UnManifest Destiny (My American Dark Age, Part Eight)

I tried to refine that neighbor of mine, honest to God, I did.
I grieved for his fate, and early and late I watched over him like a kid.
I gave him excuse, I bore his abuse in every way that I could; I swore to prevail; I camped on his trail; I plotted and planned for his good.
By day and by night I strove in men's sight to gather him into the fold,
With precept and prayer, with hope and despair,
in hunger and hardship and cold.
I followed him into Gehennas of sin, I sat where the sirens sit;
In the shade of the Pole, for the sake of his soul,
I strove with the powers of the Pit.
I shadowed him down to the scrofulous town;
I dragged him from dissolute brawls;
But I killed the galoot when he started to shoot electricity into my walls. ~Robert W. Service, The Ballad Of Pious Pete.

Seriously?

I've been too tired to write much of anything for the past couple of days.

But the other day, I managed to walk unsuspecting into a next of COVIDiots.

It was a simple mistake, a former coworker, who was...to be honest...the dumb kid, posted on Facebook questioning the need to wear a mask. I simply replied "Science. Wear a damn mask, it's not that hard, some people care about you and don't want you to get sick. I also posted a video of Bill Nye the Science Guy explaining why wearing masks is important. I ended up getting swarmed by a bunch of really stupid people that I don't know who, if I had to guess are probably fairly partisan Republicans and/or Trump Supporters.

Then he finally replied "Stay at home and social distance and all that if you want, but let me live free." Dafuq? It's supposed to be "Live free or die" not "Live free and die."

I ended up blocking him, and all his idiot friends. Let them figure it out, the hard way. I get that we should try to help everybody we can...but you gotta wanna be saved.

My Facebook and Twitter feeds these last few days have been full of stories of people who didn't take this crap seriously, who are now dead. I know people who've had family members get the virus. I know a guy that died. He had other health problems, but took care of himself. He was doing everything he could to not get sick, but somebody else wasn't. As far as I'm concerned people like Trump and the Republicans need to be held accountable for this mess, and then never listened to again.

Just sayin' people, the respawn rate in the game of life SUCKS.

But ya know, I've been thinking.

My mind keeps going back to the one statement: "Stay home if you want, but let me live free."

I have a job, I have bills, I have pets, I can't afford to just stay home. This dude knows where I work. He knows I can't afford that shit. People who won't wear a mask and won't socially distance, etc. are putting others at risk whether they realize it or not...and doing just one or the other is only particularly useful if you can avoid people. I can't for 40 hours out of my week.

Especially these days, "Conservatives" and what has become of the Republican Party bang on endlessly about "Freedom."

I put it in quotes for a reason, because the kind of freedom that can only come at a cost to somebody else really isn't freedom. If your idea of freedom requires other people to be put at risk so that you can have it, your idea of freedom sucks.

But that's the only kind of freedom they want, and these fucking people still seem to be hoping that the virus just kills off the rest of us, despite the fact that it's them and theirs who seem to be getting sick and dying in greater numbers.

But they don't care about that, do they? For one thing, they've bought into their own propaganda for too long. For another, I'm genuinely no longer sure that these people even give a damn about their own lives, so long as somebody else gets hurt too. That makes these fucking people every bit as dangerous as some Daesh suicide bomber or Taliban insurgent. In fact some of these fucking people seem to want to sacrifice their lives for classism, racism, for the profits of the rich people, for Trump and for white supremacy...or at least some kind of white superiority.

My roommate, who is Black, has over the last several days read or showed me some horribly racist or reactionary Facebook posts by co-workers and former co-workers. One lady that we used to work with, who seems to be in a state of perpetual meltdown these days posted "Never apologize for being white."

As if anybody is asking you to, you stupid bitch.

These fucking people's definition of freedom clearly requires others to be held down by the power of the State...if not actively put in chains.

But what good is freedom or profits or "racial dominance" for that matter, if you're dead because you ignored the deadly virus until it was too late? It seems like if you want to have power...you should also want to do what is necessary so you can be alive to enjoy it.

But that's not what's going on here, is it?

Millions of Americans have apparently been convinced that they should go out in some kind of blaze of glory...or choking misery...for the Manifest Destiny or the profits of, wait for it, somebody else?

This ain't some Taliban fighter shouting Allah Akbar as he blazes away in suicidal fury at US Army soldiers with better weapons and body armor who are backed up by Abrams and Bradleys. This is some fat pineapple eating ass motherfucker in a pickup truck or some crazy woman in a pizza joint shouting at clouds or the demons in their own heads mainly because they have this fake paste-up idea of their "enemies" that doesn't come even close to reality...and they might just manage to get fired from their job over it, lose some of their people, and eventually realize where they fucked up and have to live with what they did...mostly to themselves.

And the only thing they're even being offered in return is a cheap feeling of victory for "Owning the Libs" that in truth only obscures the fact that the people you were just screaming at are laughing at you as you storm out the door.

If we are to remain a civilization or a society at all, much less a free one, those who convinced conservatives to embrace this Unmanifest Destiny, to effectively destroy themselves for nothing, must be held to account.

But first, as of right now we've got about one third of our entire society actively trying to pull down the other two thirds along with itself. I don't know how the hell we're ever going to solve that problem.

Part Seven.

Part Nine.