How the Human Immune System
Can Heal Our Democracy
by Matt Lyman
part 1
It is 6:14 a.m. With an oversized Yeti mug of coffee, I slide into an economical gas-powered sedan. I’m heading to Wyoming for a bird hunting trip. I exit suburbia and drive to the inland bridge spanning the brackish water that flows into the Bay Area. I’m leaving Brentwood, inland from San Francisco, and making my hunting pilgrimage to the land of the jackalope. A seismic cultural shift is imminent.
The road snakes along the Sacramento River through Walnut Grove, a historic small town with pizza and ice cream shops; it is the one-two punch that draws in the summer boat and Jet Ski enthusiasts. I hang a right and speed towards the California capital in the Central Valley.
The sky awakes. The clouds overhead have a stone-washed appearance. Orchards and palm trees encircle me along the two-lane road. By the time I arrive in Sacramento, the sun will dispense warmth on the landscape like a spray tan. Pollution isn’t too bad today. Traffic is what it is: at least it is moving.
My upbringing was close to Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming and in rural Montana communities. Small town America:towns that didn’t have a single traffic light, or only a few. Places where you knew the name of most everyone. A favorite childhood memory: watching my dad drive down the highway in his dually-truck — one with four tires on the rear axle — lifting his two fingers off the steering wheel to wave to passing cars as we headed to the family farm.
Later, when I was in high school and college, I worked at Valley Ranch, a private wonderland where in a single day one might see elk, moose, bighorn sheep, and deer. The country was open, majestic, and teeming with nature. I have a vivid memory of coming home from “Valley” one summer day and being greeted by an Australian couple in our living room. My parents met them at the grocery store and asked if they wanted dinner and a place to wash their clothes. I learned, from a young age, that being a Wyomingite meant being welcoming.
I now work as a scientist in Northern California. The area is bubbling over with diversity, creative ideas, wealth, extreme driving, and opportunity. I met a hiker who moved to the Bay from Kyrgyzstan, laser physicists who contributed to hydrogen fusion, a sommelier who explained wine grafts brought from Bordeaux, and more. There are supercomputers that can calculate at least one quintillion (1,000,000,000,000,000,000) mathematical operations per second — also known as an “exaflop.” There are lasers that heat materials hotter than the surface of the sun. Science here, in its beauty and complexity, is on the verge of science fiction.
The father of my work colleague fled Iran when the Shah was overthrown in 1979 and walked to Turkey with broken shoes and a broken spirit, later settling in the Bay Area and starting a tea business on the wharf. Another lives on John Madden’s old estate when he coached the Oakland Raiders. Life is dynamic and interesting.
I merge onto I-80 in Sacramento. It’s a straight shot to Lyman, Wyoming, 768 miles due east. I turn off Google Maps. I can’t possibly screw this up, can I? Just go straight and not too slow. I settle into the flow of traffic heading to Lake Tahoe and climb over the Sierra. I’m in the fast lane but keep getting passed on the right side: signature California. An uneasy feeling settles into my psyche as I slice across the nation’s most populous state.
When I travel between Wyoming and California, I notice a long-distance argument between the two states’ cultures and politics. It reminds me of a couple on the verge of divorce, where disdain and condescension drip from their mouths, approaching a snarl. It is close to contempt, that terminal poison that kills all hope for mutual forbearance.
The argument arises in unexpected, passive-aggressive ways. When visiting Wyoming on a family trip, my cousin asked if the Toyota Tundra with the California plates was, in fact, mine. When I replied in the affirmative, I was told, “Don’t forget Pearl Harbor.” What? Aren’t we on good terms with Japan? Isn’t it acceptable to interact with the international community?
When a cowboy took a wounded wolf into a Wyoming bar and posted pictures on social media, I received emails from California colleagues highlighting the stupidity of Wyomingites: Look at them! What a disgrace! So uncivilized! Then whiplash back to Wyoming social media: vaccines, what a government scam! I was vaccinated and got sick again!
The vitriol also permeates gun politics, DEI, immigration, manufacturing, education, technology, property taxes, and on and on. To discuss anything beyond the weather... Well, best not: cue global warming...
Rephrase: to discuss anything seems inflammatory.
I’m on the backside of the Sierra now. I drop down into Reno, Nevada, and pay attention to the speed limit. State troopers will ticket offenders. Going with the flow of traffic won’t be enough to avoid a citation. Throttle down. My wife is from Las Vegas, so I notice the sad spectacle of casinos. It is not the glitz and glow that The Strip radiates. Traffic eases as I follow the Truckee River out of town and enter the mountain valley where O.J. Simpson was incarcerated for nine years. Lovelock Correctional Center is just ahead!
Like pouring gasoline on a topic already on fire, our political discussions flare up in unpredictable ways and places, burning up friendships and families. The fight doesn’t target external threats such as China and Russia. Instead, we attack our fellow Americans: patriots, neighbors, colleagues, loved ones. To be sure, the politics of the least populated state and most populated state in America are at the extreme ends of the spectrum: the most conservative vs. the most liberal, social values vs. intellectual values, the bison vs. the golden bear.
