Blindness

One thousand people have been arrested for their actions during the insurrection of 6 July 2021; many hundreds have pleaded guilty and several hundred have been sent to prison, convicted by a jury of their peers though I suppose that there are not a few insurgents who would say that the only jury of their peers would be like-minded insurrectionists. Leader of the Oath Keepers, Stewart Rhodes, will spend eighteen years in prison; Thomas Webster was sentenced to ten years, Jessica Watkins to 8.5 years and Patrick McCaughey to 7.5 years. The man with his feet on Nancy Pelosi’s desk will spend 4.5 years in jail. Other coconspirators in the violent events of that day have been placed on home detention. There are, obviously, many others who have been since charged and are now awaiting trial or sentencing. And still the Republican sycophants continue to whitewash (not a pun) the event, decry the persecution of its pacific protestors, and the indited Trump, and there are even some who claim that the whole happening was a) a peaceful event; b) an event provoked by FBI infiltrators, or Antifa or (of course), socialist or Communist sympathizers. I suppose some might even blame the insurrection on the product of an alien invasion. But as the violence proceeded and the treasonous rioters called for the hanging of Mike Pence, not a few senators and representatives took cover from the rioters in safe places in the Capitol that was under attack, and several prominent Republican leaders subsequently accused Donald Trump of inspiring and helping to foment the riot and did nothing to stop his ugly base from their heinous acts. But now and two years hence many of those same Republicans have since walked themselves pusillanimously back from these charges and not a few despite a complete lack of evidence continue to promulgate Trump’s Big Lie that the election of 2020 was stolen. The level of cowardliness and blindness confounds and shocks me.
            Jose Saramago’s novel, Blindness, concerns the visitation of a plague of blindness. Without warning citizens are suddenly and without etiology struck blind. Suddenly and without cause individuals go blind but this blindness is not an experience of total blackness but one of milky whiteness. I do not think Saramago refers here to white supremacist propaganda, but it is to my mind an apt infection with which people suffer. But plague is an occurrence that I have experienced and suffered with for the past three years. I am not blind to its consequences. One of the early victims of blindness was an ophthalmologist who had earlier received an understandably panicked visit from the first victim of it. The now-plagued doctor ascribes his blindness as having spread from his patient, but the doctor’s wife understands that “blindness isn’t something that can be caught just by a blind man looking at someone who is not, blindness is a private matter between a person and the eyes with which he or she was born.” Blindness can sometimes be a willed condition and occurs when a person sees only what they want to see without regard to what else might be obvious. Ah, but that is a cliché finally, I think. I think this is an apt description of the blindness of the Republican congress members and of the hard-right base who would support Trump even if he shot someone dead on Fifth Avenue. This blindness is, indeed, one that has been chosen. These are the core supporters of the disgraced, twice impeached, and yet twice indited former president. The ophthalmologist says that no one is to blame in an epidemic but that we are all victims, but in fact that is not exactly the case at present. There are some who have been self-infected and they have turned us all into victims. We have become oppressed and ill by the willed blindness of these others.
           Now, physical blindness is a result of a malfunction of the optic system and except in rare cases does not suggest a problem with brain functioning. Actual physical impairment of sight almost always has no emotional/psychological etiology. This type of blindness is a physical disability that has resulted in an unwished-for incapacity for sight. Those who experience this form of blindness must (and for the most part do) learn to function in the diurnal by their own and other assistive agencies. Society has created alternative stratagems and devices to facilitate daily life for the sight-impaired, for those who are physically blind that had not been considered necessary for the sighted, though it is certainly true that auditory signals offering safe travel at crosswalks serve as a benefit the unsighted and sighted alike. There are other modifications that were originally developed for the benefit of the physically sight impaired and that has improved the quality of the life that can be enjoyed. But the blindness Saramago refers to is a conscious decision made by an individual not to see; this blindness is, indeed, an affliction whose etiology is emotional and psychological and for which education might have been the only remediation. I think that it is possible that the afflicted can be taught to choose not to be blind. These blind-afflicted individuals and groups would prefer to remain sightless and therefore, refuse to be educated. Their white-cloudy infirmity is to them a welcome attribute and an emblem of pride. Such has been evident in the arguments denying the benefits of the COVID vaccines and the subsequent boosters despite all of the studies proving their effectiveness. One of those deniers is actually running for President of the United States. 
            There is a wonderful Peanuts cartoon: Lucy and Linus are looking up at the sky and Lucy says to her brother, “Clouds are very peculiar . . . sometimes they seem to form actual words.” Charlie Brown, who has overheard, corrects Lucy. He says, “Those aren’t clouds . . . That’s sky-writing.” Lucy looks at Charlie Brown and turns back to Linus. In the final frame again looking up at the sky, Lucy says to Linus, “Clouds are very peculiar  . . . sometimes they seem to form actual words.” Ignorance is more than an inability to see; it is a repudiation of seeing. It is a willed blindness. 
            Republicans and others of their ilk will their blindness. Despite all evidences to the contrary they would look at the skywriting and say it is clouds. But they are also ignorant. They will not learn. They do not learn.