Cases like Lizzie prompt us to re-examine what really constitutes beauty in a human being, the often cruel accidents of destiny (which certainly include being born poor or into some persecuted minority), and if any form of “ugliness” is only a brand of misfortune, just like being extremely beautiful, another genetic accident, is a big stroke of luck.

The United States, whose middlebrow culture is marinated in infantilism, is a culture of extreme “denialists,” of “can-doists”, “superficialists” extraordinaire. This is a society that defiantly thrives on self-delusion, and in fact has developed a monstrous, enormously profitable industry upon it, with many branches, from a plethora of “success literature” and “how-to” books, to religious charlatanism. While social solidarity and steadfast resolve occasionally show their noble faces, and in a complicated nation of more than 300 million souls there are many admirable individuals, by and large Americans run from anything considered ugly or unpleasant. This national attitude is constantly albeit deviously reinforced by a zillion commercials extolling the advantages of beauty, or mendaciously portraying beautiful people as the norm. This is yet another way in which the business system depletes the potential for actual human happiness on the basis of a mature understanding of reality and a true sense of solidarity.

In this severely damaged social grid, the tendency therefore is to blindly embrace a faux egalitarian “inclusionism”, force an illusory genetic democracy on the less fortunate, an approach to social interaction whereby people with legitimate, painful conditions, psychic or physical, or both, are expected to behave like brave cheerleaders, losing, incidentally the feeling of genuine empathy that such people may crave and in fact need. In this artificial and utterly phony construct, a backhanded and equally phony restatement of a nonexistent American equality, pity, compassion and natural sympathy in their raw forms have been criminalized in the American lexicon; banished from admittance to PC precincts, as if they were insults, ignoble sentiments unworthy of civilized people.

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In their confusion far too many Americans fear that pity will be seen as contempt; that feeling and showing compassion will be perceived as a demonstration of unacceptable, unwarranted superiority to those whose fate has dealt a rotten hand, instead of simply love. And worst of all, that such outward recognition will only ratify a social inferiority, a civic inequality that any human rights campaigner would rightfully reject. This repression of natural sentiment, and the contortions it requires, adds stress and conflict to the culture, while putting extra burdens on every person laboring under some pronounced disadvantage, from common dwarfism to conjoined twins syndrome, to progeria, or even more terrible conditions.

The problem here is that pretending that such people are not that severely hindered is not only a lie, but a misguided way of assuring their place under the sun. Compassion and civic egalitarianism are not inherently at loggerheads, but quite the opposite. This much is well understood around the world, especially in cultures where widespread suffering has long been almost a national constant. Mexicans, whose potent indigenous cultural treasures and wisdom arrogant racists like Trump are unable to fathom (their loss!), even celebrate a “Day of the Dead”. As the Wiki notes, “the holiday focuses on gatherings of family and friends to pray for and remember friends and family members who have died, and help support their spiritual journey.”

Poor as most Mexicans may be, they are far less neurotic about life’s realities than most Americans, who may have to rely on Dr Phil and other pop gurus for a roadmap to living life with a modicum of sanity.

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Briton by birth Branford Perry serves as TGP’s Associate Editor. Patrice Greanville is TGP’s founding editor and current editor in chief.

WHAT FOLLOWS IS EXCERPTED FROM WIKIPEDIA