand why Madison's words on the tyranny of majorities is the most insidious of all tyrannies.
Majorities enslave the minority and then solidify with tyranny over the minds of their own majority deluding them to believe they've won (how won?????).
Elections, as such, are not symptoms of disease, but the spread of the disease and a blockade of the immune system from recognizing the disease until death does collapse the virus of majority rule and a democracy that is not about the issues of concern but of people who continue to propagate that death of you is all right but not the death of them.
{As a personal sidenote by immune system was also compromised by an autoimmune disease] that attacked by nutrients---but only in the presence of gluten, but then it also aided me and I rarely got "sick" and normally I healed rapidly all the time dying of insufficiency of nutrients, so I understand your analogy here and might say might be the reason most Americans cannot see how "their"(their repression ?????) was being disguised by the idea of voting for candidates rather than the issues that concerned them.}
A democracy, should one exist would mean even one black southern voter, should he have slipped into being allowed could have vetoed all Jim Crow laws, but if even no blacks could have voted---just one white vote (heaven help us if there wasn't at least one) could have done the same.
No it has always been a disease, and the American conception of democracy maintained itself only by Alzheimerizing the populace.
Well said.