Apocalypses, real and imagined (American Revelation III, Prequel.)

Listen, if you're not ready to hear the truth and deal with uncomfortable facts, here's a picture of a ferret, and move along.

I don't think you and I are very closely related, however, if you are capable of trembling with indignation each time that an injustice is committed anywhere in the world, we are comrades, and that is more important. ~Che Guevara

Actually, if you want to know how my day started out: this is Rokea, one of my ferrets. She was diagnosed with Insulinoma early Monday morning after having several seizures overnight on Sunday. She never bounced back, and wasn't doing much of anything, seeming to have lost even basic instincts, an indicator of brain damage. Although she did respond well to the medication and only had one more seizure, that's still no way to have to live. Yesterday I made a difficult decision, and early this morning I took Rokea to the vet and had her put to sleep.

I had to do my normal payday stuff after that, one last hurrah for the normal routine as I go on Unemployment and have to scrape up a new one, thank you Coronavirus.

And then...when I get home, this is the very first thing I see.

"We cannot destroy the country for the sake of New York City."

Somebody tell these Federalist assholes where Wall Street is located/ I mean, fucking seriously, I find it very interesting that conservatives, the very people who taught me to detest primitivism in all its forms, are still trying to find a virgin to sacrifice to the volcano in the hope that it will calm the volcano gods and magically the mess we find ourselves in will go away. I mean, for one thing NYC is one of the economic and financial engines that drives this country. Of course, the truth is that NYC is seen as "Liberal" and therefore deserving of death and sacrifice in these idiots' fever dreams.

Good to know these assholes think that entire geographical regions and millions of people are disposable, so long as they get their money.

Fuck these motherfuckers. Let's look at this logically, right now.

Here's a simple map of movement in this country as of last week. Now, I recognize that in some of these areas, people may have to travel a ways to simply go to the grocery store, so I understand that some people might be being responsible and safe but still have to travel...and I suspect such may well be the case in West Texas, for example.

But on the whole, it's Red states that have the highest amounts of normal travel.

In other words, culture warriors and Republicans are not taking the crisis seriously, yet again.

Eventually, and by eventually I mean a few days or weeks from now, this is going to be a problem, because I guarantee you some of those people are already sick and spreading the virus. I rather suspect that Texas as a whole is going to make New York City look like a normal flu season within a week or two. I've read that experts are saying cases in NYC may have already peaked and it's possible the situation could be improving.

Now, here's a map of states that have accepted the Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act vs. those that have not. See a pattern?

Now, I want you to go ahead and compare this map to the one right up above. This is where the virus hot spots will be in a couple weeks and nobody, NOBODY, is going to be talking about New York City. It's gonna be a goddamned slaughter in Florida, and I'm not joking. Most of the rest of the Deep South isn't going to be much better...and in fact may even be worse. At least a lot of places in Florida have decent health infrastructure to start with. It's a lot harder to say that about Alabama or Mississippi.

It was nice knowing you Kansas and Oklahoma and West Texas and Wyoming. While I was out today I found out we're up to two deaths and ten cases here where I live. Just the other day, we had one case and no deaths. Think about that.

God damn, this whole thing is going to be a mess and even now Republicans are whistling past the graveyard thinking that New York City is somehow going to take the worst of it and should be sacrificed to Mammon at their demand? Again, fuck these motherfuckers. I live in Michigan, one of the states Trump has already targeted. If you support this shit at this time, I've got nothing to say except fuck you.

And you know, the funny part here is the old guy ahead of me in line at Walmart today was wearing a Bob Marley shirt, a denim Looney Tunes vest...the kind that was hella expensive 25 years ago...and a MAGA hat and paying for his groceries with an EBT card...which all made for a very interesting juxtaposition. I think Republicans are going to find their various and assorted efforts to price-gouge and hurt the poor may have some unexpected consequences.

Oh, wait, that's already happening in Florida as Rick Scott's purpose-built-to-fail Unemployment agencies are so overwhelmed that many people cannot even apply for benefits. Granted, I'm pretty sure every state's social safety net is overwhelmed at the moment but Florida is already in bad enough shape that it's looking like it might affect Republican electoral prospects. Good! Fuck these motherfuckers. I'm goddamned sick of the Republican M.O. of Jesus this and Jesus that and hate the Blacks and oh by the way reduce the majority of the population to penury and then get elected to Federal office and spend all their time in Washington D.C. If this crisis doesn't bring out the pitchforks and torches, or muskets and guillotines, I'm going to be very disappointed in the survival instincts of Americans. I mean, seriously, Rick Scott's company got busted for millions in Medicare and Medicaid fraud...and he basically crapped all over his own state and somehow this motherfucker is a Senator instead of sitting in a cell somewhere trying to avoid prison booty bandits? I mean, who the fuck builds a government program to fail, just so that it'll keep unemployment numbers low in the middle of a recession? Oh, right, Republicans.

And you know, that's not even the worst thing I've seen today.

Republicans are literally stealing PPE already ordered and already presumably paid for by the state of Massachusetts. Mind you, the governor of the state...a Republican but apparently not Republican enough...had to get Robert Kraft to send the New England Patriots team plane to China to pick up a big order of PPE secured by back-channel U.N. and World Health Organization contacts. I realize that might just be a hell of a plot for an action movie, but my God, it should not even be necessary. Something like that should never be necessary.

And I guarantee you, if you think this situation is bad, the reasoning behind why it exists appears to actually be much worse. I'm not joking.

Republicans are tying to kill us, so that they can corner the market on PPE and price-gouge the fuck out of Americans.

