Psycho/Pathogen
Psycho/Pathogen defines this tumultuous moment in America and is a literary cartography of how we got here, which precedes the nation’s founding. This tapestry of racial, social, and environmental justice is described as “a diary of the COVID-19 pandemic with searing cultural and historic commentary.” Psycho/Pathogen is a collection of essays that was written while the world was in lockdown during the socially distanced 2020 US presidential election, a momentous year in American history with few parallels. Each essay carries its start date, the final piece, Camp Auschwitz, being January 6, 2021. “Rain predicted all of Trump’s moves and the failed coup,” observes the former president’s White House Director of Communications, Anthony Scaramucci, with President Vicente Fox, the 62nd President of Mexico, adding that Psycho/Pathogen boasts “farsighted political analysis.” The US House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack committed some eighteen months, millions of dollars, amassed thousands of documents, and called hundreds of witnesses to piece together the insurrection. Without any of that but with history as a guide, the author provided a virtual play-by-play in real time during 2020 that provides the book’s subtitle, “Intubating Democracy, A Cultural Diagnosis of the Virus of Hate”
Described by Native News Online as, “Essential reading for America’s conscience,” some essays lay bare the enduring socio-trauma of infamous acts from the 1800s that were carried out in the name of Manifest Destiny. Psycho/Pathogen is “a must-read collection of essays” states Assembly of First Nations (AFN) National Chief, RoseAnne Archibald, the first woman to ever hold the position. The author also delves deep into his heritage to provide largely unknown cultural vignettes of the Roma, one of the world’s most marginalized and stigmatized ethnic minorities, to demonstrate how the most ancient virus, racial hate and intolerance, is transmitted and how in this incarnation it was spread here in the form of far-right “Christian” nationalism that infected the mainstream of the Republican Party while the world was in lockdown. In towering, descriptive prose and incisive historical and cultural commentary, Psycho/Pathogen is a journey across continents and generations to our shared destination of now.