A Child's Game with Deadly Stakes
Remember “cooties”?
That cruel, silly game where one child would point at another and shout, “Tommy has cooties!”—and just like that, the whole class would treat him like a pariah. No evidence. No trial. Just the power of repetition, the fear of being next, and the unspoken rule: if you don’t play along, you might be the next one shunned.
We all hated it. Not just because it was unfair, but because we knew it was unfair. We knew, even as kids, that the game wasn’t about germs or justice. It was about power and control. About who got to decide who was in and who was out. About the way a single chant could turn a person into a monster in the eyes of the group.
And yet, as adults, we still play the game.
The Grown-Up Version
The chant is louder now. The stakes are higher. The playground has become the global stage, and the cooties have new names:
“Putin is a monster.”
“Assad is a butcher.”
“Xi is a dictator.”
The mechanism is identical. A name is repeated like a spell. The media amplifies it. Politicians weaponize it. And soon, we’re all hissing on cue, afraid to question, afraid to be the one who doesn’t join in.
But here’s the thing about cooties: they were never real.
Neither are these.
Not that the people in question are saints. But the chant—the reflexive, unthinking hissing—isn’t about them. It’s about us. About our obedience. About our willingness to outsource our critical thinking to those who benefit from keeping us divided, scared, and docile.
The Opthean Question: Who Benefits?
Opthe isn’t about defending the powerful. It’s about refusing to be powerless.
So let’s ask the questions we were trained not to ask:
Who gets to decide who has “cooties” this week?
(Hint: It’s rarely the people actually affected by the policies that follow.)
Why do we accept childish games as geopolitical analysis?
If a leader bombs a country, is it “intervention” or “aggression”? Does the answer depend on who’s doing the bombing—or who’s doing the chanting?
What would happen if we stopped playing?
What if, instead of chanting, we demanded evidence? Context? Consistency? What if we treated foreign policy like adults instead of children?
A Praxis of Critical Thinking
So next time we hear the chant—whether it’s about Putin, or Maduro, or the next “villain” du jour—let’s pause. Let’s remember the playground. And let’s ask ourselves:
Are we chanting because it’s true? Or because we’re afraid not to?
Because the real “cooties” aren’t out there. They’re in the way we’ve been trained to react. And the only cure is to stop playing the game together.
For Further Reflection:
How have we seen this dynamic play out in our own lives or communities?
What’s one “cooties” narrative we’ve accepted unquestionably? What happens when we examine it?
How can we build a politics of agape-gratia—one that refuses demonization and insists on truth, even when it’s inconvenient?
The world doesn’t need more chanting. It needs more of us—thinking, questioning, and acting from coherence.