Month: April 2020

One of the particularly infernal aspects of this grotesques assumption of historically unprecedented power by, mainly, State Governors, is that they mute resistance by the very form it takes. 

When governments in the past enacted idiotic or abusive policy–and I would argue these quarantines are both in the forms they are being implemented in–people would gather, listen to speakers, then get angry and go storm the Statehouse, or Governor’s mansion, or something.  I am speaking generally and probably not completely realistically, but ponder that most people are not hearing sermons in churches.  They are not hearing their legislators speaking to assemblies.

We’re not even supposed to gather, in most States, in groups large enough to have a badminton or chess tournament.

Whatever complaining that is going to happen, happens on-line, and all of that can easily be monitored.

My past comments notwithstanding, I’m on the fence as to whether or not this is a planned, engineered event.  But I have ZERO doubt that the many, many people in our State, Local and Federal governments who have latent authoritarian tendencies are seeing this as the opportunity of a lifetime to crack the whip and remind all of us how important they are.  I think many Governors never want this crisis to end. It’s just too beautiful.

It is only possible to be large within a box.

Put another way, if you want to be powerful, you must first make sure you live in a cage.  If the cage does not exist, you must create it, and accept living within it.

Imagine a world where a social media campaign got started where young healthy people INSISTED that they be allowed to get the coronavirus.  Imagine they had underground COVID-19 parties, against the wishes of the Party.  Imagine we lived in a world where the young were strong, rebellious free.

Hard to do, isn’t it?  Equally hard to imagine a government that would support such a thing even though it would be logical and contribute in immediate and useful ways to the resolution of this economic collapse through stupidity and inaction.

What happens to the people who spent all day worrying about pronouns before this whole thing?  Do they grow balls–wherever they started from–and find courage to face and see the truth?  Not at all.  They default to fear and obedience.

I think of Bertolucci’s “Il Conformista”, of people who just bounce from here to there, always in fear, always hiding, never seeing, never deciding for themselves.

It’s hard not to conclude that America is ripe for some form of technocratic Fascism.  People do not think for themselves.  They seemingly have lost the capacity to reason.  They follow even idiotic orders blindly, and demand others do the same.

As I posted elsewhere, I think most of America, if some noted expert came on their favorite media outlet and told them the sky was now green, would doubt their eyes, not the expert.

It’s unbelievable.  For me, I am pulling inward somewhat.  Fuck these people.  Not everyone is an idiot, but most people are.  Perhaps it has always been so.  But we all get ‘educations” now.  Why–and of course I know the answer but will ask the question anyway–is it so damned ineffective?  Why have our allegedly best and brightest repudiated everything that makes our culture work, and which has done so much to promote global peace and prosperity?

Anyone who condemns sexism, or racism, or discrimination against homosexuals, etc., does so using WESTERN IDEALS.  There is no analogue anywhere else.  These ideas were created and promulgated by dead white males.

Oi.

We could give young healthy people the option to self infect.  Subject to reasonable restrictions, we could let healthy people under the age of say 40 volunteer to be infected with this virus.  People who live alone, in groups of other young healthy people, or couples–gay, straight and other– without children: all good candidates.  Most of them will get over it quickly, and they could actually be studied to see how many have no symptoms at all.   This would add to our knowledge of this virus.

Everything which gets some part of the population past the rapids makes this whole thing less dangerous for everyone.  I would volunteer, personally.

And I will say again: this time is a blessing for me, personally.  I am not worried for my sake. I am really valuing and using this time to take stock, and slow down even more.  I think I’m pretty slow by most standards normally, but I’m trying to get down to sloth proportions, relatively speaking

I think most of us live on manic energy.  It is helpful in our climate.  It has survival value.  But it makes life LESS FUN, or even NO FUN.  It sucks the joy out of everything when everybody needs every last fucking thing immediately and will fire you if they don’t get it.  It’s a drag.

We don’t “recreate” so much as recover.  We rest just enough to survive, but not enough to feel like we are living honest, engaged, complete lives.

There are forces out there making it like this.  There are people out there laughing at all of us running around like hamsters on wheels.  At a minimum, it  is certainly the bankers robbing us blind, with not one person in a thousand able to see the subterfuge.  It was the same a century ago, almost to the year, when Keynes said the same thing, when he was still being honest.

I’m treating this whole thing as an opportunity for a reboot and upgrade.  Sad that I would choose computer imagery, but it is the myth of our times, isn’t it?  A guy argued to me in a bar once that we are already cyborgs, since for all intents and purposes most of us are attached to our phones.  I think he was right.

Put your phone away right now. Bury it, and only check it a couple times a day.  Or bury it, turn the ring tone way up if there are any people you actually care about who might REALLY need to get a hold of you, then don’t check it until you reemerge into the sunlight of a freed world.

The opposite of evil is not a moral code: it is feeling the life within you and feeling the joy it brings, like a continually bubbling fountain.

