“We’re gonna get through this.”

It could be Gov. Edwards, Gov. Hochul, Bill De Blasio, Gov. Murphy, Gov. Wolf. Probably not Gov. De Santis, because he’s Alfred E. Neuman in the flesh. Nothing to worry about in Florida. Everything is fine there.

In any event, these words are ringing hollow, just an increasingly pathetic attempt at something leaders are expected to say in the midst of a disaster. The whole country is burning or drowning or suffocating, but all our leaders can muster is “we’re gonna get through this.” Wow. Thanks. Don’t know what I would have done without your powerful words.

And then to add insult to injury, the solution put forth is to anticipate these bigger and angrier storms, build our infrastructure so it withstands the assaults… instead of having the balls to acknowledge that we have a more pressing issue: we need to change. We the people need to curb our appetites and change our habits and stop feeling so entitled. Because the forces of nature will always stay one step ahead of us.

Holy shit. Bigger and better isn’t the answer! That’s not the direction we need to go! Why is it not possible for people to see this by now?

Ida was mayhem. Ida was a slice of chaos and hell on earth from which many will never recover. And some day soon, Ida is going to seem like child’s play. But chances are that our elected leaders will just keep using the lazy and tried but not-so-true sound byte.

“We’re gonna get through this.”

Confusion sown by the sheer volume of conflicting information. This has been the case throughout the Covid era. For example, the Delta variant is running rampant, cases are skyrocketing, ICU staffs are surviving on stomach lining, but at the same time cases have plateaued and started going the other way. It’s been a constant stream of conflicting and confusing numbers and trends, dueling panels of experts. Cherry-picked statistics?

By now, I know that because someone dares whisper “a decline in cases,” I’m not going to throw caution to the wind and abandon certain habits that have been ingrained since March 2020. Yet for others, it’s permission. It’s all they need to hear. It’s their excuse to party, or it’s affirmation that vaccines are hooey.

The decline in cases often reflects a drop from astronomically bad levels to something that’s just less astronomically bad. There’s no reason to celebrate or let your guard down!!!!!

Fauci and Osterholm aren’t boogeymen. They’re doctors who deal in the rational and the real-world. They may not have all the answers, but they’ve been as right as anyone possibly could be– Osterholm uncannily so. If we had listened to them from the beginning, we’d be in a better place right now.

But you just keep taking that ivermectin.

Didn’t watch Maddow last night. Getting tired of the Afghanistan coverage. There are only so many ways to parse what’s going on, and it’s easy to take pot shots from afar, to get all indignant and assign blame. There is a long line of critics, topped off by Lindsey Graham and others who are jumping on the bandwagon of calling for Biden’s impeachment, as if to imply what he’s doing now rises to the level, or sinks to the depths of Trump’s entire presidency. Not exactly apples and apples. But turnabout is fair play, right?

What did we expect? We reacted in typical bloviating American fashion to, yes, the worst attack on our own soil. But still… we overreacted, we ignored history, and didn’t think about long-term consequences. We attacked in Afghanistan, of all places, “the graveyard of empires,” and stayed there for twenty years. Threw more than a trillion dollars at an intractable problem. It really is the epitome of boasting and hubris, along with a certain amount of idealism and good intent.

And let’s not forget all the money that was made by contractors. War is good business for somebody, all body counts considered.

Dealing with shades of gray gets frustrating after a while. Life is easier when you don’t have to think too much.

It seems we live in a world not only of differing opinions, but polarized opinions which, apparently, are all cogent and valuable, and equally valid. No one is on the wrong side of any issue, because many are immature adolescents who can’t stand to be corrected or admit to the possibility that they don’t have all the facts.

When we get to pick and choose our facts, it’s like we really are living on different planets. It is difficult to gain momentum in any specific direction. A pandemic, for example, arrives on our doorstep, and millions buy the lie that it’s nothing to worry about, that certain media folk are blowing it way out of proportion and actual experts are idiots and pawns who should be jailed, that masks are offensive and vaccines are dangerous. And just ignore the patient data that’s skewing younger, or the negative number of available ICU beds in Alabama and field hospitals set up in parking garages in Mississippi and an empty-headed sycophant of a Governor in Florida. And, of course, there’s Texas in all its outsized bluster and hubris and freaking loudness and frontier patriotism.

The people targeted for silencing or jail time have seen all of this coming since the beginning! Though I doubt they could have imagined that so many would refuse a simple shot in the arm. That probably has blown a few minds.

It shouldn’t come as any surprise that the outfits who can afford the longest TV commercials are drug companies and investment firms. Both genres are insufferable, and they just plain suck. And let’s not forget insurance companies and auto manufacturers. Drive a Nissan, or BMW or Lexus or Mustang– it’ll somehow change your life, make you a happier, better person.

