so here we are

Sept. 24, 2020

So here we are.

It’s the fall of 2020, amid a pandemic, social injustice and subsequent unrest, a forthcoming election that may masticate our constitution and spit it out in a slathered crumple, and the terraforming of our planet from climate damages long cautioned by those with the perspective enlightened enough to think beyond their own backyard.  There exists no filter optimistic enough with which to view our ever diminishing new normal with any sense of contentment.  Our fight or flight responses are in overdrive.  Sleep is anxious.  Waking is restless.  If ever there was a test to gauge what the human psyche can endure, it is the constant threat of foundational collapse at any level.  Our typical distractions have gone flaccid; present in form but lost in spirit.  There’s an ever-present dread that something, maybe everything, is going to break.

Fade in:  Louisville, Kentucky.

Two cops were shot this week during protests regarding the absence of indictments for the officers who murdered Breonna Taylor.  You don’t have to be there, in the streets, to feel a change in the rules of engagement.   This is escalation born of pure, uncut defiance.  The standard of respect for authority, while spoken before, has been rejected now in like-for-like aggression.  ‘If you can kill us, we can kill you.’ It won’t be long before Trump’s “All Lives Matter and we’re not being specific unless you count Blue Lives” militias, those championing Kyle Rittenhouse, enter the field with trigger fingers itching for the realization of their man-child wet dreams.  It could very well be precedent setting mayhem.  

Donald would love this to be the case.  To see exercised before him the willingness of his base to execute such limitless righteousness would demonstrate to our beloved leader that his involuntary departure from the presidency is not necessarily mandated should he lose in November.  He feeds off his cultists.  All things are possible through his mindless acolytes and where cameras see hundreds, Trump visualizes millions.  He’s already cast doubt on a peaceful transfer of power should defeat implore him in January.  If the military is at his disposal and the streets are patrolled by his armed zombies, appreciated and supported by police who assume guilt before innocence, that fucking dunce might just decide to stay.

So here we are.

All is politicized now.  Nothing can simply be an adherence to universal morality.  For all those patriots who supposedly love this country, they can’t stand most of the people in it apparently. Or maybe that’s an overdose of input talking.   Maybe the constant, cowardly barrage of posts, likes, upvotes, and keyboard bravery has made the pornography real.  We’re all convinced that we have a legion of like minded avatars behind our beliefs.  So our in-person exchanges are warped with ideals, takes, and opinions of others whose staunch principles, otherwise tested at the Home Depot, embolden our own crass exchanges while simply being asked to wear a mask.

The simplest of deterrents, used every day half a world away without a single consideration toward personal freedoms.  If America can’t be trusted with that basic responsibility of covering your particulates in a pandemic, how will a vaccine ever be effectively distributed throughout the county?  That too, the cure which we’re all anticipating to bring back our blessed sportsballs, already has its validity doubted from politicization of the science behind it.  Trump wants the CDC to lessen its requirements for approval.  The American public, comprised of those who vaccinate their kids and a strange minority that don’t, suddenly find themselves equally concerned about a vaccine that hasn’t passed all stages of clinical trials.  So some won’t take it because all vaccines make your kids like Star Trek Voyager and others, who would ordinarily take an approved vaccine because they believe in modern medicine, suddenly find themselves conflicted on whether or not they can trust the actual science they’ve championed to this point.  Covid in America.  A perfect virus.

So here we are.

A swarm of 328 million locusts flapping our agitated wings against every exposed nerve.

Forty nine years ago, Hunter Stockton Thompson spoke of a high water mark in collective consciousness that, “with the right eyes”, could be seen by those who experienced a cultural shove toward progressiveness.  That philosophical milestone’s visibility was of course only possible because the unified wave that dampened the cultural landscape had receded, seemingly never to threaten the coast of conservatism again.

That high water mark now, in 2020, has not only been exceeded, it has been drowned beneath a tsunami of activism and blood throated outcry against systemic racism, police brutality, and governmental corruption.  Those salty, coercive waves relentlessly concuss a complacent ethos that has refused, or at least neglected, a final push toward actual equality in these United States.  

Maybe too, with that rarely seen vigor of protest, is a heightened national tension fueling it all.  Indomitable stressors assault on all sides.  Trump’s laissez faire shepherding toward civil war in the prime of a pandemic, the West consumed in flames, record number of hurricanes, doubts of our voting process in an election year: you can feel all of it slowly constricting your left ventricle.  The only respite is temporary apathy.  Turn it off.  Pour a drink.  Breathe for fuck’s sake.  But, on the apex of a pandemic, those escapes are solitary.  The distractions historically available to us are hollow, dead behind the eyes, if available at all. 

So here we are.