iRant.org

AIDS has no party affiliation. It does not discriminate against liberals or conservatives. The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) does not care if Republicans or Democrats control Congress. It continues to infect an average of 56,000 Americans a year, whether it’s an election year or not. And it certainly doesn’t shut down in times of economic distress.

Following November’s midterm elections, television pundits have prattled endlessly about a new political reality, while lobbying firms and advocacy organizations have been scrambling to position themselves for the new governing landscape. Conservative organizations are touting the election as a rebuke of progressive policies, while liberal groups argue that it was nothing more than a reflection of an electorate frustrated by a floundering economy.

World AIDS Day offers an opportunity to put this political posturing aside and examine the realities of this 30 year epidemic. This year’s theme is “universal access and human rights.” These principles are not exclusive to one political party or ideology. Nearly 600,000 Americans have lost their lives to this terrible disease and another 1.1 million Americans struggle with it daily. Every nine and a half minutes, someone is diagnosed with HIV and must face a new and uncertain future — a lifetime fighting a disease that has no cure.

Americans living with AIDS don’t divide themselves neatly among partly lines, residing strictly in Republican or Democratic districts. They look to their elected officials in both parties for action, no matter which controls the reigns of Congress or the White House at any given time. And today more than ever, our nation requires strong leadership from everyone in Washington if it is to address the challenges posed by this epidemic.

Much of the public has been lulled into a sense of complacency about the disease, even as infection rates remain alarmingly high, particularly in communities of color. More people are now waiting to receive life-saving medications from the AIDS Drug Assistance Program than at any time in its 20 year history. And a weak economy has left countless more Americans living with the disease questioning how they will continue to afford their treatment.

During previous administrations, Democrats and Republicans have worked together, finding common ground in their efforts to address HIV/AIDS, and I hope that our current representatives will continue this tradition. The president has provided a fantastic road map for action with the National HIV/AIDS Strategy and must continue to make it a top priority. But it’s up to those in Congress to ensure that its recommendations receive the funding necessary for their successful implementation.

As both parties prepare for the 112th Congress, the AIDS community is looking to them to ensure that fighting HIV/AIDS remains a national priority. I sincerely hope that all of our leaders, Republican and Democratic alike, will rise to the challenge.

The idea now popular in conservative circles is that all past interpretations of Thanksgiving are tainted either by malign forms of multiculturalism – did those white colonists really need help from the Indians to get their act together? – or by dangerous inclinations to socialism.

Some of our friends on the ascending right wing insist that it’s a big lie to use Thanksgiving to celebrate how the Pilgrims pulled together and, with the help of God, prospered through communal assistance and a little help from their new neighbors. They buy the part about the Almighty but insist this holiday is primarily about the virtues of American capitalism and how free enterprise saved those folks at Plymouth.

The historian Rush Limbaugh has been pushing this view since 1993, when he published the definitive account in his book “See, I Told You So.” Year after year, he’s used his talk show to teach us that the settlers suffered because at the outset, their land and their homes “belonged to the community.” As Limbaugh exclaimed on a 2007 show, “They were collectivists!”

The colony’s governor, William Bradford, saw that this destructive nonsense was failing, Limbaugh instructs us, took “bold action” and “assigned a plot of land to each family to work and manage, thus turning loose the power of the marketplace.” The moral of the story: “Long before Karl Marx was even born, the Pilgrims had discovered and experimented with what could only be described as socialism. And what happened? It didn’t work!”

The mainstream media and liberal columnists have largely ignored this bold reinterpretation of American history – or perhaps we were covering it up, fearing that Limbaugh’s blinding insight would take hold and foil our collectivist designs.

But the rise of the Tea Party movement has forced everyone to pay attention to such dissident notions, and thus did the New York Times’ Kate Zernike helpfully chronicle the Thanksgiving thinking of the Limbaugh School and the much earlier right-wing accounts on which it is based. She also pointed out that the actual story of the Pilgrims was, well, a bit more complicated than Limbaugh and his philosophical forebears would like it to be. This led him to sniff on his Tuesday broadcast that Zernike’s point was that “hey, socialism wasn’t that bad for the Pilgrims.” That’s not what she said, but never mind.

Now, I want to be honest: Given what I do for a living and my own inclinations, I’m perfectly capable of politicizing all manner of issues, too. It’s also true that national holidays almost necessarily invite this sort of debate. We are, after all, celebrating something, and it shouldn’t surprise us that we’d tangle over exactly what that something is. Besides, having grown up in a politically diverse extended family, I have fond memories of Thanksgiving dinners being the staging ground for many a raucous debate. Why not argue about the holiday itself?

Yet putting aside the dangers of allowing ideology to distort the facts of our present and our past, we seem to have lost our sense of balance as a country. This argument over Thanksgiving strikes me as a symptom of our failure to acknowledge that the American story is not all one thing or all another.

