I’m not big on faith or hope, people starve if that’s all they’ve access to, but I have no doubt what matters to me and mine or any life will outlive this place. Explosions are jarring but even supernovas are bound to fade. And that’s what the USA is, a prolonged explosion that will run its course.
It’s my understanding the Chinese government shared a chemical compound of the virus months ago so other nations could start developing vaccines, which the USA federal government ignored outright. The world outside the USA is currently flipping because it’s spreading even faster than they could prepare for. Even without a pandemic, our own healthcare system is a fucking nightmare of a sick joke. And this government has already crippled all of its traditional welfare programs, for no finer reason but to cover some of the taxes avoided by its not quite so diverse business interests. American citizens will need to survive without their government, but they must learn to live without them in the slow news cycles, too. I don’t think the adage of “ignorance is bliss” applies anymore. Now I think it’s more the matter that knowledge is masochism. Considering how the majority of Americans live in abject denial of the scope of their own military, I’ve no doubt there’d be as many jaws on floors over just how many of their government’s sanctions and embargoes aren’t leveraged against human rights abuses but to cripple competing business interests abroad.
Too many of us are overeager to scapegoat though, and too many of us live and die by the goodies of pharma. This is not hep, but personally I think certain of the anti-vax arguments make sense from the perspective where we’re given no earthly reasons to trust that industry in the first place. I mean, Facebook is overflowing with voices convinced that all the peoples of China (and Russia and Iran, and Afghanistan, and Syria, et cetera ad nauseum) exist for no other purpose but to give Uncle Sam a wedgie. It’s not even vaguely logical but it’s readily out there in the noosphere and supported by governance. In days gone by the polio vaccine was given away without uproar, so there is some precedent for ethics and hopefully that’s where sensible heads may lead. But because millions of lives depend on it, fat fucking chance.
I know all of this is fucked up in different ways for different people, but times like this are precisely when we really need to take note of how fundamental self-sufficiency truly is. Help is not coming, so the masses must look out for each other themselves, or perish. I’m not declaring it to be an attainable goal, but I am saying we should prompt ourselves into helping those having even more troubles than ourselves. Any one of us can find persons worse off, national emergency or not, and we don’t need permission or incentives to reach out. The only way I survived my darkest times was not by any proper channels. When I preach about living like there is no government, I’m not advocating lawlessness, but to take responsibility into our own hands. Because *somebody* has to while the fuckers play their reindeer games. So I don’t imply self-sufficiency in the sense that someone such as me can blow myself, but that I endure my life in spite of the government. Cops, hospitals, elected officials, all entirely fucking useless. Sure, hashtag fight for change, but until we learn in the series finale that the USA was all a dream, things need doing in the here and now.
I don’t believe in an afterlife for the same reason I don’t believe the world is a simulation, because it alleviates responsibility for the here and now. But even without the escape mechanism, there is nothing to fear. The fact anything might happen in life is what defines life. A life under limitations is robbed of purpose, robbed of any chance of meaning. And the crippling effects of fear are no less self-destructive than running into brick walls. Bad things happen, but it’s the bad things which give gravitas to the good. There’s an old zen Buddhist sentiment to that effect, how we can never really understand pain if we’ve never known joy to contrast it by, and versa vice. Endless lessons in humility verify this.
But there’s another slogan anyone who’s attended AA will recognize, about how to “Let go and let god”. Which is bullshit. We do not have to be complacent to what life throws in our respective pathways. Otherwise, what’s the point to living, but to be a voyeur? Give the pandemic or whichever circumstance which disturbs you and yours your best fight. Even if you lose, at least you would have tried, and that’s a far better life spent than living under the blanket, dreading the unknown. Be a goddamn hero, even if only to the scared little kid we all used to be.