This Nation of Cowards
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, center, and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie at a news conference on Ebola in New York, October 24, 2014. The governors of New York and New Jersey on Sunday stood by their decision to require medical workers who had contact with Ebola patients in West Africa into quarantine, despite deep concerns about the impact it might have on fighting the epidemic and the lack of clarity about exactly how the plan would work.
(Photo: Katie Orlinsky / The New York Times)
This Nation of Cowards
By William Rivers Pitt
Truthout | Op-Ed
Tuesday 28 October 2014
It is likely that most of us, myself included, will live out our entire lives and die without ever meeting someone who willingly and purposefully volunteers to spend their vacation thousands of miles away, tending to people with diseases that make the talking heads on CNN and Fox want to hide under the bed. Kaci Hickox, a nurse from Maine who graduated from Johns Hopkins, is one such person.
In 2010, Hickox traveled overseas with the organization Doctors Without Borders to treat people suffering from yellow fever, one of several trips she made with that organization. Until last Friday, she was in Sierra Leone for a month, spending her vacation time helping to treat people infected with Ebola, the virus that has been burning through western Africa at an unprecedented rate. Kaci Hickox went to one of the most unstable countries in the world to help fight a deadly disease because someone had to, and so she raised her hand.
On Friday, she came home to a timorous nation of cowards.
That same day, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo teamed up with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie to establish a mandatory 21-day quarantine for any health workers returning from West Africa. When she landed at the ironically-named Liberty International Airport in Newark, she informed an immigration official that she had just returned from Sierra Leone, and was immediately hustled into a room. For the next several hours, she was questioned harshly by several people wearing bio-suits without being told exactly what was going on. According to her, nobody seemed to be in charge.
One man whose gun was visible under his bio-suit, in Hickox own words, "barked questions at me as if I was a criminal." After several hours passed, she was brought to University Hospital in Newark in a speeding sirens-blaring lights-flashing caravan of eight police cars. Upon arrival, she was stuffed into a quarantine tent with scant furniture, a port-o-potty and no shower, and was informed that this would be her home for the next twenty-one days.
(snip)
"The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny," Aesop tells us. These days, the tyrant will justify that tyranny by playing to the fears of the people. Kaci Hickox is but one example of a nation that has entirely surrendered to those fears, both real and imagined, because those fears are a facile way for TV networks to get ratings, and for politicians to get coverage by stoking those fears, which creates more fear, which generates ratings, which makes political careers. Lather rinse repeat.
This is what happens in a nation trained to be fearful by a media and political establishment which profits from that fear. We have seen it with terrorism, and with WMD in Iraq, and Bird Flu, and "They're coming for your guns," and immigration, and now ISIS, and in so many other moments as well. Now, it is Ebola, which is dangerous to be sure, but not to the point that we explode the Bill of Rights, again. For the record, it seems the CDC would seem to agree.
This is what happens to an ill-informed populace which is not taught to be strong, and fair, and true to the ideals of their founding, but is instead convinced by the very entities tasked to protect and inform them that they are, actually, about to die at the hands of this week's bloviated threat.
This is how a nation of cowards is made.
Mission accomplished.
The rest: http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/27090-this-nation-of-cowards
= new reply since forum marked as read
don't get me started...
One of the most chilling but entertaining novels I have ever read. "Entertaining Novel' being the key words here.
geez 
sad attempt to be 'balanced and fair'. "Unfamiliar threat"? and on and on.
with compassionate care and treatment of potential ebola carriers and those that register positive. Just because that jerk christie backtracked as a result of negative press, it does nothing to change my mind about the ability of people,with the help of RW fear mongering to revert to draconian measures to deal with people who might be infected. I agree with anyone who uses empathy and compassion with people like Ms. Hickox. She's a hero who was treated shamefully by cowards and their lackeys. Hope she's treated better in her state. 
I wept when Mario didn't run in the 1992 General Election. Literally. 
There have been so many "we're all gonna die!" diseases in the past ten years, it's difficult for some of us to get worked up about them anymore. I don't have TV and so don't watch the 24 hour news chanels (actually didn't watch them when I did have it). I wonder how much of the fear would dissipate if all the 24 hour news channels would go *poof*?
all those claims of Ms. Hickox being arrogant and whiney about the conditions she was forced to endure in the "cowards" type of quarantine. People on another thread related to this travesty were smearing her without knowing this truth. I repeat to Ms. Hickox and all who are like her, THANK YOU for your compassion, bravery and dedication.
And thank you w.pitt.
Last edited Tue Oct 28, 2014, 02:04 PM - Edit history (1)
I remember discussing the polio epidemics (and scarlet fever epidemics, etc.) with him, and expressing admiration for his courage during those times. His response was, "Son, it's part of being a physician. It's what we do".
There was also fear then, a fear that was FAR more reasonable than our hysteria about ebola, but that fear was largely put to rest by public health departments and physicians themselves, because they knew what the hell they were talking about, unlike today's politicians and talking heads.
There were also quarantines then, but they were humane: public officials, health departments, churches, neighbors and friends made sure that those who were quarantined had food, water, electricity, telephone, reading materials, etc. ; in no way were the quarantines punitive.
What the hell is wrong with this country? We've done this before, for a couple of centuries, in fact, and it need not be this way!
Fantastic piece. This is exactly what is being orchestrated, in so many ways.
Yet, it is obvious why you said this:
Here's the part where I thank myself for kicking my thread.
Derp.
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weaker than you are. Why, you're nothing but a great big coward!" Dorothy, Wizard of Oz.
Now, it's all political.
Which means Dems should be running on "Obamacre saved us from ebola", 
