by Thaddeus G. McCotter

I’m a doctor. Fine, I’m a doctor of laws not of medicine. But I can scroll Web, M.D. as well as anyone, so believe you me – forget all the other scourges ravaging our free republic, even if (nay, especially if) they are afflicting you. Those scourges are mere distractions from the root cause of our impending doom.

No, I’m not talking about climate change/global warming/new Ice Age or whatever current false alarm the Left is sounding, for that false alarm is itself is a symptom of the new scourge; and, at the risk of sounding alarmist, our demise may well occur within the next twelve years. For, as President Abraham Lincoln ominously noted, “America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.” And Mr. Lincoln wasn’t just talking about Jussie Smollett paying for his hoax hate crime with a check.

What is this postmodern plague consuming our nation?

Toxic imbecility.

And where is the hot zone where this imbecilic chicken first came home to roost and now appears ready to cook our goose? An educated guess is that it’s wherever educators first devolved into indoctrinators, turning young people’s brains into carriers of leftist bumper sticker tropes. (Perhaps some of the $3 billion sitting in New York City’s coffers that the Amazonian plutocrat Jeff Bezos didn’t steal from hard working folks can now be invested in remedial courses in economics for elected officials? But I digress.)

Regardless of the exact location for the ground zero of this toxic imbecility (which ultimately renders its victims’ IQs), the scourge’s spread is bipartisan. On the Left, collusion conspiracy theorists, Democratic Socialists (redundant), celebrities, pundits, and the elitist cable media prove toxic imbecility can be an airborne pathogen, as well as spread by human contact with the Washington Post, the New York Times, and other vestiges of so-called “respectable journalism.” The scourge then manifests itself in the afflicted as an obstinate, irrational belief in injurious idiocies, such as the weaponized lie of the Russian collusion delusion, the defamation of the Covington Catholic high schoolers and so many others instances of toxic imbecility.

On the “Right,” useful idiots compound the spread of toxic imbecility through human interaction with, say, a back issue of the now-defunct Weekly Standard or staring at a screen grab of The Bulwark; and, if untreated, it can lead the afflicted to follow Max Boot on Twitter and tattooing #NeverTrump onto their rumps (right beside where their heads entered).

Other symptoms of toxic imbecility include but are certainly not limited to the following:

A febrile fever (colloquially termed, “feeling the Bern”), which leaves one seized with prehensile fingers grasping for other people’s money.
A feeling of irrational gratitude when 25,000 jobs won’t be coming to town to enrich your neighbors.
A delusion that Chicago is “MAGA country,” where Trump supporters brave sub-zero temperatures to accost celebrities whose shows they don’t watch because they’re racist homophobes.
A persistent aching for open borders everywhere except in your gated community.
A paranoid belief that President Trump, former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, U.S. Representative Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), the NRA, the GOP, the NRCC, the NRSC and, hell, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir are all Russian assets.
Conflating contrary views with violence and hate speech; demanding safe spaces from such differing ideas; and a generalized, free-floating anxiety about the dangers of free speech.
Being possessed by Trump Derangement Syndrome (a disorder in and of itself), often manifested by espousing one’s chilling sense that the Putin-sponsored, illegitimate imposition upon America of President Trump means we are all going to die sooner than climate change can kill us.

Tragically, the symptoms of #ToxicImbecility appear to be endless. Fortunately, the vaccine, for those not yet infected, and the antidote, for those now suffering the scourge, is relatively succinct; readily available and, thanks to the internet, largely free: read liberal doses of Edmund Burke, Russell Kirk, William F. Buckley, Jr. and Victor Davis Hanson; escape your safe space; and embrace reality. Yes, it’s that simple.

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The Hon. Thaddeus McCotter is the former chairman of the Republican House Policy Committee, current itinerant guitarist, American Greatness contributor, and Monday co-host of the “John Batchelor Show.”