The problem with all historical religions is they don’t really have a method for describing how evil happens, why one person chooses to inflict pain on others and themselves versus living happily and in harmony.

This problem has, in my view, been largely solved with Developmental Psychology.  It may be that some people are born no good, but most people who choose darkness are hurt in primal, primitive and imprinting ways at very early ages.  They are not loved enough, one way or another.  Perhaps they are tortured, as in some respects I was, although that was not the goal. 

But whatever it is, some part of them fails to build a connection to human life, writ large.  And it is easy to assume the worst, and do the worst, when you are dealing with a group “over there” which has no actual, real connection to you.

We are in the position on this planet of developing a useful, comprehensive, lasting global religion, one based on science.  I pray daily to be able to play a role in the creation of this thing.  It’s so large, such an idea. 

But relative to what I’ve already endured in my life, the world is not too large.  As with everything else, you just have to start small, small wheels, and add larger wheels as you can.

The Great Pause might be building the soil I need.  I hope so.  Certainly, my work on myself continues, because I am far from being done with the first large phase.

About 2.8 million Americans die every year, and whatever happens when you die, happens to them. We are born, spend some time confused, certain, or some combination of the two, make decisions, don’t make decision, love, fail, love, succeed, never love, work, toil, sweat, worry, eat, drink, and try to take joy in our work, at least in complaining about it.  Then we die.  All of us, so far as we know.

An added 200,000 deaths, then, would not even constitute a 10% increase.

Are you starting to understand that we are being played for fools, because most of us ARE fools?

An analogy I would use is we are paddling down a river, when suddenly word comes from down-river that there is a torrent nobody knew about that is particularly terrible.  It is killing people.  So we pull over and think “what should we do?”

The Democrats all say “we should just stay here.  It’s much safer”.  Many Republicans concur, although for different reasons.  Democrats think Trump just wants to go down the river, so they want to stay.  Republicans, on the other hand, are by nature security and safety conscious.  They have strong protective instincts, and the media and the most replicated and amplified part of the “expert” class are screaming DANGER DANGER.

So what to do?

The torrent isn’t going away.  It will only cease to be dangerous once everyone is through.  Perhaps a few of the less vigorous and sickly can portage around, but the young and healthy need to just go right through the middle, knowing some of them may die.

No matter how long they stay on the side of the river–in this analogy until a cure or vaccine is found, which most experts and most Democrats seemingly hope will never happen–the problem never gets easier.  But the sun is setting.  And when it is dark, it will stay dark.  The economy will crash.

So why not get moving?  I ask this question every day.  I try to limit what I have to say, but this is one of the first times in my life since the first election of Trump that the issues being pondered seemed to be of existential importance to the future of our nation and people.

We can go in shifts.  We can lift the quarantine in parts, and have good plans to move ventilators around.  For people ACTUALLY trying to solve the problem while realizing millions of bankruptcies is not good for anyone’s health, these are not difficult challenges.

I have proposed even zip codes–either for the business or the person working there, with the latter making slightly more sense to me, since all businesses get somebody in them.  I have proposed names ending, say, A-L.  We could even literally do every other State.  Open up California and New Mexico, but leave Arizona closed.  Prepare to move Arizona’s respirators to California as needed.

Or open up every other county.  Or do sound demographics, build some sort of unit, and then alternate. Or hell open up one quarter of businesses.  ANYTHING is better than the idiocy we have right now.

I literally think an honest case could be made at this moment that those who are infected should make every effort they can to infect as many people as they can. Not because they are bastards.  Not out of spite.  Not to prove a point.  But because they RECOGNIZE that this disease is not traveling fast enough, that some 60% of us need to get it, and that a continued shut down is going to lead to more misery, possibly, than there has ever been in this country.  People are horrified now by pictures of the ER in Brooklyn.  What about tent cities and hungry people?  What about famished AMERICANS?  What about MORE full ER’s from people sick of a variety of diseases that good nutrition would prevent?  There is nothing so bad that sufficiently stupid policy cannot make ten times worse. Just look at Venezuela.  Just look at our own Great Depression.  Absent the mistakes, nobody but specialists would remember the recession of 1929-1930.

These are likely overblown scenarios, but that is the zip code in my view where people’s thoughts should be.

And to be clear, I am NOT, repeat AM NOT recommending people who are sick do anything but stay home and get well

[I will note that all the other usual disease remain in circulation too.  A friend of mine went through the big production of getting a COVID-19 test, since he WAS sick, and he tested negative; meanwhile, people are still dying of the regular flu, of heart attacks and strokes, and of cancer].

The big problem is the policy, not anything any one person may or may not do, so it would in any event be pointless.  It would be a symbolic act that might well prove fatal to someone, which is an awful thought.  So don’t do it.  Don’t always take me literally.  Don’t even always assume I mean what I say.  I don’t. Sometimes I just like to see how things look when written.  It is YOUR job to form your own opinions, and to notice and make allowance for my bullshit. 

