This is the Worst Spring, Ever
Is this the worst episode of Black Mirror, or what? Every single time I scroll my feed or stop to watch the talking heads for a few, I’m reminded, yep, everything is still awful. Forget watching CNN or Fox News. It’s a verbal WWE match. Let’s get the steel cage and let them figure this thing out with folding chairs and barbed wire. Anderson Cooper doling out Stone Cold Stunners? Why not?
John Prine is dead. Same with Bill Withers.The little girl who inspired the CBD movement, too. A few friends were sick. Sturgill Simpson is laid up, and by god, someone had better keep Willie Nelson in a hyperbaric chamber. We're hoarding Charmin, and everyone is obsessed with "that bitch Carol Baskin."
We're all stuck in our own hell, whether it's the lack of social stimulation or realizing you fucking hate your husband.
These people are our neighbors
Comment sections are filled with people convinced this is a global conspiracy to install 5G towers. I saw a sweet, grammatically incoherent tirade about PizzaGate, that Anthony Bourdain was 86ed because he was involved with the Clintons. According to that whack job, Trump is going to round up Hollywood and stick them in Guantanamo. Bill Gates is microchipping us – and I'm a terrible person. I'm the fake news and am "too liberal" to see "what's really happening."
This isn't a liberal hoax. Do you think an old man dying in Berlin gives a shit about American progressivism vs. conservative values? Do you think some small Japanese town wanted to lose all of its tourist money? It's not as simple as some scandalous theme played out in New World Order conspiracy videos on YouTube.
You'd have thought that we're America, we get it done. NOPE. Instead, we're getting $1,200 to shut up. Almost half of our economy is in the toilet and we’ve got the largest body count. Sometimes, being number one isn't that cool. Watching the U.S. government deal with COVID-19 is like the Ministry of Magic dealing with Voldemort coming back.
Governors shut their states down, while up until last week, a few let their people kick it at the beach because the free market economy is cool with burying Nana a few years early. That's what Bill O'Reilly and Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick think, anyhow.
This is the worst spring, ever
We’ve learned a few hard lessons: our infrastructure is terrible – both how the government is set up and how literally no state or federal systems are designed to actually work. You can program your house to play Drake with purple “fuck me” lights when you walk inside but hit the bricks you if you're thinking about unemployment.
Resident Ghoul Mitch McConnell wanted to take care of his corporate homies by rewarding them with bailouts and buybacks, allowing corporations to take the cash, buy their stock at a low price and then sell it for profit. The Dems and ultimately, Trump weren’t having it, so it was back to the drawing board.
You can argue the benefits of extending the solar and wind credits. If you ask me, continuing the credits keeps 40K people working, but I also think fracking is a terrible idea. The funding of the Kennedy Center, PBS, and NPR doesn't exactly make sense right now, but I understand it from, "if we don't try to tack this on, they're going to fight us down the line."
Call me silly lefty all you want, but I don't know how people have fallen for trickle-down economics and ruthless capitalism. Why are most working people screwed after two missed paychecks, and every public company that hacks and slashes at shareholder demands suddenly needs a bailout? Ain’t our fault y'all can't manage the books.
Egos run rampant in Washington, D.C.
Trump is not a steady hand. The ten weeks of denial, letting the states bid against one another in a cannibalistic free-market experiment – all his fault. But his base will never split. They'll never look past his Denali of errors. He's their bastion of hope for a fictitious America of their darkest fantasies.
He was obsessed with making sure the world knew it started overseas, refusing to acknowledge it as anything but "the China virus." And for his psychotic brand, it makes perfect sense. He loves to discredit, creating a false identity, giving knuckle draggers something to froth at the mouth over. They love fierce ignorance wrapped in blind patriotism.
Trump knew what he was doing – making the Chinese look like they're the ones who poisoned the world, shaming them as villains. All while driving down value, strengthening the American market. Despite a few instances, we got lucky. If you think a guy in a MAGA hat is above accosting an Asian woman trying to live her life, I’ve got news for you, pal.
The dismantling of a public identity
The real victims of this epidemic are marginalized communities. From indigenous people to African Americans, to immigrants scared of ICE. It's the poor and underserved, saddled with horrific infrastructure where medical supplies and help aren't in the neighborhood, but maybe across town or miles away. Most of these people are working class, not covered by the stimulus package. They're grinding, no matter what's going on. The biggest probable culprit as there are a significant amount of underlying health issues in all of these communities like diabetes and asthma, which allows the virus to wreak havoc on immune systems.
And here we are
We're going to see a dog and pony show of Donald Trump touting his economy and his virus response. Joe Biden will try to combat every second of it. And it's going to suck. Bernie Sanders was given the boot by those who feared his electability would hurt him, that his ideas were too radical.
Funny, who's getting a stimulus check to save the American worker, extending the privilege of having free health care during a crisis? At the same time, who’s seeing the absolute corporate-driven nonsense that has acted as the puppeteer of this country? It sounds like democratic socialism to me.
A lot of us will swallow the bitter pill of pulling the lever based on partisan politics, again. I hope more folks realize that the two-party system isn't representative of Americans. We've got two houses full of millionaires pretending they give a shit. And the worst part, there's no end in sight. Pass the Jameson.