Disgust is one of those universally experienced emotions which, over time seems to have evolved in line with us as an advanced species. In its most basic form, it’s that rising sense of nausea and skin crawl you get when you for example, bite into an apple to reveal half a worm’s corruption. The sensation of disgust is so palpable that it acts like a pre-warning immune system. Before antibiotics and refrigeration, it might have been your best bet against food poisoning, and in many ways it still is.
Then there is sexual disgust which is apparently a two component safeguard against incest and the selection of a ‘biologically costly mate’. This would probably go far to explain why women experience disgust more readily than men. Men being men, they might prioritize a quick jump over any finer feelings whereas women, not only run the risk of STDs and getting pregnant but also enduring a terminally ugly partner with inbred offspring thrown into the bargain.
And let’s face it, bumping uglies is just that — as Freud (no stranger himself to repression and disgust) requoted the memorable observation by St Augustine, in his book ‘Civilization and its Discontents’, that we are all born between urine and faeces (inter urinas et faeces nascimur). While our undercarriage might look beautiful to some, it’s pretty close to elements in component one mentioned in the first paragraph.
And then there is moral disgust, which is where I think it gets really interesting with us as a species. Moral disgust is revulsion for anti-social behaviors such as lying, theft, murder, and rape (but not necessarily in that order). Moral disgust instructs us to stay away from individuals who champion such behaviors, and for a reason. These corrosive behaviors create rifts in the fabric of society and threaten ultimately the cohesion we all value.
This is where the cognitive dissonance kicks in because at this special moment in history, for the most part, we seem to have elected leaders who embrace disgust in all its venal glory. With the assurance that you might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb and the safeguard of other big crooks, they lie, cheat, rape, embezzle and even murder, safe in the knowledge that power will protect them. As Stalin himself said ‘ A single death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic’.
Where is the moral outrage, the disgust of the electorate? A quick look at human affairs suggests that the systems we have created to communicate with each other have been seconded by unscrupulous politicians and other actors to build walls of disgust and outrage between ordinary people. Divide and conquer politics is a simple act of math against civilizations that have grown too big to fail.
But under the present model, they will fail. In less than one month, the American experiment might come to a grinding halt. if Donald Trump, his Republican fixers and other criminal accessories secure another four years in power under the cloak of democratic legitimacy, the lights will go out around the world.
That is not to say that Biden does not represent a comfortable acceptance with Wall Street, an unchecked Military and lobbyists for industries that asset strip the natural world. There is nevertheless a sense that he upholds democratic principles and the rule of law — something which Trump’s autocratic tendencies do not recognize.
The historian James MacGregor Burns said it best when he wrote in his book The American Experiment: The Vineyard of Liberty, The Workshop of Democracy, and The Crosswinds of Freedom:
“Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to controul the abuses of government. But what is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controuls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: You must first enable the government to controul the governed; and in the next place oblige it to controul itself. A dependence on the people, is no doubt, the primary controul on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.”
We can see with our own eyes, the kind of America that arises when its most esteemed office is occupied by an habitual and pathological liar, a man who makes light of 200 000 preventable Covid-19 deaths; a failed businessman whose tax contributions would put Warren Buffet to shame and a sexual predator whose crimes may yet be punished once his presidency is over.
Donald Trump, a known germaphobe, is said to have been relieved by the restrictions of social distancing that allowed him not to have to shake hands with ‘disgusting people’ (those would be ‘his people’ by the way). We can only hope that the collective disgust of rightminded American voters on the other side in November will ensure that Trump and all his enablers are flushed down with prejudice.
It won’t drain the swamp, but it will do much to relieve a stench that has become unbearable for America and the world.
