Crying ‘Racism’ on Ebola

In the grittier, less sanitized adaptations of Aesop’s “The Boy Who Cried Wolf,” it is not only the sheep that lose their lives but the eponymous “boy” as well, his repeated mendacity and ill-timed attention-seeking leading, ultimately, to his death. Behavior, readers learn, breeds behavior, dishonesty begets mistrust, and gratuitousness fosters insensitivity, for “Men bileve not lyghtly hym whiche is knowen for a lyer.” Alarm, that most useful of things, operates on broadly the same principle. If everything is terrifying, eventually nothing will be. And then what is to become of us?