Toxic Drip

Think back, if you will, to the halcyon days of the Reagan regime, with the Great Communicator's elaborate economic agenda he called “trickle-down economics.” The alleged benefits never trickled down to most of us, and we know now that the whole thing was little more than a hoax disguising further wealth distribution upward. (We'll put aside, for now, the fact that the current administration has once again duped the nation and resurrected this bogus plan with its recent tax cuts and other deep discounts for the wealthy and superwealthy.)

Now, wealth might not be “trickle down” as the GOP claimed, but the locution is quite applicable to some other situations, and we are now almost daily experiencing the effects of a steady toxic drip onto our lives and the lives of our neighbors across the country. Turns out, there are some things that really do trickle down, things that are even less tangible than wealth. When people or organizations in roles of prominence and/or authority speak out, many people hear them. Some people listen. Some even take in and espouse what they hear as important, true, useful, sometimes even inspiring or motivating. In other words, ambient messages seep in to varying extents, on various levels, both conscious and unconscious. When ideas and opinions are repeated forcefully over and over again, especially by persons in authority, their power to influence increases proportionately. When opposing voices are simultaneously denigrated, stifled, or demonized, that power can increase exponentially. (We're speaking metaphorically here, not as statisticians; this is not rocket science.)

Case in point: The president pontificates about the criminality of immigrant populations; tacitly defends white supremacists as holders of some kind of legitimate opposing view to those who fight inequality and oppression; models disrespect, intolerance, othering, victim blaming, impulsivity, vindictiveness, reactivity, cruelty, lawlessness, and elected ignorance as accep