Listening to the CBC news today (Monday 23rd March, 2020) – Our (Canadian) Prime Minister Justin Trudeau – (to paraphrase) ‘Stay home voluntarily, or we will make you,’ – sounding a lot like a benevolent yet stern patriarch admonishing his errant children. Sanctimonious bastard.
(I get that the threat needs to be there to wake up the last of the scared, the panicked, the downright ijits, I do)
But … that this wasn’t done weeks ago enrages me. That governments the world over have not acted proactively, enrages me. That hundreds of thousands of people WILL DIE unnecessarily because of these things, enrages me.
That healthcare workers are begging anyone, any institution, who has Personal Protective Equipment (masks, gloves, etc) to donate it to them, (and that this wasn’t mandated weeks ago) enrages me.
I have entire pages on how humanity, institutions, governments, businesses, have consistently and willfully ignored the information that WAS THERE FOR ALL TO SEE over the last three months, and that enrages me.
Going to scream into a pillow for a moment … be back in a little while …
-oOo-
…. the storm of my rage, at least this wave, has passed.
I have many, many, more pages of the beautiful things individual people have done for each other over the last three months.
Rhetorical question – When did ‘governing’ go from FOR the people, to OVER the people? … it probably occurred at the same time the ‘people’ decided they didn’t want to be responsible for the consequences of their own actions.
Either way, there’s not a government left in the world that’s worth fighting for, or dying for.
I know there are good people within all governments, trying their damnedest to make a difference …. just like there were people on the Titanic trying their best to make a difference, but no matter what they did the ship still sank. The good people saved a few more lives, and other good people (or the ones who has the most money to lose – sometimes a bit of both) shifted the circumstances that set up the situation in the first place, a little …while a few other people figured out how they could get around the shifted circumstances and behave just as they had before.
I’m not asking you to start a revolution, well not all of you anyway, but when ‘things’ go back to ‘normal’ (even though that ‘normal’ is gone for ever for all of us – and was never real in the first place) remember this ‘Time of the Plague’ and do your damnedest to shift the circumstances that caused it in the first place.
Tell me, what are you going to do?
Widdershins Worlds 
Agreed entirely. Is you do the mental equivalent of a “Photoshop posterise filter” on human society and reduce it to three or four elements, money – something originally invented to facilitate exchange of goods and work effort FOR humans – has now become the one metric, the one ring to rule them all, with all human systems bent towards its creation and preservation.
Folk are on the verge of lynching “hoarders” and yet the whole system celebrates and lauds billionaires – who are doing nothing except to suck value from the system and hoard it themselves.
The measures were all delayed because of “the economy” and have been watered down and limited and efforts effectively sabotaged because of “the economy” – and by “economy” they (“they”) are not referring to the exchange of goods and work, just to money money money. Money is nothing in reality, in a true crisis you might just be able to burn it to keep you warm, but most money now is useless for even that, it’s all electronic.
Now that reality has hit the fan we are realising that money and the money system has developed into a Quatermass mass, far beyond and perverted from what is needed. If the human species were in any way intelligent we would immediately replace it with a system tied to social and humanitarian worth, not to the ability to scam billions. We are of course, as a species, as thick as three short planks – and very settled in our ways.
IMHO. 😉
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Your ‘umble’ opinion is very welcome and appreciated here. 🙂
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That is the question – how to make over 7 billion people cooperate with each other and share resources.
We haven’t been able to do it before, after the 1918 flu pandemic, and it doesn’t look like our institutional memory is long enough, or the systems we live with good enough, to do it this time.
We stumble – and then another generation is past, and the new kids on the block again know nothing.
I don’t know what to do – never have. I vote. I pray. I deal with what affects me. And I worry now more than ever about the basic inequalities in the system.
The professionals aren’t much better. And they supposedly spend all their time on the job (when they’re not fundraising or campaigning or enjoying the elite life).
Sometimes all you can do is carve out a hole in the ice.
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7 billion … I’d settle for 7 thousand, hell even 7 hundred … that’s what appears to be unfolding though isn’t it … individual people, reclaiming their sovereignty again, perhaps? … we shall see.
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Humanity will survive; this doesn’t have a 100% mortality rate (neither did the black plague, or we wouldn’t still be here).
It’s me I want to ensure, and my kids – even as others are making decisions that throw some of us under the bus as ‘less valuable.’
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Such hubris they have to use their own vile standards to judge the value of a human life.
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I am angry – for the others who are in the same boat as I am. If there’s anything I can do or say to get fair treatment for myself, I want it for them, too.
In normal times, we get short shrift. Now, we’re getting deadly short shrift. The talk on my online support group is dire.
