George and Mary Farquar will soon be able to visit with their son in Shelburne Falls. The pandemic is raging and they’ve been sequestered with only a phone and email, Mary going out to get necessities and food. Their governor has declared everyone can pretty much do anything they like, leaving everyone sort of in limbo, some suggesting precautions, and many taking it as a sign of regained liberty worth celebrating. The vaccine is out and younger people really don’t die so much from COVID. The older folks are now pretty much protected, right?
Does it matter who is protected and who isn’t? The entire world went from a first dozen cases in Wuhan to worldwide in three months. The individual was on his own. But pretty quickly the rules came out, the one way forward. Such a bitter pill to swallow. Who can I blame? Rather who’s to blame? Concluding with It’s not my fault, I didn’t ask for this. Well of course you didn’t. How did Uncle Ben contact COVID anyway? What was he doing? Why does it matter?
I recently watched on PBS a couple of World War II dramas and was reminded how tyranny has so many cascading effects. Whole countries like Norway, Denmark, and Sweden found no shield against the brutality of Hitler and the force of his cruelty. Democratic dissolution only takes pulling a couple of cogs from the tram rail and down it falls. Apocalyptic scenarios always fool the unwary and purposefully obtuse, and the rest of us spin our wheels and latch on to our self-certainty, no longer feeling so certain.
There’s no convincing the delusional. It’s the era of don’t believe in government or what it tells you. Government is the problem. We’ll form our own militias. Point of view doesn’t need facts to shore up its defenses. With enough noise, people like Marjorie Taylor Green and Matt Gatz can render real governance moot. Histrionics get hits.
If you think I’m being grim, it’s because pointless suffering continues to be the world’s number one manufactured item. Of course we’re dealing with world tyrants and crooks, confidence men and a magnificent array of hypocrites. We have governors playing with the virus calculous with no common direction for the control of this disease.
The virus is doing what it does best: let people make fools of themselves. If it all works out in the end it’s not because of what those people do or did, it’s because of the people that listened to Dr. Fauci and other experts, those who didn’t arrogantly believe they had no real effect on the transmission of the disease. What does it matter if I get a slight or moderate case of Covid? I’ll survive it.
So Biden and Co. have decided to take as many tricks as they can before the cards run out. He keeps up the façade that wants you to believe there is a strategy, a plan, though we hope it might just be using a finesse to keep the targets off guard. Mitch baby is posing as a roadside distraction because it’s all he knows how to do. Cataloguing Republican displacement syndrome may take lifetimes so cut the losses and focus the message: the American people want out of this morass of adolescent flatulence. Retakes of evolving evidence in the Capitol storming keep surfacing, proving Faulkner’s “The past isn’t dead, it hasn’t even passed.”
My own studies and faith have brought me to realize all change and growth depends on how open I am to what I’m meant to be shown, actually asked for. We all can feel powerless to act, and succumb to the torpor surrounding us. The news stirs the stews of popular unrest and confusion. George and Mary decided not to pick up a paper or listen to NPR or MSNBC for a week. When they tuned back in, it was the same characters, new episode. They felt they hadn’t missed anything, gone anywhere. Yet Mary remarked she got more done and George did a whole lot more reading, and communing with friends.
It’s hard for the world at large to understand what’s happening at any moment. Our worlds are circumscribed by family, friends, work, and interests as they should be. Building a better and a more stable future is always the goal. The beauty and magnificence I’m free to experience here in lovely Shelburne Falls is a privilege not to be taken for granted.
Allan Harris, who lives i Shelburne Falls, is surviving the virus with wife Jane, recording an audio book of his novel and lots of swim and gym time.