How Your Germs Control Your Politics (with David Wong)
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Stop me if you've heard this one before: a charismatic populist leader rises to power by warning of immigrants who are are "filthy" and "bring disease." It's no coincidence the greatest deplorable leaders through the ages use the same coded language to talk about people who are "other."
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It's psychology. Quite understandably, it's human nature to fear disease. It's why rats are icky to us and I ceremonially burn my clothes after I go to Disneyland. But if you know what you're looking for, you'll see how diseases are are framed as exotic and foreign as an excuse to gang up on different nationalities: SARS, ban Chinese people; Ebola, ban everybody from Africa; sickness in general, build that wall.
On this week's podcast, Alex Schmidt is joined by Cracked executive editor Jason Pargin (aka David Wong) to talk about how this weird germ theory controls how you think about everything.
Footnotes:
What The Hell Did I Just Read: A Novel of Cosmic Horror (David Wong)
4 Creepy Things That Secretly Control Your Personality (Cracked)
The Germ Theory of Democracy, Dictatorship, And All Your Most Cherished Beliefs (Pacific Standard)
What Is The Monkeysphere? (Cracked)
The Limits of Friendship (The New Yorker)
Before Rosa Parks, There Was Claudette Colman (NPR)
6 Big Differences That Turn City Dwellers Into Liberals (Cracked)
How Half of America Lost It's F**king Mind (Cracked)
The Moral Roots of Liberals and Conservatives (TED)
The Bath Riots: Indignity Along the Mexican Border (NPR)
5 Scientific Ways to Trick Yourself into Being a Good Person (Cracked)
The Stuff in Your Bedroom Signals How You Vote (Slate)
Alex Jones Retracts Chobani Claims to Resolve Lawsuit (New York Times)
Donald Trump: Mexican migrants bring 'tremendous infectious disease' to US (The Guardian)
Rick Perry: Illegal immigration is 'like a disease' (Dallas News)
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