Skip to main content

Has It Really Been Six Months?

I started posting these rants on March 22 of this year. A little over six months ago. I wanted to put down some sort of account of life in the time of the plague, which even then was looking like an inflection point in world history.

I didn’t know my writing would get so political, and while I had suspected that Trump would not be an astute manager of a major crisis, I’ve nonetheless been dumbstruck at the depths of his depravity. I am not alone.

The first post I wrote was of my dread making a final trip to the supermarket, before what surely would be weeks of staying home. Weeks.

What I didn’t notice at the time was what now seems as obvious as it is insane. Nobody was wearing a mask. We were being advised against it. We were being told it wouldn’t help, and it could hurt. Were we naïve or just trying to be good citizens? Probably both.

We’ve come a long way. But my wife and I have been in a state of semi-lockdown ever since.

We’re lucky, still. We’re still living at around 80 percent of our previous life. Our neighborhood feels the same. We live one mile from a major medical center that was slammed with Covid in April, yet we have no knowledge of anyone who has even tested positive. I’m no longer afraid of supermarkets, and early-morning grocery shopping has become a guilty pleasure.

My rage comes totally from the outside world. The internet shows me — in more detail than is good for me — a country in free fall. Pain is everywhere, in varying degrees. The powerlessness of it all, the knowledge that there is nobody at the controls, is almost more terrifying than the virus itself. It’s hard not to feel a deep malaise, even on a good day.

I am fortunate to be able to channel this rage by writing about it. And, paradoxically, to enjoy writing about it. While I make the occasional half-assed attempt to expand my audience, the truth is I’m writing mostly for selfish reasons. It keeps me from going batshit. That said, I am deeply grateful to be read by anyone.

So now that we’ve been living with this deadly virus for six months — and this even deadlier president for four years — what have I learned?

I’ve learned that the pandemic is a work in progress. That I will probably be living in this strange, stripped-down version of life for at least a few years, maybe more. Even in a best-case scenario, my chances of being allowed into Canada, even next summer, seem only fair. Europe feels like never again.

I’ve learned that the virus ruthlessly punishes stupidity, especially in government officials with more ideology than sense. Red state governors are still determined to follow Trump over a cliff, dragging their constituents kicking and screaming behind them. It’s worse than indecent, it’s murder. In some places it amounts to genocide.

I’ve learned that the virus is at least as racist as the Republican party. That it comes down particularly hard on people of color, the very people who make up the backbone of our healthcare system, and possibly our whole economy. And it’s only Democrats who care.

I’ve learned that the virus loves Fox News. A disease vector in its own right — a super-spreader of lethal misinformation — the virus couldn’t ask for a more effective advocate. Its viewers are trained, Pavlovian style, to tune out all factual content. They insist Covid is a flu and a hoax — how it can be both is unclear — and their blindness is as astounding as anything in my lifetime.

I’ve learned that whoever said “Never let a crisis go to waste” knew well what they were talking about. When a catastrophe this existential can be botched this badly, we are clearly in need of reinvention. What we’re doing is not working. If we waste this moment — and we might — the damage could be irreparable.

Finally, I’ve learned that the virus doesn’t thrive in a responsible citizenry. That it may have taken us by surprise in the early days, that it spread among us before we knew what was happening. But once we got the hang of it, once we knew what needed doing, good citizens with effective leaders came through. The virus loves complacency, but my state, for one, seems to have weathered the worst. Knock wood.

This is one of the few bright spots. That even a country this broken can muster, in most of its population, a sense of civic duty that had seemingly grown rusty from underuse. With six months of the virus behind us, and an unknown number of months — or years — in front of us, this rediscovery of the basic obligations of citizenship will only grow in importance.

It will surely be necessary. It may not be sufficient.


Berkley MI

Tuesday 09/01/20 

Comments

  1. Nancy SlomeSeptember 7, 2020 at 5:41 PM

    Yup. Truer words were never spoken (as you wrote): “I’ve learned that the virus is at least as racist as the Republican party. That it comes down particularly hard on people of color, the very people who make up the backbone of our healthcare system, and possibly our whole economy. And it’s only Democrats who care.

    I’ve learned that the virus loves Fox News. A disease vector in its own right — a super-spreader of lethal misinformation — the virus couldn’t ask for a more effective advocate. Its viewers are trained, Pavlovian style, to tune out all factual content. They insist Covid is a flu and a hoax — how it can be both is unclear — and their blindness is as astounding as anything in my lifetime.”

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Few F-Bombs, Which Seem Appropriate to the Current Situation

   As I’m not writing this week, I’m re-running my most profane piece, an exploration of FAFO, a term that has grown ever more pointed as time goes by. The piece goes back to February 2025, before the tariffs, before the Epstein scandal went nuclear, before the Iran War. Back then, things were looking quite bad indeed, especially for large parts of the MAGA base. And while, as the title says, these F-bombs were entirely appropriate then, they’ve only grown more so since.   I try not to write the word ‘fuck’ too often. This is not from any prudishness or discomfort — I use it regularly in everyday speech — but seeing it in writing quickly gets old and tired. I do use it occasionally for effect, but the effect is usually minimal. In this post, however, I can’t get around it. This one is about the ironic, unintended meanings of the redneck t-shirt slogan “Fuck Around and Find Out.” A masterpiece of trashy thought, trashily expressed, I can’t talk about...
Post a Comment
Read more

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes — And Your Nose, Throat, and Lungs, As Well

   Here in Michigan, we are a bit smug when it comes to climate change. We think of ourselves as unusually well positioned for the increasingly dire future we can see for the planet. Geography favors us. Hurricanes, droughts, and wildfires feel reassuringly remote. True, ice storms and other severe weather events are more frequent than they used to be, but compared to other parts of the country the climate here is relatively benign. Our confidence stems, first, from our northern location, where global warming has made our cold winters generally more comfortable than they once were, and where the summers only occasionally get higher than the mid-80s. But the real source of our confidence, or smugness if you like, comes from the four Great Lakes that surround us. We have, as a state, access to a full one-fifth of the world’s fresh water. In that sense, there’s no place like it in the world. And make no mistake, water is already a crisis in many parts of th...
1 comment
Read more

Move to the Center, My Ass

   This piece isn’t that old, but it bears repeating. It was written in the immediate aftermath of last year’s off-year elections, when Democrats made an unusually strong showing, which according to the legacy media was a sign of weakness. Now, as we enter the silly season leading up to November, that same media can be counted on to make the midterms seem like a contest between two legitimate entities. Already the stories feature Democrats hopelessly, and haplessly, locked in ideological struggles that threaten their ability to walk and chew gum, mostly because the Trumpian apocalypse story is getting old. If it seems like we’ve heard all this too many times before, I’m with you. And as you’ll see, I’ve even written about it.   In the run-up to last Tuesday’s election, it was hard to avoid the overpaid pundits repeating the oldest and laziest clichés in the pundit handbook: “Democrats need to move to the center.” “Democrats are out of touch with voters....
Post a Comment
Read more