The graveyard of empires. This is what Afghanistan is called. Seems accurate. The former Soviet Union languished there, and now we’re leaving after 20 years and a trillion dollars spent. Somebody made money, and thousands of people died, but in the end the Taliban are back. Pretty ugly stuff, though after 20 years, progress was made and people got a taste of a different life. The Taliban says it will be more tolerant of certain things, which remains to be seen. Maybe they’ll party like it’s 1500 instead of 1200.

It matters not at all that Greg Abbott has tested positive for Covid-19. He probably welcomes it, will use it as some sort of “teaching moment.”

Climate change is a figment of our imaginations.

So we can just disregard the latest batch of video clips from, oh, pretty much anywhere on earth. From the drought and fires out west, to massive fires in Siberia and deluges in Texas, to Spain and other European destinations where wind is ravaging beachfronts and kicking up dust storms, and rain is coming down in buckets, rendering postcard villages repositories for mud and damage very few ever imagined they’d see. Even China is suffering its share of meteorological excess.

Still, climate change is a plot by tree-hugging leftists who have it out for America. It can’t be climate change. It’s just earth being earth, that silly planet.

They apparently cannot see that the earth is being earth, and it is in the process of ridding itself of a malady. Which is us.

Balance is not part of the lexicon. Many things are out of balance.

The Delta variant is running rampant through mostly red states. Florida has many waiting for a bed, Louisiana is sending patients to Texas, Mississippi is setting up field hospitals in parking garages. Health systems are on the verge of collapse. Holy shit. What did they expect?

In places, it’s the worst things have been since the start of the pandemic. Medical workers must be pulling their hair out, saying things like, “We shouldn’t be here, y’all.” Amen to that.

Freedom, though. Freedom is what it’s all about. No one gonna tell me what to do.

So be it, Donald. And Ronald. And Greg. And anyone else treating this as merely an “assault on our freedom,” a.k.a. a twisted political calculation.

This is what doubling down gets you. Your bandwagon is losing its axles, and you’re afraid of losing face with whoever is left in your insane march to the deep end.

Are the scandals real? Are there really that many men who have behaved badly? Probably. Is it really that women have just had enough and they’re not gonna take it anymore? Or is it also—maybe a little, or a lot— that women smell a payday and they want to get in on a settlement? That’s horribly cynical, I know. But the lure of cash makes for a powerful motivator. I best leave this to judges and juries to decide, and find something else to talk about.

Something more edifying, like the latest Covid disinformation. That’s often good for a belly laugh or two. I’ll try to figure out what I’m missing as Abbott and Costello, I mean DeSantis, stand in the way of health professionals who are trying to save lives. Who the hell are they playing to? Are they gambling with their careers, or are they that sure that support for such behavior still exists? Things are making less sense every day.

The planet is retching and purging, and people are losing their minds.

What is a human life worth? Apparently not enough to sway opinions and understandings of Covid-19 and those heinous mask mandates and social distancing guidelines. And don’t get people started on having to wash their hands or get vaccinated. Freedom rules!

At this point, we are not going to emerge from the dark cloud that is Covid-19. It will not be completely controlled, it will continue to rear its ugly head from time to time, and we will just have to learn to live with it. Like the flu, on steroids. So, not like the flu at all.

It’s beyond my capability to capture in words. There is no such thing as all being on the same page, even when it comes to fighting a pandemic- a world-wide epidemic. No one asked for it, but it has happened and is happening still. Yet for far too many, it’s like it’s not happened at all.

The Delta variant may give way to something more vile and transmissible and practically impossible to defend against, which may sound alarmist but shouldn’t come as a surprise. The anti-vaxxers will inevitably jump on this and somehow interpret it to mean that the vaccines have been useless all along. Just as they thought!

See, this is when the mind-numbness hits another gear. All along the way, we have arrived at crossroads, and enough people have blown right through them without giving a thought to the significance of the moment.

Early on, we were told by people who actually know something about virus behavior that if we masked up and kept our distance for a while, the virus would peter out because it had less of a chance to infect somebody. Through a mix of necessity and stubbornness, enough people ignored that and the pandemic worsened.

Certain high-ranking government officials and network talking heads claimed our rights were being violated and freedoms threatened by being forced to wear a fucking mask and keep our distance. Many jumped on that bandwagon, and the pandemic worsened.

Vaccines were introduced for the purpose of inoculating as many people as possible and reducing the number of targets the virus could set its sights on, but enough people keep saying “no” and the pandemic that was in retreat is now resurging and likely to mutate into a form that current vaccines can’t defend against.

The unvaccinated will continue to place the blame on Dr. Fauci or the Communist pinko liberal Democrats or the boogeyman lurking under their beds.

I don’t know where the virus originated. We may never know this. What I do know is that millions of people have been steered down the wrong road by people they, for whatever reason, trust. And as they continue to listen to and believe Donald Trump and Rand Paul and Ron DeSantis and Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity and the rest, they will watch this nation they say they love—and the rest of the world- descend into chaos.

I’m beginning to think that the bunker builders and survivalists are on to something.