Opinion/Editorial

THE PRICE AND COST OF FAME

 The nation is reeling with anger, contempt, and being led astray in so many different and dangerous ways.  That fact is inescapably apparent to anyone who goes out in public, watches news on television, listens to talk radio, or reads newspapers, national and local.   This is being done to the nation by the broadcasting systems in all areas of mass communications, from news shows to Internet Social Media sites.  These broadcasting systems are picking up their information from famous people.  Famous people many times who are only famous because of Hollywood stardom, athletic prowess, or political position.  Medical, psychological, cultural, linguistic, and even economic credentials are almost totally lacking in all these famous talking heads, from Aaron Rodgers, Novak Djokovic (the tennis star), Marjorie Greene, Donald Trump, Steve Bannon, Michael Lindell (the pillow guy), Glenn Youngkin (the new governor of Virginia), and on to so many more.

Many of these people being listened to, as if they are genius material or carrying Ph.ds in any educational discipline, are being treated as if they know what they’re talking about.  And people are dying, as a result.  One member of the U.S. Supreme Court failed to wear a mask at a recent gathering.  The other members of the court wore masks.  Mr. Gorsuch didn’t wear a mask to express his political feelings, which should have little to do with gauging the seriousness of the virus or its potentially deadly effect on people around him.  Sotomayor, another justice on the court, who is usually seated next to Gorsuch, will no longer attend meetings where he’s present.  This kind of nervous, although justified, response hurts all of us.

The neocon/right-wing ignorance, whether deliberate or accidental is having an odd effect, as the distribution of vaccines has waned while the transmission of the new omicron variation of the disease has expanded.  This group of the population (outside of the little or no-credentialed famous people who are usually all vaccinated and boosted) is exercising an American right.  Yes, one of those rights, just confirmed by the Supreme Court, in many cases is not to get vaccinated, but that’s not the right I want to illustrate here.  These people are exercising the right to die for themselves and for friends while famous people like the members of the Supreme Court and Fox News are all vaccinated and pretty much safe.  These people, the poorly led masses of them, are the ones dying of the virus now.  Is there justice in this?

No. there is sadness.  The sadness extends to considering the loss of all these unnecessarily lost lives but also to how much cold-blooded intent to kill these people exists at the top of media, politics, and even organized religion.  The leaders in these areas know.  They know what they are doing, and they are doing it for money, for self-aggrandizement, and for growing ‘branding’ and more fame.  The tennis ‘clown’ who just got kicked out of Australia for refusing to get vaccinated is getting more ‘branding’ and fame worldwide than he would have ever received if he’d been able to play and even win the Australian championship.  There is a lot wrong with this illustration of how it is all working these days.  Aaron Rodgers, the quarterback of the Green Bay Packers, is using his fame to help people who supposedly believe as he does, to die, while he throws and hands off a leather ball to ear hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars a year.  And, as his fame grows, more people will die.

Most of the American public has no contact with famous people in any sector of the culture.  They are isolated by walls, limos, private aircraft, and giant yachts, as are the billionaires.  There is something that occurred through the ages called ‘The Divine Right of Kings.’  The monarchies of old, their leaders, came to believe that God had given them the right and power of their position, and therefore their conduct was deemed to always be guided by that entity.  Great wealth has another form of that divine right.  Super wealthy people come to believe that God granted them the ability to have wealth. The next part of the extended thought process that has led the world to the very edge of violent revolution and chaos is vital to everyone’s understanding.

These people have come to believe that God also intended, by granting the super-wealthy most of the controlling power of huge money, to be deemed by that same caring and loving God to be deserving of not having wealth.  Finally, these people, meeting in Davos, Switzerland once per year to run the world, for the most part, have come to believe that it is part of their mission is to make sure that the determination by God that ‘commoners’ be kept poor is rigorously applied and maintained.

         These are interesting times, as the very ancient Chinese curse long ago indicated for living in very difficult periods or eras.  Anthropology, through the study of all periods of social and cultural development through many thousands of years, treats this economic time as a teeter tooter.  The more wealth accumulated by the few, the more ‘weight’ in social rage grows, until the teeter tooter tips, once more, as it always has in the past.  Interesting times.