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Well said, Widders. What to do, I wish I knew
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Perhaps now, in this space between how things were before, and what is to come after this wave has passed, many of us can decide how we will engage with that very uncertain future.
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I have no idea either, and the futility of it all makes me want to scream too. Time for the people who can change things to make a difference, woke up and took a deep breath of the coffee, preferably before it’s too late…
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I had hopes that enough people would take action with the climate crisis looming over their heads … I guess Mother Nature decided they weren’t moving fast enough. 😦
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She will always have the last word!
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Indubitably! 🙂
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I hope and I pray.
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😀 … good choices … and afterwards? …
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I honestly haven’t thought that far ahead. Maybe I should.
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There’s so much disruption everywhere on so many levels that there will be opportunities for change to be enacted. 🙂
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Let’s hope it is the right change for the right reason. In the meantime we can watch the Earth heal.
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🙂
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My hopes are as strong and heart-felt as others’ prayers, but – in truth . what can we do when most of us fully realize that there is a huge glut of greedy people in our world who – while clever – have very little common sense and what little they have, serves their own purpose in life. Hope has never had to be stronger! I so hope it prevails! I love this planet with all my heart, and many people on it..
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What perplexes me on a visceral level, (intellectually, I know the answer) is why don’t we all rise up at once and chuck the lot of’em out the nearest air-lock, metaphorically speaking.
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What am I going to do? Do my best to not get infected and should I, make sure it stays with me. Knock on wood. You have better luck with your country’s leader than us with dummkopf. Take care.
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That’s what we hope for too … so far, so good.
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The government here in Australia has also been slow to be proactive. Believe it or not schools are still open,(some have chosen to close) apparently children don’t get or carry potentially deadly infectious viruses …what rot.
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And more and more younglings are getting sick because of this attitude.
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I share your rage that more governments didn’t do more earlier.
I feel extremely lucky to live in New Zealand where our government actually seems competent and caring, and we are going into lockdown at midnight tonight for at least four weeks with only a few cases of community transmission in the country.
That doesn’t help all the people who live in countries with politicians who are too worried about the economy to want to save lives.
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Trust me, there are a lot of us who envy NZ. Whatever you do, don’t let #ScottyFromMarketing into the country, ever again.
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If he tries, I’ll be at the airport with a pitchfork to turn him back.
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YES!!!
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lmao! I’ll send you a file so you can make those points nice and sharp!!
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p.s. tried to comment on your Cheery Uppy post about cute animals but there was a glitch of some kind.
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Aw, thanks. Did my site seem broken in some way? I try to defeat the techy demons, but sometimes they win.
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No, it seemed fine. Just the ability to leave a comment.
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I’m now going with shaking my head and muttering ‘fucking idiots’, as I plot world domination.
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Rage away my friend. Until recently I didn’t even know there was such a thing as ‘new liberalism’. Now I know it’s the system that rewards the worst of humanity and denigrates the best. If there’s one thing I want, once this is all over, it’s for all of us to value each and every human life. And may profit be damned to the hottest pits of hell.
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Seconded!
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Here too (here being the UK) they farted around for weeks before taking small steps, then more small steps, then, oops, how did it all get this bad? steps. And they had weeks (9, I think) to prepare for it after the outbreak started in China, which they wasted. Didn’t buy masks, didn’t buy ventilators, didn’t buy protective gear for the medical staff.
Ack. I’ll stop. You don’t need the full list. I’m furious.
What am I going to do? Vote. Talk. Write. Attack the bastards any way I know how.
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Th say nothing of the Chinese waiting 6 weeks (at least) before they did anything about it in the first place …
I love your ‘to do’ list.
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When this first broke out in China, many of us (including me) said, smugly, that their slow response came out of a system that puts a penalty on passing bad news up the line. Well, we can all just un-smug ourselves now.
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Horrifyingly un-smugged now.
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Mm hmm.
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I beg to differ, Jacinda Adern ❤
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Agreed 🙂 … to a point. No government anywhere reacted in time to slow this down, starting with the Chinese who waited six weeks before they even began their shutdown. 😦
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I’m really enjoying staying at home and writing. I always felt like I had to go out and prove myself that I was getting better mentally and that I was functional. Now I’m feeling more and more like just allowing myself to stay home and live there. Not to go out, just stay at home as much as I can.
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Hi Michael 🙂 … welcome to my little corner of the interwebz.
Funny how all our ‘anti-socially unacceptable’ behaviours are suddenly acceptable, eh?
Take care and stay well. 🙂
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Hi! Yeah, it’s so different to not have the peer pressure to perform and ‘get out there’. So odd. I hope you stay well too ❤
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🙂
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