It is worth noting that the average year for the average person at any place and any time in history before the 20th century was vastly worse than that of even the poor among us now, in lockdown.
We have antibiotics. We have grocery stores filled with “luxury” goods all available at very modest prices, and Indian grocers on every corner filled with the spices Columbus was hoping to make a fortune with, by finding an alternate route to India. Our homes are heated and cooled to within a degree or two of the exact temperature we want, and most of us have running water, and heated water at that. Most of us do not need to do back breaking labor in the fields. The list is long, and comprises nearly every physical detail of our lives.
So 2020 is not the worst year ever. It is perhaps the worst year since World War 2, maybe, for many of us. It would depend on some arbitrary metric, and might make for a good bar argument that the Guinness Book of Records would not help resolve.
But here is a claim I will make with no hesitation: the measures enacted on the PRETEXT (not in response to, since the responses outside of Sweden and more obviously Switzerland have not been scientific, and have patently not had benign intents) of responding to this bad flu bug, have been the largest ENGINEERED, which is to say man-made, disaster outside of wartime ever inflicted on the human species in the whole of history.
I feel very confident making that claim. Now, obviously nearly all wars waged everywhere have been worse. Homes were destroyed, famines generalized, people killed, and all manner of atrocities enabled and perpetrated in the general carnage and destruction.
But it is peacetime, and our governments–the precise aggregations of fallible and obviously corruptible human individuals which we entrusted with our safe-keeping–have betrayed our trust, and attacked us. No other honest view is possible, in my opinion. These responses are not guided by science. They have no precedent, and the two obvious precedents we now have in countries similar to the US–Sweden and Switzerland–are not being studied, not being copied, not being emulated.
I go back and forth, wrestling with this part of me that says “stop caring, it’s too big for you, you make no difference, you need to focus on your own peace of mind, what will be will be, focus on your own well being and peace”, etc.
Does it make a difference, trying to speak coherently, when the world has lost its fucking mind? I don’t know. I don’t even know if it is strictly necessary for my own sanity. I can write in my journal, take walks and think my own thoughts.
I am confused. I look at the videos being played in my gym, and reflect that most Americans lack the intelligence and the motivation to question our dominant culture, one currently highly relevant feature of which is obeisance to purported expertise, and quite frequently, by extension, to government itself, in all its forms.
How does one combat the stupid, the ignorant? Is combat the word? How does one reform them, teach them, guide them, when they are complacent, self satisfied, and unquestioning? They won’t listen, and nothing I have to say is really that easy to understand. The simple and wrong answers are nearly all owned by the Left.
For my part, if all of our leaders outside of Trump have sold out, and abandoned their moral duties to protect American life and liberty, I see no way out. I see no way, if the CIA, DIA, NSA, Pentagon, and all our senior leadership have sold out, that our freedom stays intact. Where are our protectors? Even Mattis is corrupted, and he was damn near a demi-god to most veterans. The guy got bought; the price does not even matter.
Where are the honest leaders of America? For what did so many fighting men and women give their lives, if we are to be sold out to the highest bidder by a bunch of fucking whores?
I have no good answers. I don’t even have any bad answers. I just don’t know.