I excerpt part of a letter I sent my friend in Ireland. It expresses my state of mind. I edited and revised a bit, but for the record, as I have not groused for a few weeks now, here 'tis.
Economically, both my sons were laid off mid-March, but both have enrolled for online MBAs at where I teach, as they get discounts. We figure the loans are worth it. My wife's one small business is barely functioning and both her part-time helpers had to be laid off. But as 34% of my fellow Americans are making more on the bonuses added to unemployment checks than they would have on their jobs, that says something, doesn't it? This is the issue that this whole up-ending has again revealed. But neither party gives a damn about the little guys and gals except come election, and the Dems want to tip the populace so everywhere looks like California, a one-party nepotistic fiefdom from now 'til eternity, while the GOP shrinks and bleeds out. What I want is more alternatives. I root for underdogs and misfits. But unlike "your" systems, which at least enable smaller groups some say, we're trapped.
I'm ticked off that the Dems shot down Bernie again. Not that I backed his entire platform or scheme. How he could fund "free college" and lots of goodies remains utopian. (Yet that was before the magic stimulus trillions got printed suddenly, as if Jack of Beanstalk fame's beans.) But he could have riled up the establishment. He would have gotten us motivated about decisions that effect us, not the Beltway Them. Joe Biden bumbling in as the Banker's Best Pal isn't a scenario I wanted either. I tend to brush past Trump, frankly. Agree or not, he delivered on few promises. Not that Obama did either, for the most part, but at least this Congress had the majority it wanted to theoretically enact its stratagems. What is odd is that while I don't obsess over #45, Biden always evokes dislike in me, as with Hillary or her ilk.
When the blue-state's cadre challenges me, I have no facile solutions. It looks as if the Elephant's Army will take this campaign against sporadic enemy firepower. However, the "necessary evil" compromise after four decades of my votes wears thin as a rationale for supporting a corrupt mechanism by which we're increasingly suppressed and manipulated.
Sure, same as it ever was. Except now it's GPS, CCTV, data-mining, and keyboard strokes. Soon augmented by temperature scans, who we've been near, and where we can come and go. The shrugs that these measures assure our happiness bring to mind the "salami tactics" of how the Eastern Bloc communists took power after WWII. They came into coalition with the socialist or left-leaning parties. Then they nudged their way forward, edging out their rivals, and slicing ever thinner the "rights" or "room" that they were allowed under the Reds. By a thousand precise strokes of the knife, millions found themselves painfully diminished.
Back to the present, I have a lot of students and seemingly no less work than before, but at least the soul-draining commutes are shelved for the nonce. But there's tremendous agitation to get back to business here, even though virus contagion has not abated but plateaued. Basically, Americans have given up caring. The commercials were fascinating to see evolve the past three months, as I mentally charted how long it took for messages and slogans to evolve, inevitably over soothing piano music and soft female voiceovers. As if everybody is in a quarantine where their house is boarded up with them inside for forty days as in the good old days while bodies pile up at the doorstep. I'm embarrassed to gripe.
It reminded me of Most Oppressed People Ever for the Irish, when in fact I am among the guilty who can stay home and work while millions out there have to schlep about packages and deliveries to "us," and to deal with hospitals and protestors--that whole scene in my opinion was due to a contingent looking for a "show-case" to generate "civil unrest" that fit a certain set of dramatis personae that could be cast, and due to the cabin fever that people had been sick of as June loomed and folks demanded to be let out of their confines. It's not simple. I am addressing this in Ethics courses next term, as I am interested in why "certain cases" get promoted by activists while others that don't fit a narrative do not find the same traction whether as spread in various media or among protesters. My innate skepticism contends here with my recognition of wrongs needing righting. It's again that I sense our collective strings getting firmly pulled by a determined force above and just out of our sight or comprehension, that has been waiting for the virus situation to roll out their versions of what will be sold for our own protection, and mandated for our activity, while implementing in accelerated form a surveillance regimen that restricts our liberties for a "greater good."
But I heard that if measures weren't taken, there'd be 60 million dead globally and 2-3 million in the US, half a million in Britain. While many of us probably know nobody with the virus, among my students, one woman caught it from a co-worker who did not notify their boss early on, and then she passed it to her baby, who spent ten days in the hospital. Another reported her grandmother succumbed, and one from Cairo that her grandmother has the virus. And then there's indirect deaths, from those otherwise needing care that may have had their treatment limited or their access thwarted. Among these: a family member of mine in my small circle, who died in assisted-living in San Francisco. A second, a family friend whose son and mine have bonded ever since pre-school, was killed by a speeding kid in a McLaren sports car as he walked in downtown L.A. The emptied streets meant more pedestrian fatalities. Finally, for now, my wife's college friend died of brain cancer in New Mexico. While that likely had nothing direct to do with the virus, the fact that three funerals that would have been attended by us never happened adds to another type of loss deeply felt.
What I cannot understand is the vocal minority opposed to lockdowns since claims "they lied to us" given the casualty rates are low, as if the lockdown had nothing to do with the diminished death toll. Still wrapping my head around that claim! Damned if we did nothing, condemned if we did. Now we have silent enemy #2 to fight against with trillions of dollars, to complement our post-9/11 "homeland" force. Like a war on terror, how do you ever declare victory over an elusive foe? Does such a conflict stop? Or does it mutate forever?
Meanwhile, such threats mean those in power once again consolidate their grip on us all.
A way to monitor everyone for their own safety, and tracking movements for security. Which may sound familiar, somehow. After all, it's doing great in the People's Republic of China.
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