Image credit: quickmeme.com
We passed our 90th day in self-isolation with no end in sight. A month ago, the resolve of many a U.S. Governor waned under the pressure that orders to stay at home were likely unconstitutional and that people were having too difficult a time being cooped up, so the dogs of viral warfare were unleashed. Exactly one month ago, I wrote here on my blog that after 60 days, Arizona had 12,674 cases of people infected with COVID-19, and now, 30 days later, we have reached 34,600 cases, an increase of 21,986 people. Deaths from the virus have nearly doubled in this intervening month, having climbed from 624 to 1,189.
This year, we’ve learned about the “Karens.” My mother was named Karen and was a Karen before she died. She wasn’t always a Karen, but with a couple of years left in Obama’s presidency and her feasting on conspiracy and propaganda, she moved from being the noun Karen to the adjective Karen. When Trump was elected, she started to weaponize this trait, and if she were alive today, I’m certain my toxic mother, who was not a Karen in the 1970s through the 1990s, would be a coughing, bludgeoning tool of Kareness I would want to sacrifice on the pyre of needed change. COVID-Karen’s have become a thing as white, privileged women have taken to flaunting their indignation that others are even wearing masks. This type of Karen is pissed that anyone wants to control their right to be in public and go about their life regardless of some fakey “plandemic” that has been orchestrated to control the sheeple on the Global Elite’s behalf.
For nearly three weeks since the death of George Floyd, the police have been using rubber bullets to de-escalate the tension that is a response to their brutality. They are using tear gas and flashbangs for crowd control. They set up a phalanx of stormtroopers dressed for battle to keep the peace. Yet these actions appear to be nothing more than the demand for submission.
To be an American this year requires you to give up your will to survive and accept the need to live or maybe die with COVID-19. You must be considerate and make room for a generation of heartless citizens who only see their own needs and their will to exercise the immediacy of rights to satisfy their wants. And you must submit to the authority of the state with its right to decide on your life and death if you become a nuisance. To think, this is all in an effort to bring us around to normal.
What is normal? Our normal is being more concerned about our stuff than our lives. How many times have I heard someone explaining their gun ownership with the exclamation that if someone were to break into their home, they’d kill that person trying to steal their stuff? Most burglaries occur when the homeowner is NOT there. How many times a year do we hear about a homeowner killing someone while committing the crime of breaking and entering? During our mass shootings, there are always those people who brag that had they been there, “The shooter would have been wasted after I emptied my 9mm in his dumb ass.” For the most part, I hear those who are going to protect their stuff, and that is what’s at the heart of gun ownership as far as I’m concerned. We are more tightly connected to our things than we are to our own lives. I think this might be a generational concern as our recent demonstrations are putting on display that there is now a large part of America that cares more about life than the shit they amassed. While those on the sidelines are more concerned about looted and destroyed stuff than the lives that are at stake.
Maybe these 90+ days that reasonable people are taking seriously are offering them the opportunity to be reflective and take inventory of what’s really important. To the generation that was born towards the end of World War II, debt, homes, boats, cars, guns, TVs, and more stuff represented the pinnacle of having attained the American dream. For a new generation burdened with crippling debt, who can’t afford homeownership, don’t want a car that will contribute to harming the environment, don’t watch TV, and know that their possession of a gun will be the license for the police to shoot them, we are witnessing the clash of cultures where “Old” America is giving way to “New” America. Except, “Old-thinking” America hates blacks, gays, trans people, immigrants, environmental protection, electric cars, debt forgiveness, and health care for those not sacrificing for it, and they are not alone as they’ve already poisoned enough of their children that we have a young intolerant generation of people who think just like the old-fashioned idiots afraid of change.
Is it that simple to only be a generational gap, or is there something larger at work? I’m sensing that the shift is one where the driving force behind American life had been in the exercise of economic liberties and that the movement of the civil liberties activities during the 60s now needs a full embrace. The people of that generation planted the seed, but their parents’ influence on what it meant to be an American was so ingrained that soon after the Civil Rights Bill was signed, the war had been won, and things normalized. Fifty years later, life is now too expensive to participate in for many young people who cannot afford health insurance, renting an apartment on their own, vacation, transportation, and even new clothes. Look at the generation on the street today; they often shop at Dollar Stores and the Salvation Army, use bicycles, go on staycations, and turn to alternative health, as traditional healthcare can only saddle them with more debt. So what does a disenfranchised American have to look forward to in this age they can’t afford to participate in? At a minimum, they need their civil liberties, and they need them now. The idea that there’s a price to pay if you are gay, trans, black, Hispanic, hipster, or counter-culturalist is a tragedy in a country that brags so loudly about being the melting pot when, for many, that’s a farce.
I posit that the powers-that-be are in some small way, or maybe they are fully aware of this cultural shift and recognize that by shutting down our economy, they nearly showed their empty hand that the economic game can be put on pause while the civil responsibility to one another was placed front and center. Were the 60 days of Pandora’s Box being open enough to wake the realization that money is simply something noted as a ledger entry and that during a global health crisis things could change in an instant?
The genie is being shoved back into its bottle, and it is only with the continued efforts of demonstrators that the much-needed social change can happen. Lucky for those of us desiring these changes that, the police are using more brutality to try to win the hearts and minds of constituents who want to see a return to their ideas of racist order. Lucky for us that, governors are opening their states to more death, sickness, and pain, as suffering is the harbinger of more change. Lucky us that the government, big media, and extremist pundits are still spewing disinformation as it will help evolve decentralized citizen-based initiatives that will either marginalize or totally disenfranchise the hate machine. Unlucky us that this will disrupt our comfort but that’s the price required to be paid when change couldn’t be embraced by a controlling culture lost in their own blind greed.
I expect that in another 30 days, I’ll be updating my blog with news about our self-isolation, but other than that, I have no idea what direction our rudderless country is currently going.
