It is one month into the Toilet Paper Panic of 2020. COVID-19, also kown as “The Coronavirus” has taken over America, and now commands the might of the whole United States economy.
People have been quarantined in their homes, unable to leave due to doorknobs being removed by gremlins under the influence of the virus. Windows are sealed closed with FlexTape®, and there is no escape.
It has been four years since my last post in this, my blog, and the last quarter of a decade has gone by swiftly as our nation is harrowed by the onslaught of the extreme hard right. In 2016, not 9 months after my last post, Donald Trump was elected President. This was not the will of the people, but rather because some damn fool went back in time to hunt dinosaurs and stepped on a goddam butterfly.
In addition, the nation has moved so far to the right that basic human rights (and needs) are considered “socialism,” and the wealthy 1% have succeeded in establishing the economic might to preserve their posteriors in positions of power.
Hindsight, as they have said for the past four years, is 2020, and this year, we have the opportunity to end the error of Trump, though the zombieless apocalypse may interfere in that too.
All in all, I long for the days of Reagan and Bush, when the plague on humanity was communism, and the Republican party didn’t revel in blood red fascism. Now unfortunately, the phrase “better dead than red” has taken on a meaning almost completely contrary to its right-wing origins in McCarthyism’s heyday.
I suppose there are those who will call me “socialist” because I want people to have healthcare, because I believe that life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are, if not cemented in the Constitution (it’s in Paragraph 2 of the Declaration of Independence), at least undeniable rights in any Democracy.
Instead, the rich and powerful have come to believe that the economy is theirs alone, and that those of us who are not in their exclusive “billions” club, are little more than cattle.
Of the five provisions of the preamble of the Constitution of the United States of America, there is no mention of wealth, no text which guarantees unlimited access to resources, or to land, or to the lives of the people. Instead, it attempts to “Form a more perfect Union” in five ways: Establish Justice, Insure Domestic Tranquility, Provide for the Common Defense, Promote the General Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.
Is justice established?& When the President can violate the law without fear of prosecution?
Is domestic tranquility insured, with the people at each others’ throats thanks to what some call “freedom of the press,” and others call propaganda?
Is the Common Defense provided for, when we are slowly losing the right to defend ourselves?
Is the General Welfare promoted when people must work 2, 3, or even 4 jobs to support their families? And when debts outweigh the lives of those who owe them?
Are the Blessings of Liberty secured? When color is still a factor in determining the guilt or innocence of a suspect? When defense of oneself in court rather than accepting a plea bargain can inflict a far more serious penalty than is warranted? When the penalty for victimless crimes outweighs the penalty for violent crimes perpetrated by those in power?
America might just be dead. CORVID-19 may be the death knell that sounds throughout the lands, marking the end of the freedoms we once held, and the beginning of a new world undreamed of by the apocalyptic prophesies of Verne, Wells, Gibson, and Bradbury.
Or, we might come together and heal. We might stand against this, a most horrible disease, gird our loins and take up arms against this sea of troubles, and by opposing, end it (Hamlet Act 3, Scene 1). We might emerge from this crisis stronger than we were when it began, and from that strength and unity form bonds stronger than those of the chain which bound the Fenris wolf, join hands as brothers and sisters and rise up from our own complacency like the legendary phoenix from its own ashes.
But personally, I think we’re fucked.