I wonder how that's going to work out when all those Deep South Red States that ain't got a bucket to piss in budget-wise, nor a window to throw it out of, come calling needing help. And yes, it will happen. Jim Wright of Stonekettle Station lives in the Florida Panhandle, and the way he described not only the economy of the area, but the health care infrastructure and the health of the populace...several weeks ago before any of us could be sure that things would get this bad...it sounded like an apocalyptic situation on a normal day. This situation is absolutely not normal. Now, from what he's said since, it sounds like most people there are at least smart enough to follow social distancing guidelines, so I could be wrong, but from the comments on one of the more recent posts on the subject, it sounds like there's a lot of people who still aren't taking this situation seriously in various places in the South and central Midwest.

And when you combine that with Republicans and rich people trying to profiteer off of this, rather than doing the right thing...which, if they did, mind you, even liberals would have to hail them as heroes...I'm sorry if I'm not optimistic for the country as a whole, even if my own circumstances are not that bad.

I live in Michigan, and I have to say that even the conservatives and old people are taking this seriously here at this point. I ran into one of my fellow Air Force veterans from work at Walmart, a guy who normally doesn't ever have one good thing to say about Democrats, ever...and the worst complaint he had about our governor was that the Unemployment offices are closed, which is something that I've also objected to because not everybody has internet access or is computer literate to file online.

I'm set despite my own bandwidth normally being piss-poor, but it made for an aggravating day on Tuesday. Gretchen Whitmer will still have my vote if we're all here in 2022.

Leadership matters, if you have it, mistakes can be overcome and people will work with you, even if they might not be people who would normally like you much. Respect is earned, by every action, every day. Even my co-worker, who pretty much lives by Fox News, was taking social distancing and shit seriously.

Hell, the one conservative Evangelical sometime-conspiracy theorist lady that works at the pet store is taking this mess seriously, and told me today that she put in for a week off...and got it...because of the virus.

But not everyone is taking it seriously, and some people are still actively lying and spreading misinformation, and by now, the vast majority of those fucking people are Republicans.

And lest you think I'm joking, this is the kind of crap that the Q-Anon idiots are shoveling these days.

I didn't even know that was still a thing because I haven't been hearing much about it lately, or at least the popularity of that bullshit seems to be on the wane in my neck of the woods.

But apparently they're still out there, and the other day somebody tried to crash a train into a US Navy hospital ship because of this garbage. I'm serious, and I hope I'm wrong but I think we're looking at our next domestic terror threat right here. I don't think this fever-dream Q-bullshit is going to go away if we get rid of Trump in November either, not least because I think it's probably a Russian information warfare operation. In any case, whatever the source of it these people are insane.

And in the middle of a pandemic, this level of bad information, of people cheerfully willing to be lied to so long as the lies confirm their biases and tickle their ears...is fucking dangerous.

And let me tell you why.

I watched several videos today of Captain Crozier of the USS Theodore Roosevelt walking off the ship after having been relieved of command. He was given a thunderous send-off by his crew members that were still aboard ship.

This is everyday America here, this is Duty, Honor, Country. This is respect is earned by every action, every day. Service before self, yo.

And this? Not to mention modern small-L liberal democracy and personal freedom is not compatible with the crazy Q-bullshit that claims all this social distancing stuff is some kind of a cover for some secret operation. I'm sorry but the military has its hands full with surviving this virus crap just like everybody else. As of now, so far as I know, the vast majority of America, like these sailors, is cheering the Captain. This is what heroism looks like...as well as how it's usually rewarded when we elect shitbag leaders.

The Trump people, from Trump himself down to the lowest Redcap motherfucker? They're not going to be heroes. At the rate they're going they're going to overreach, piss people off, and quite likely be dragged from their gilded safe spaces right along with getting voted out. Then, rich people are going to have to learn to do with a little less. They're not going to be heroes, there's nobody leaving little cue cards around that say "Who is John Galt?" Not in real life, anyway, and that prospect terrifies these sons of bitches.

And you watch and see if they don't try to turn all these Q-Nuts into some kind of Billionaires Liberation Front if things go the way they're looking electorally.

Or, if you prefer, to quote conservative New York Times columnist Ross Douthat "If you didn't like the religious right, you're really not going to like the post-religious right."

Oh, and don't worry, the possibility of a post-religious Right also terrifies the Evangelicals. Look for things to get even more crazy.

I already know card-carrying members of These Fucking People, an ex-partner of mine being a "truther" and all, who think this mess is The End Times.

As a former member of the End Times Prophecy Movement myself, I know from what I read that they're not. But if you look at a lot of the pop-End Times shit like the "Left Behind" novels, a lot of the pop-culture Christian End Times shit really is just a projection of their hatred for secular liberalism. They don't see it as the End Times because actual Biblical signs are being fulfilled, they see it as the End Times because progressive policies are the way to defeat this virus and experts and facts are our salvation, not politics or religion. They see that their bullshit is only working for a very select few...and they see that we can see.

And they know that neither Jesus nor John Galt is going to whisk them away so they can watch the rest of us die and go to hell...which in truth was the entire basis for belief in the Rapture and/or Randian escapism in the first place...and they're stuck riding this out with the rest of us. And you know what? That terrifies the hard core religious nuts more than having to pay more in taxes terrifies the rich people.

In the days ahead I'm going to be writing a series of articles about this stuff, and trying to unpack and untangle how these people got to this point.

Join me for this journey of meth-head eschatology:

Start here for the original series.

Start here for the second installment.

Part One of this series.