The highway is wide open, and I notice the increase of ranch trucks. They are not the shiny gems of California with custom exhaust. These are work trucks: dirty, dented, authentic. I can see the Ruby Mountains in the distance as I pass through Elko. Good elk hunting and fishing. I stop for gas and replace my Patagonia puffer with my Carhartt jacket. In a wardrobe sleight of hand, I’ve switched between California intellectual to Rocky Mountain worker. White collar to blue. They are the two halves of myself, two halves I’ve stopped trying to reconcile. It is that clash of Native American and European values that is at the footing of our culture. I restart a podcast and ease out of the Maverick gas station.
Of all the classes I took in my academic career, immunology, the study of the human immune system, was the most captivating. A system that both fights and heals. A warrior married to a saint. So much power to determine whether someone lives or dies. It is no wonder that the Soviet biological weapons program in the 1980s researched how to turn the human immune system against itself. Forget anthrax, smallpox, and other infectious diseases. If someone controls the levers of the immune system, it’s checkmate.
With formal training in immunology, I’m drawn to the parallels between inflammation in the body politic and inflammation in the body. Both are destructive and painful. Both erode the stability of a healthy system. Both create an auto-immune state where we attack ourselves. The difference is that the human immune system has mechanisms to ensure tolerance of self and to heal. And more than ever, Americans need to heal.
If we gave voice to the human immune system, could it help fight inflammatory disease in our political discourse? What advice would it give?
I cross into Utah and drive past the “Life Elevated” sign welcoming me to the salt flats. I’m reminded that Salt Lake City is a leader for breast implants. It’s not appropriate to put boobs instead of mountains on the sign, but Utah could, and nothing would be lost with their pithy slogan: “Peaks Galore.”
Inflammation Is Escalation
Inflammation and politics both revolve around a key principle: escalation. Escalation is a “ramping up” that disrupts the equilibrium of a system. It is not always bad, but it means that something must offset the escalation to restore balance. Healthy systems — from physiology, economics, sociology, and politics — thrive in equilibrium.
Most humans do not appreciate that we carry a loaded gun inside ourselves: the immune system. It can “go off” through a complex chain of molecular events, which results in an overwhelming biological show of force. In fact, the immune system may respond with such power that its overreaction can kill a person. One example is a “cytokine storm,” a severe immune reaction in which the body releases too many chemical triggers into the blood. Like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.
Toxic Shock Syndrome, an overwhelming immune response caused by contaminated tampons, wound bandages, or open skin lesions, is one example. A bacterial toxin known as a “superantigen” over-stimulates the immune system, causing a systemic and life-threatening inflammatory response.
Perhaps a cytokine storm also exists in politics, when the response is disproportionate to the threat. Perhaps this is the mistake most of us make: we over-respond to perceived threats. Why? Constitutional history and James Madison can jog our collective memory. In his 1953 book The Complete Madison, Saul Padover says:
“To begin with, Madison proposed, you openly recognize and accept the existence of human diversity, whether in opinion or in property. Second, you control the effects of such diversity, that is to say, conflicts, by making government protect each interest or ‘faction.’ Government can best do so by preventing any one group or party from invading the rights of any other. That, according to Madison, was the primary object of government.”
In Federalist No. 10, Madison simplifies it further: “Enlightened Statesmen will not always be at the helm... CAUSES of factions cannot be removed, and that relief is only to be sought in the means of controlling the EFFECTS [the capitalization is Madison’s].”
It is our inflammatory response to this faction, therefore, that threatens the system. Diversity of property and opinion will always exist.
A few more hours have slipped away. I’m on the outskirts of Salt Lake City. The Wasatch Range looms over the buildings, which hugs the base of the mountain like a crowd against a concert stage. Traffic is thickening but no one is passing on the right side. The number of minivans increases. I can see the state capitol and Mormon temple in the distance. Time to start climbing. Wyoming sits on a damn pedestal!
In John Avlon’s book on George Washington, Washington’s Farewell: The Founding Father’s Warning to Future Generations, he notes that the “proliferation of the partisan press was largely to blame” for the full-fledged combat between political rivals in the Revolutionary era. The Gazette of the United States was a newspaper that received contributions from Alexander Hamilton, George Washington’s most trusted advisor. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison attacked the Washington administration in the National Gazette. In one of Jefferson’s most revealing quotes of his disdain for Hamilton, he asked Madison to “take up your pen, select the most striking heresies, and cut him to pieces in the face of the public.”
What is different today is the speed at which an inflammatory message travels and the digital molding of that message to manipulate a person’s ideology. Cue scenes from Netflix’s The Social Dilemma, in which we are puppets in a digital world and are being fed information by supercomputing trained to target us. Artificial intelligence has even reversed the direction of eating.
It is the inability to counteract the force-fed, incendiary narrative — human or computer — that worries me. “Your fellow Americans are the threat.” Or “Americans that disagree with you need to be pushed aside or else.” Or “Your culture doesn’t belong here.” A healthy immune system balances between escalation, to fight a threat, and de-escalation, to reset the system. Fixating on political war within America, with no countervailing narrative, is the recipe for a social auto-immune disorder.
As I crest over the pass, I’m amazed by how many people have moved into Park City, Utah. It is a grand ski area stuffed to the gills. Will there be enough snow for the 2034 Olympics? I suppress my liberal thinking and continue the climb to the Wyoming border. My focus narrows as I recognize I’m in the final hours of the drive. It’s either that, or lack of oxygen.
Copyright © 2025 by Matt Lyman