I  simply offer that as what Edward de Bono called a “Provocative Operation”.  My intent is to break mental boundaries by crossing into places you never thought to go.

Everyone seems terrified.  Everyone seems to feel helpless.  We don’t need to be terrified.  We are not helpless.

If the way out is through, then this whole fucking country is flunking the Marshmallow Test.

How such a stupid, undisciplined, lazy, complacent rabble can survive as a great nation is unclear to me.  Our best are idiots.  Our average are sheep.

In my more melodramatic moments I like to strike a pose (in my mind) and imagine I am channeling an Old Testament prophets.  Since that is absurd, it makes me feel better.

Well, mid-afternoon: time for my morning shower.  You know, because.

I think most of the Leftists out there who their quarantine should be, to quote Trey Parker and Matt Stone, “longer, thicker and uncut”, have in the back of their minds that whatever problems are created, government can fix it.

This is always the thought: whatever problem their policy creates, government can fix it.  Unemployment?  Government can fix it.  Bad healthcare?  Government can fix it.

But NONE OF THEM HAVE THE SLIGHTEST FUCKING CLUE HOW ANY OF THIS WORKS.

They don’t have concrete plans.  And here is the point: they DON’T REALIZE THEY NEED CONCRETE PLANS.  It’s all vague, I’m a smart guy or gal, and it’s a large government and how hard can it be?

You know, the mindset of people who have never actually accomplished ANYTHING in the world, and who don’t realize the world gets a vote too, and it will always vote against the complacent and unprepared.

It is mind boggling.  We send kids to college to get smarter, and they become simultaneously dumber and more smug.  It’s lose/lose.  And that at a high cost.  Lose to the third power, with no recompense.

But those of us capable of actually seeing the world we live in understand that’s often how it works.  Silver linings can be created, but they are not handed out like candy.

It appears to me a great many people think the choice is between a safe way and an unsafe way.   THERE IS NO SAFE WAY.  There will be death and misery no matter what policy is chosen, no matter what people choose to do.

The question is do we recognize this as adults–the Swedish PM went so far as to say “we are adults, and we understand the risk”–or do we pretend that hiding in our houses long enough, no matter the cost in jobs lost and failed businesses, will eventually make this boogey man go away?

Until there is a cure, or a vaccine that is made, tested, manufactured and distributed in sufficient numbers, then the only way out is through.  This is how all historic epidemics have ended, or so I believe.

I seem to be the only one citing Farr’s Law, which basically says epidemics happen in the shape of a Bell Curve.  Once you get to the top, they decline and end, naturally.

Here is the thing: if you start on the up slope of the Bell Curve, then STOP, because the social intercourse of people has stopped, the disease does not disappear.  There are trillions of spores or whatever viruses are out there, and it only takes ONE to start everything up again.  The curve has to be traversed, absent mass vaccination, or a cure.  THERE IS NO OTHER WAY.  Or so I understand.

We ARE decadent.  Barzun–and I am just restating the obvious–was right.

It is equally true, though, that as Yogi Berra said, “it’s hard to make predictions, especially about the future.”  Those of us capable of seeing–self evidently I include myself in that category while granting both that I am sometimes blind and always not aware when I am being blind–need to just keep doing the best we can.  It’s all we can do.  With a miracle, it will be enough.

It occurs to me this is yet another case of Socialist policies failing, hurting badly the people they were intended to help, and the elites, not being affected themselves, or actually benefiting, not caring in the least.

Those who have nothing to lose have no reason not to protect their vanity by saying “we just need to do more, and by we I mean you.  Somebody has to carry the whip.”

The failure of this policy will not be fully obvious until it ends, and we are able to observe how many businesses remain shuttered.  But it should be said that nobody who owns a business that fails can claim unemployment.  Neither can Independent Contractors, which is how a great many sales jobs are structured.  1099 people.  So the actual toll will not be reflected in unemployment claims.  It will only be seen when one counts the For Sale signs on the doors of formerly prosperous, or at least stable, businesses.

But my personal guess, and this is of course necessarily a SWAG, is that AT LEAST 2 people will die for every life which our rulers can plausibly say was saved with their policies.  And those numbers get daily and weekly worse the longer this lasts.

I say again: BEFORE this debacle, 7 out of 10 Americans did not have $1,000 in savings.  If you figure that number, too, was on a curve, that means a great many had NOTHING.  Day to day.  Broke now.  Dealing drugs or doing tricks to put food in the table.

And THAT number, in turn, is the result of our unsound currency.  Our national savings rate started plummeting some time around or after the inflation of the 1970’s.  If money is not stable, then hiding it away makes a lot less sense than spending it immediately.  Add to this easy credit, and Americans fell hook, line and sinker for the idea that no nest egg was needed, and YOLO.