Physicians who work with Alzheimer’s patients call it an “amyloid cascade”; or they used to, when everyone but a couple of mavericks believed that deposits of beta-amyloid protein the the brain caused the disease, a long-held hypothesis that is now undergoing long-overdue reconsideration. Anyway, an amyloid “cascade” describes when a relatively stable AD patient suddenly suffers a catastrophic decline, a mudslide of symptoms in a relatively short space of time.
Here at the shebeen, we have long talked about the prion disease that has afflicted American conservative thought, and the Republican Party that has been its primary vehicle since Ronald Reagan fed the GOP its first helping of monkey brains back in the late 1970s. Over the weekend, we experienced what can safely be called a “prion cascade” that has left the Republican Party blithering incomprehensible ragtime while some of its more enthusiastic adherents took matters into their own hands.
