Monsters Among Us

Monsters are real,” Stephen King wrote, “and sometimes they win.”

I’m not young enough or naive enough to still believe that good always overcomes evil. I think that the very best we can hope for – but not count on – is that it will mostly even out. And that’s only on days when I can manage to convince myself that hope itself is not one massive illusion. Those days are becoming fewer and farther between.

In some places around the world, the plague has been beaten back or kept at bay but in my own country, it’s winning. We denied it and downplayed it and offered it a firm grasp, not bothering to put up any resistance until it was too late. We provided a handful of masks and a fraction of the testing required and declared we’d won. And only now with the death tolls at staggering levels and the infection rates sky rocketing like a California wildfire, do we realize that we’re losing. Greed and profit matter more than lives. Ignorance combined with arrogance is the most deadly sin and it will be our undoing. No matter how this ends, if it ever does, life is never, ever going to be the same. The resulting economic crash was inevitable as was the mendacity that pushed for the reckless and fatal re-openings of states. Politicians and a selfish, lawless citizenry pushed for re-openings and are now paying the price. I have searched my soul and cannot find a single shred of sympathy for Texas or Florida. Small wonder that the virus has the upper hand – we invited the damn thing in.

Meanwhile, black lives are still being sacrificed in the cause of law and order. An illiterate, incoherent, lying, too stupid to live white supremacist sits in the White House and is protected and shielded by a cadre of bought and paid for congressmen and a cult of supporters too racist and willfully blind to see what’s happening. God and guns and fuck you, I got mine is the rule of the land. We have elected a cruel and delusional fool and chosen a path that can only lead to self destruction.

It’s remarkable how little time and effort it took to get to the “Just let’em die and be done with it” stage.