Corona Virus Thoughts #7

The most pressing political question of the lockdown/reopening/quarantine is: why is a fudge shop open and not an elk viewing area? That strikes to the heart of the frustration many people have expressed about the inexplicable inconsistency of policy and enforcement. Had everything been more consistent or seemingly more commonsense, perhaps things wouldn’t have boiled over. I don’t know. I’m glad I didn’t have to make the decisions. It’s easy to second guess when nothing happens.

(As I write this from an OTA joint, two old men are debunking all the virus science and epidemiology. They just know as PHDs in the field do not. Public health officials are in conspiracy to ruin the economy, overthrow Trump and violate the Bill of Rights.)

Yes, fudge versus elk. What an existential dilemma!

People are on the road. You can feel the restlessness in the air.

If I hear the phrase “mainstream media” one more time in defense of an opinion I might kill someone.

I listened to Save Me Jesus Radio the other day as I often do on my drives around Oregon. The new party line is the conspiracy by liberals and secularists to prevent real Christians from practicing their true region in the company of others. What happened to reading the Bible in solitude and thinking about the stories and scriptures without someone telling you want to think? What about walking in nature and marveling at God’s avian creations without someone telling you human beings fly above birds? Why do so many Americans have the inability to stand being with themselves and their own thoughts for a limited amount of time? I have always wanted to write an alternate history of America where Walden was adopted as the nation’s holy book rather than the Bible. Maybe I will.

Cotton is an interesting verb and in complete disuse. As are reckon and fancy. I think they need to return to the vernacular.

A man just ordered a shot of Jack at high noon.

I’m reading a book called Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire by the novelist and social critic Kurt Andersen. It was published in 2017 and explains with perfect lucidity how Trump was elected and how three years later a conspiracy-themed public response to the lockdown took hold in many quarters of American society. His thesis is that we are a nation built by/on myth and fantasy by unique set of hucksters, fabulists, crackpots, pseudo clarinetists, charlatans, religious freaks. Think PT Barnum to Mary Baker Eddy to William Randolph Hearst to Col. Tom Parker to Hollywood to Ronald Reagan to a reality show star being elected to the nation’s highest office. I could go on, but why bother? Get the book. Challenge your orthodoxies. It certainly has mine with a few of his contentions, one of them that Thoreau was a complete poseur in Walden. I already knew this deep in my heart but I choose to believe his words. Sounds a lot like faith, doesn’t it? Oh Henry!

“Gimme Shelter” just came on the jukebox….it’s just a shot away, it’s just a shot away.