It is, instead, a tale of a healthy and ongoing tension between our love of individualism and our reverence for community. Capitalism is part of our story, but so are solidarity and the idea that no one ever really “goes it alone.” Our rights are embedded in a web of social bonds and obligations that enrich us. We have a responsibility to take care of ourselves and our families but also to look out for one another. And we hope that if we run into trouble, someone, maybe even the entire community, will look out for us.

Such homely sentiments, edited down a bit, could be stitched on a holiday sampler. These are the values not of an angry and radical individualism but of a tempered individualism that is truer to the Pilgrims’ faith and our national experience. I’ll grant the Tea Party historians the virtues of those industrious farmers if they’ll grant me that these early Americans believed passionately in a common good and the promise of mutual assistance. Then we can sit down together, enjoy our turkey or leftovers, and argue about everything else.

SO OFTEN in Haiti urgent problems—mudslides that bury towns, storms that wash houses out to sea or spikes in food prices—and chronic political instability have conspired to subvert efforts to lay the basis for sustained development. The earthquake last January that devastated the capital, Port-au-Prince, was supposed to have changed that. It inspired promises by world leaders to put Haiti on a more solid footing, backed by pledges of billions of dollars, and an ambitious, if vague, reconstruction plan from the government. But the earthquake has made Haiti even more vulnerable: witness the escalating cholera epidemic that in the past few weeks has claimed more than 1,100 lives.

Haiti is trapped in an especially vicious circle. More than 1m people still live in squalid tent camps in or around the capital and their continued exposure to the elements and disease precipitates emergencies that distract policymakers from reconstruction and resettlement. A general election due on November 28th adds another layer of complication. Understandably, Haitians are more scared of cholera than enamoured of their politicians. A lacklustre campaign may culminate in an unusually low turnout.

The electoral authority insists that the vote will go ahead. But it cannot without security and logistical help from Minustah, the United Nations mission in Haiti. And the UN has itself come under fire over the cholera outbreak. After a sudden surge in cholera cases in the north of the country, two people died this week in violent demonstrations against the UN in Cap-Haïtien, Haiti’s second city. Six UN personnel were injured in a similar protest in Hinche. Many Haitians reckon that Nepalese peacekeepers introduced the cholera virus (it is a South Asian strain). The UN denies this, and claims that the protests were election-related. In any event, they halted aid flights and a water-chlorination campaign.

Doctors say that cholera has not yet peaked and is likely to last months, if not years. Postponing the election would merely prolong a political limbo that is causing delay or inaction among donors, investors and even government officials. Candidates have continued to hold rallies and broadcast radio ads.

For the first time in Haiti’s two decades of patchy democracy, there is no clear front-runner for president among the 19 candidates, and the contest is likely to go to a run-off, due on January 16th. That may be between Jude Célestin, who runs the state construction agency and is the protégé of René Préval, the current president, and Mirlande Manigat, whose husband, Leslie, was president for four months between two military governments in 1988. Ms Manigat, who describes herself as of the moderate left and wants to rein in Haiti’s thousands of NGOs, is ahead in some polling. Mr Célestin may be hurt by Mr Préval’s low-key response to the quake, which has made him unpopular.

Whoever wins will inherit a country overwhelmed. Cholera’s effects go beyond the death toll. They are compounding Haiti’s other woes. Farmers and fishermen in Grand’Anse, a verdant department that was hit badly by a recent hurricane, have seen sales plummet as customers spurn local foodstuffs.

Potential investors are also being scared off by cholera, even though it can be easily prevented with good sanitation and clean drinking water (or treated by oral rehydration). Textile buyers called off a forum scheduled for this week, according to Gregor Avril of the manufacturers’ association. The International Finance Corporation, part of the World Bank, postponed a meeting to discuss special economic zones. Hoping to quell fears among its well-heeled clientele, the capital’s fanciest restaurant has emblazoned its menu with “Everything is Imported”. All this has prompted government economists to reduce their estimates for economic growth.

The immediate priority remains taming an epidemic that in the past fortnight has got out of control. Health workers have struggled to find sites for treatment centres where cholera patients can be segregated, because of neighbours’ fears of contagion. The mayor of St Marc, where cholera first appeared, authorised a centre last month. But when Médecins Sans Frontières, a medical charity, prepared to open it, protesters attacked with rocks. The mayor withdrew his support. As a result, St Marc’s hospital has been inundated with cholera cases, obliging other patients to go elsewhere. In Carrefour, a suburb of the capital, the mayor has refused to allow outsiders to seek help at its treatment centre, despite cajoling by national officials.

Aid workers hope that local leaders will start to see treatment centres as an asset. The government has at last begun a concerted campaign to educate Haitians about cholera and its treatment. This has included Mr Préval’s appearance on a four-hour television programme—the most his people have seen of their reclusive president in years. Fighting cholera, like reconstruction, needs a legitimate and effective government. Irrelevant though it may at first seem, the election matters too.