United States / Democratic Republic of Congo - The Fearful Self Purges Its Own, Abandoning Citizens to a Phantom Contamination

Event Baseline: A US national who contracted Ebola in the DRC was flown to Germany for treatment as the Trump administration barred Americans in the DRC from traveling to the US on commercial flights.

The organism of the state has activated an autoimmune response. The fear of the invisible other—the virus—has overridden the illusion of national unity. The 'self' of the nation now sees its own returning parts as a threat to be rejected. This is the panic energy without a reason, sustaining itself and looking for an occasion to discharge. The belief in purity, in a border that can keep out death, is a mechanical fantasy. The brain, slave to thought, has fragmented the world into infected and clean, and in doing so, it has broken the most basic tribal bond: the protection of its own. This is the logic of the disbanded self; it will dissolve any connection to preserve the phantom image of safety.