I got a message on the Facebook the other day mentioning how I’d been “mysteriously quiet” on the subject of the recent pandemic. I’ve chosen to take that as an invitation to speak (or write), rather than a suggestion that perhaps I should be quiet on more things (Kim Waggoner, you have only yourself to blame – Everybody else, blame Kim!).

I’ve thought about writing something on this mess for a while now, but I’ve been alternating between rage, sadness, and a sort of locked-down ennui. There’s really no reason to go into the rage – if you know me at all you know what and whom I’m angry with, and why. If you have to wonder, you really don’t know me, and wouldn’t understand if I tried to explain it.

The ennui is pretty standard-issue right now. It seems like most of the country is in the same locked-down boat as I am. Sitting at home, killing our brains with Netflix. I do have one advantage that most don’t have – I’m locked down with the lovely and talented Jess. Sadly for her, that means she’s trapped with me.

The sadness is maybe a little less understandable, at least to those who know me – if you know me at all, you know that rage is really the only emotion I’m truly comfortable with.

I’m sad because we’ve got this thing going on, and I feel pretty confident that, when this is eventually over, we’re going to forget the things that we should be learning, and retain all the things we shouldn’t be. Our current love affair with the “heroic” teachers, fast-food workers, truckers, grocery store employees, and medical professionals will pretty quickly fade, once we are back to work.

Instead of insisting on a living wage for low-level workers, smaller classrooms and more teachers, better pay, benefits, and conditions for teachers, ensuring medical coverage for all, improving the lot of those medical professionals, including the lower-level carers like orderlies, CNAs, home healthcare workers, etc., and making other substantive changes to our country, we’ll soon be back to bitching about the service, saying “They want a living wage for this? Monkeys could do this job better!”, and wondering why they aren’t more motivated, all while whining about the treatment that “we” deserve.

They’ll be forgotten, just like the contributions of all the Rosie the Riveters were after WWII. Sure, we’ll pay lip service to it once in a while, and the politicians on both sides will outdo each other swearing allegiance to them, but once that big ol’ economy machine starts back up, we’re going to go right back to making sure we get ours, and feeling like anyone in a position “below” ours is trying to steal what’s ours.

One idea that I’d heard about even before all this happened, is that internet access should be considered a public utility. If nothing else, this pandemic should be causing some serious discussion about this. It has certainly demonstrated the necessity of the internet for education, for work, for communication, for dissemination of necessary public information.

Still, I haven’t seen much of anything about this lately, at least not from anyone who can do something about it.

Anyway, as a result of thinking about this stuff, I’ve been taking the social distancing thing a little too seriously, maybe. I’m not calling anyone, I’m not even answering emails.

It’s not that I have nothing to say, but more a matter of I don’t feel like shouting into a hurricane. Few will hear it, even less will understand it. There’s just too much noise, too little substance, and way too much spin.

There’s lots of things that I’d like to talk about, I’m just having a hard time seeing the point right now. Don’t worry though, by tomorrow, I’ll probably be hopefull enough to go back to my normal, angry, confrontational, and, mouthy.