Delete Button - Reboot

Votes for Sale

Okay, to start this chapter, I apologize for the brevity of the previous chapter, but it has been several months since I have written anything and the world has moved on and so have I. Welcome to the world of the pandemic. Covid-19 has most of the world shaking in their surgical masks, I take it fatalistically. If I am meant to die from this thing I will. It is the only point of view I can take. I am the designated shopper for our entire clan. I go into all the stores alone. I face the empty shelves. I face the stickers telling you one way only down the aisles, not that anybody pays any attention to that. I am the one who stands on the little Xs in line. Other than that, I’m good.

My health is good, as long as you don’t count the cough I have had since before this whole pandemic thing happened, or the deteriorating mental health. I can’t seem to make up my mind between mania and depression. I am energetically depressed. It is an interesting place to be. As for the cough, I am not too concerned, until the woman in the line ahead of me coughs, without a mask. Then the slightest tickle in my throat sends me straight to the panic button, but it is what it is.

Now to the irony of things. I believe my views on Trump are clear by now, if not you have not been paying any attention. That said, I can’t criticize how he has handled the crisis. There was a comment about using disinfectants to just flush the infection out of your system, but he wouldn’t be Trump without some show of his level of intelligence, or lack of. He closed the borders to keep out sources of infection. He closed non-essential businesses. He encouraged people to… who am I kidding? The man refuses to wear a mask! I know that the successful measures he has taken were someone else’s idea. All we can credit him with is actually taking the advice. Flush their systems out with disinfectant? Enough politics, how about the economy… The first stimulus payment was a real windfall. It was just what we needed when we needed it.

Okay, so we’ve talked about Covid-19. We also have another set of crises. There is the whole Black Lives Matter issue and the resultant riots- ehm protests. Also, there is the toilet paper shortage and other shortages of goods. Like for a while my Walmart was completely sold out of flat-screen tvs and if you want a Nintendo Switch be prepared to pay five or six hundred used on eBay. Then there is the more disturbing shortage that has come up recently, apparently there is a national coin shortage. A lot of retailers are accepting cards only.

So, if anyone is reading this, does anyone feel like I am watching the fall of American civilization? I mean, it sure feels like the emperor is fiddling as Rome burns. Trump refuses to wear a mask, how is anyone supposed to take him seriously when he tells everyone else to wear one. Is this like what the romans felt as their civilization fell.

We have major cities defunding or outright disbanding their police forces and then acting surprised when civil law collapses. I have heard that police in New York city aren’t responding to calls involving gunfire. A grassroot civilian group is trying to hold the line but they are just civilians.

Trump has shut up about the border wall, but no one is going out or working anyway, so I guess illegal immigration is down? Or he has just moved on to other issues that are more frightening to his constituents. I can’t tell if he is trying to scare his way into reelection or buy his way back into office. I heard he wanted his signature to appear on the first round of stimulus checks. Can anyone say bribing the vote? Well, his people must have checked the polls and done the math. They seem to have told him that the first round didn’t assure his victory because there is serious talk of another round before long. Economists are even calling for regular rounds of stimulus checks.

If there is another round of checks, most articles project that most of us will have received our money by September or October at the latest. Right before the elections. Hmm. Maybe congress is trying to buy votes too.

How is that going to work? Who is going to keep voting locations secure and prevent ballot fraud with a substantial portion of law enforcement on furlough? Maybe that is why the Black Lives Matter Protests fell when they did, to ensure Trump or someone, an unfair advantage at the polls.

I feel like someone or something is manipulating us all with these circumstances. What I find odd is the silence of religious leaders on this subject. In the past, all it took for some to holler Armageddon was a few round digits on the old calendar. But now, with a plague, collapse of civil order, border walls, the real possibility real money will be worthless, namely a switch to strictly electronic payments, I haven’t heard one peep about the antichrist, Armageddon, seals, vials, four horsemen. I mean come on people, that is all we heard for the last three decades of the last millennia.

Maybe I am just tilting at windmills, but things feel wrong here. Coincidence is too simple a word, maybe it is all interconnected, but that doesn’t automatically mean Armageddon. Sure, all the self quarantining could have made people irritable, lonely and more than ready to riot. And maybe the prospect of people not working made them sensitive to even minor shortages resulting in reflexive over buying or people having to skip work because of quarantines causing lumps in the supply chain. The coin shortage could just be the natural outcome of injecting so much extra money into the economy. They just had not prepared for so much of the population lacking bank accounts having suddenly sizeable amounts of money.

I suppose that is what is going on… But why aren’t people reacting to these things like one would expect? People talk about riots and cities under siege by riotous mobs matter-of-factly, like it is just how things should be. No alarm, no distress full of speculation on what should be done. Just "Oh, we’re out of change. That is funny, guess I’ll just use my card.” Come on people! Where are the conspiracy theory whackos? Did the virus preferentially kill them? Given what I am writing, does that put me on some kind of hit list? Only if I get published, which I am thinking will be increasingly unlikely. Nobody reads books anymore anyway!

Sorry. I didn’t mean to rant. NO WAIT! Yes, I did! I have to vent. Things are circling the crapper and things look only like they will get worse. I have heard some formerly sane people talking offhand about becoming doomsday preppers. Walmart now carries a bucket of emergency rations for a family of four for a week. You used to have to go to some quack’s website to get stuff like that. Stop. Breathe. Is there even a normal to get back to?