Besides the inaction by governments on climate change, the complete ignorance of anti-maskers defies all conceivable logic. Humanity is cast aside as storms of protesters gather to defend the “individual” from government “control” of bodily functions. I’m reminded of Sterling Hayden in the ‘60s movie “Dr. Strangelove” who’s strange obsession with protecting “bodily fluids” so brilliantly captured the obsessions of Cold War paranoia.
And then the brilliant finish with Slim Pickens riding down the bomb celebrating its coronation as the be-all and of course end-all final solution. Abstraction has triumphed once again. Slim will never die, he’s embraced immortality. We’re left faced with a stark choice. But stark choices find the confronted reacting irrationally to choices at hand. Since they are unable to act for the public’s good, fearful and dismayed by authority, unsure of their actual rights, and confused by a Media empire that lives on carrion, they transform themselves into symbol, the artifice of the abandoned.
We’ve been brought up and educated to fear the mob because of its propensity for sudden, irrational, and violent actions and reactions; the lynch mobs that targeted black Americans, and not just them but any source of resentment that self-justifies violence. It’s in the American DNA. It’s in all the movies, the newspapers, and on a corner near you. Analysts continue to parse causes and trajectories in order to anticipate what’s around the corner. The Capitol was ringed with police battalions but the opposing forces gave it a final pass, thinking it would make Washington look ridiculous. Yet it was a palpable retreat. Never fight a battle that’s predetermined in your opponent’s favor.
We’re watching the demise of what our information technology produces despite its self-righteous posturing. Truth took a backseat and laments its fall as the car careens off a cliff. The anti-vaxers put on their defiance vests, arm themselves for the apocalypse, as they storm their way through infection strewn streets and gatherings, glued to 20th century self-righteousness, born aloft by egotism, blinded by self- assurances that they can beat the beast. Well, that’s not going so well is it?
Democracy is functioning on one lung at the moment. All the resources available are trained on the hopes that intelligence and pragmatism will prevail; that the For the People act and Reconciliation (help actual people act) passes. It’s been so unimaginably wacko to see factions in the Democratic Party think that this is the time for promoting their individual crusades. For heaven’s sake, we’re dealing with an opposition that cares not one whit about doing anything except take down constitutional government. There’s no sugar-coating it. Trump destroyed bipartisanship in favor of a personality cult that doesn’t really care at all about the people who genuflect to him. But we’ve known that forever.
George and Mary, my surrogates, were grumbling about how abjectly stupid Florida was looking. How would DeSantis ever claim legitimacy for his presidential ambitions by allowing so many people to die unnecessarily? The death cult of Republican governors may go down in history as the crowning picture of political self-service at the expense of those who allow and propitiate their fantasies. We know that those are average people who once infected by the misinformation virus will not perceive they’ve been had.
Mary looked across the table at George. “Why are we still debating whether or not this is simply murder? It’s the results following the justifications that convict. Intent of the highest order. Prove to me that it isn’t.”
But the barrier between intention and manifestation is wrought with snares that shield the perpetrators. What’s obvious to me turns into “you can’t prove intent.” So people go on escaping the calamities they instigate. They even pretend to run for president; and large swaths of the population turn a blind eye. And other large issues like abortion rights get the heave ho without the slightest regard for the intricacies of women’s rights to legislate what’s best for their own bodies.
Yes things really are on the line and common sense needs to prevail. The troops pull back from Afghanistan finally but can they be deployed to fight ignorance and superstition? Can they be sent to fight the fires that mankind has produced? Can they man the hospitals that are overloaded because ignorance trumps respect for life in its most basic form? Keep checking the weather. It always tells us what’s happening.
Alan Harris, formerly of Noble Feast Catering, lives with wife Jane in Shelburne Falls and works on publishing his first novel, “The Preposterous Tale of Dan and Lee.”