“Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” Winston Churchill
Y’all have probably received 10X the “news” that I have; good and hard too. Sifting through the propaganda, it’s probably hard to find a silver lining. But I see one. I’m a ray of sunshine dammit! I sense a turning point as things turn from serious to flaky.
Bear with me as I theorize, when things were serious there was a brief time when politicians did one of two things:
- Vanish and hide.
- Rise to the occasion.
That’s when you knew shit was real. Actual adults did adult things. Unserious losers and posing dipshits (aside from “journalists”) were noticeably absent. (Heard anyone bitch about global warming or 57 flavors of sexuality lately?) When I say “adults were doing things” what I mean was that nobody was dealing with this kind of dumbass (Hank Johnson, D. Georgia):
Now, as things gradually approach “handled”, human dead weight is coming back out of hiding. They were useless in the clinch and are now trying to get in front of the parade so they can claim they led it. This results in weird things that have nothing to do with contagion but everything to do with bureaucratic compliance.
That’s what I see when I look at the matrix. YMMV.
My first evidence of this is anecdotal. I just heard someone in a suit say “this is the new normal”. Whenever I hear an otherwise sentient being say something that dumb I know the truth is absolutely the opposite. (Same goes for economic predictions that start with “this time it’s different”.)
Whatever situation we’re in, it’s temporary. It’s going to change and I think for the better. (Not yet, there are still many days of deaths to endure.) I’ve seen it happen. In particular, I’ve seen the Carter and Obama economies change from “frozen this way in cement” to “launched like a rocket”.
Things get frozen because of people who can’t imagine anything but what they’re already doing. In non-emergencies it leads to stasis. While the dim ones are in control, things stay in a long slow glide-path to pathetic. Ask Soviet Russia about their dynamic and fast paced life in the 1970’s. Or Detroit about it’s awesome financials. Or California about how it’s managing water for human consumption.
Today’s situation is a contagion so it cannot be controlled by human fossils who lock things up in stasis. This is why we’ve gone from doom and gloom to two promising courses of treatment and vaccine trials in less time than it took bureaucrats to manipulate the diagnostic testing supply chain.
It’s a side effect of the nature of bureaucratic hiring. The ideal middle manager can only extrapolate current trends, they cannot suss out change or adapt to it. If they could, they’d have been removed from the chain of command long ago. Organizations eliminate rabble rousers who don’t know “how we do things here”. (And before you take this into something large scale, I’m not talking about Trump and his daily dog and pony show with doctors in tow. I’m talking about little bureaucracies and less than agile businesses and even local town politics.)
A second indicator is weirdness in “enforcement”. People intent on protecting their lives and their loved ones avoid stupid shit. People getting on the bandwagon after it’s already in motion are all about stupid shit. Look for “letter of the law” enforcement.
I haven’t experienced any of this personally. I’m in voluntary self quarantine and don’t give a flying fuck what some politician says. They can say “lockdown” or “house arrest” or “we’re passing the anti-toilet paper hoarding act of 2020” but none of it means anything at my scale. I just keep doing what I’m doing… none of which is interesting.
So look for stupid, irrelevant, knee jerk, lemming-like bullshit as a sign the sea change is happening. When people go all “letter of the law” it’s just fools enjoying the dopamine hit of compliance. The activity of survival is gradually shifting back to auto-pilot.
Here’s the now famous video of arresting a paddleboarder for violating “stay at home orders” There is no way in hell this paddleboarder was spreading contagion. Are we worried fish will get the flu? Anyone with a lick of sense would see a solo man several hundred yards from any other human, and simply ignore him. I submit that two weeks ago that would’ve happened. Now it’s all about compliance and not contagion. It leads to a dude in nature getting hassled at great expense and with lots of photogenic wheel spinning. Those two boats are filled with people who know they’re doing something stupid but now they’re not truly serious about a life threatening illness. Lacking a real concern they lack the backbone to use judgement.
Other examples involve standing at the border off a state that already has contagion within it (as do all 50 states) and stopping people from a different state that also has contagion. Remember, so long as the car’s windows are rolled up, they might as well be hermetically sealed. So stop them, roll down the window, and do a little song and dance about “respect my authoritah”… what the hell, why not give ’em a hug and lick the steering wheel too? Two weeks ago nobody wanted anything to do with that; there was a real question if cops would even show up to work. Now they’re present and doing dumb things.
Another sign of a tide turning is governors making dumb decision.
Governor Gretchen Whitmer (D. Michigan) threatened doctors against the use of of hydroxychloroquine. Why? Because we weren’t serious enough to tell her to shut the hell up and sit at the kids table. If you’re in a pitched battle with death, you don’t ignore possible solutions. If a doctor has an idea that you might be cured if you shove a kazoo up your ass and rub broccoli in your armpits you at least listen. “Really? What evidence do you have for the kazoo treatment? Someone get me a kazoo just in case.” When we’re not serious, politicians get on a kick of saying “no”. “Those kazoos are not medically acceptable because they didn’t have the medical device tax. I control the medical kazoo supply.”
Governor Steve Sisolak (D. Nevada) governor did the same thing. An executive order limiting the use hydroxychloroquine for coronavirus patients. Why? Because respect my authoritah!
Here’s good news; both reversed course in about a week. I think both banned on March 24th and realized they were in the wrong on March 31st. They both developed minimal self awareness and that’s better than going full jackbooted thug.
Look for other signs that the serious people are (already!) in retreat.
One example is curfews. Apparently contagions, like vampires, only operate at night.
Another is “shutting down” empty wilderness areas like Death Valley for example. (This gambit was tried in several budgetary shutdowns, it’s a common approach.) I’ve been to Death Valley (and loved it). I interacted with precisely zero people. Because it’s fucking Death Valley and there’s not a lot of people there.
Here’s a hint, if it involves driving a sealed car in the middle of nowhere or tents in the backcounty… just leave them alone. Stopping it is about compliance not contagion.
By the way, I get the idea of shutting down tightly packed places like Old Faithful or a the Smithsonian. I’m talking about dispersed recreation. Just look at that guy (photo of Death Valley); he could fucking explode and nobody would be affected. Stopping him has nothing to do with contagion. Ask Cartman.
One last note. If you’re in the country and the sky is clear, go look at it. A sky without contrails is an amazing thing. Take it in because you may never see it again. I’ve seen sky without contrails only now and after 9/11. Enjoy the little things.
