We’re feeling pretty cocky about covid. Like we’re kicking its ass, finally. School officials are talking bravely about full re-openings in the fall. Families are getting their first hugs in over a year. Ball parks and other venues are on the verge of filling all the seats again. All this and more, even though a relatively high percentage of people still refuse to get their shot(s), and enough of the rest of the world has hardly begun the vaccination effort.

The trouble is that the blind spot is the same as it has always been—”it’s all about me,” in a corporate sort of way. As long as we here in America are moving toward herd immunity, that’s all that matters. Except that’s not true, and we should know that by now.

We as citizens of earth have to be in this together, or it will be a planetary game of whack-a-mole for the foreseeable future.

I don’t consider Gov. Tom Wolf a tyrant, a usurper of power, or somehow evil. Yes, he’s a politician, in that he has run for public office, bought TV ad time with the express purpose of trying to get people to vote for him, and often has to weigh his words when speaking to the public. A public which includes a vocal percentage beholden to MAGA and Fox News, The Big Lie, and Vaccines Are Not To Be Trusted.

There has been way too much ink spilled over Gov. Wolf’s handling of the Covid crisis. Overreactive, partisan dissatisfaction and a convenient 20-20 hindsight that places him in the crosshairs because he “overreached,” dared to make tough decisions about curtailing activity and movement because hardly anyone alive had ever been through a pandemic before.

He’s been doing his job, listening to people who truly know more than the average person on the street who’s just repeating what they hear from Sean Hannity or Tucker Carlson or the unexamined empty-headed blather on Fox and Friends about “losing our freedom.”

Wolf is making decisions based on something other than baseless opinions and theories and insidious group think. He has had a thankless job ever since he took office, but especially since Covid came calling. He’s done what he’s had to do, some of which he may do differently the next time.

And there will be a next time, sooner than later, if we are left exposed to Covid variants or some new pathogen because of some irrational fear of a magnificent weapon against disease- vaccination- that has contributed significantly to a doubling of our lifespan over the last 300 years.

What is happening to us? What do we do with all the crap being flung at us every day?

There were over 400 shootings just over the weekend in this country. We can blame it on covid fatigue, job insecurity and the attendant stress, mental illness, all of the above and more. But those aren’t legitimate excuses, right? There are no legitimate excuses for firing a weapon out of anger and frustration and killing and maiming people with it.

War is a different, though somehow related topic.

This seems a symptom of societal sickness, a symptom of systemic neglect and skewed priorities. What are we being told when one’s only solution when angry and frustrated is to shoot somebody? This is unsustainable madness.

But how do we slow this down, or stop it?  Divine intervention might be our only hope. Nothing short of that is going to help us. Because we as a gun-loving, gun-toting nation appear unwilling to address the elephant in the room. We apparently are incapable of interpreting the writing on the wall, hearing the collective cry for help, or entertaining the possibility that maybe there are just too many guns.

We shouldn’t be used to this, yet it seems like we are. We’re ok with the perpetual Wild West.

The news out of Afghanistan is gut-wrenching, though not unexpected. “National interest” leaves the snake-bitten country without the watch dog, the buffer between hope and chaos.

What kind of God would sanction ghastly violence against school children—young girls—who are just trying to learn and grow?

The Taliban is a scourge. A fanatical, ignorant, misogynistic, misguided, archaic, hateful relic, a burden on humanity. They should have a banner unfurled from the backs of their machine gun-toting pick-ups that reads, “Welcome to the 13th Century.”

Most of us know when something doesn’t feel right in our minds and souls. We know when something is off, when something challenges what we’ve been taught as being right and proper.

Or do we? It seems there is no standard, objective measure of propriety or moral uprightness. We bring to the table some of what we were taught by our elders—parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents, teachers both grade school and Sunday School. And peers, for better or worse, not to mention the influence of constant media exposure and bombardment. All of that is tempered, embraced or discarded, as we experience life for ourselves and form our own opinions.

What makes the current times so maddening and difficult is that I see and hear video and sound bites and messaging that run counter to my understanding of what makes for moral integrity and virtue but which, at the same time, are embraced as those exact traits by others.

I watch the evening news, I tune in to my preferred “extra dose” news outlets for additional commentary and perspective. And I can’t—nor will I ever—understand how and why we can be at odds over such important things.

People who have a better command of the English language can weave a tapestry of lies and bullshit and convincingly pass it off as truth. Stephen Miller, Mitch McConnell, Josh Hawley and others are particularly adept at this. Donald Trump, on the other hand, knows just enough words to be considered literate. But they can all navigate any attack on a position and survive to fight another day. I’m sure there are Democrats who can do the same, but they’re not who I’m talking about at the moment.

The swirl of news that has come at us every day since before Trump was elected in 2016 has often landed as an assault on our ears and good judgment. Supposed “patriots” seem intent on defending the psyche of a nation that nurses old wounds, old prejudices, preserving and perpetuating them for new generations. It’s never been completely apparent to me why they’re holding on so tightly, why they can’t bring themselves to embrace progress and change.

I understand the desire to hold onto power. What I cannot grasp is their willingness to do so at the expense of their humanity and their honor. At its roots, how can this be fueled by anything other than racism and ignorance? And cowardice? When one peels back the layers of empty rhetoric and idle chatter offered up by the wordsmiths, the ugliness is right there for all to see: a death grip on the past. A blindness that refuses to acknowledge the equality of us all in the eyes of a God they claim to know and love.

Jesus was a product of his times and he had his blind spots, especially early on. But point me to a passage that proclaims he was cool with someone being treated as three-fifths of a person.

I wonder if he would have had an opinion on “the purity of the ballot box.”

Ron DeSantis can’t be as smart as some apparently think he is. He strikes me as more a puppet, a needy child seeking someone’s approval.

There’s a difference between smart, and plodding calculation. He’s just another dull human with a certain political acumen, toeing the line, dependent on ignorance and the Fox News crowd to take him where he allegedly wants to go, perhaps harboring certain ambitions.

Or maybe he’s the one who various pundits are warning might come along next—the one who flies below the radar, who’s more patient and devious, and evil, than Trump.

Nah. Can’t be.

“Impacted colon of a country…” I like this description of America, as put forth by Bill Maher. Nobody dare prevail, nobody dare win the day with their ideas and proposals and hopes.

Well, “hopes” doesn’t exactly describe the Republican agenda, because that party is currently ruled by people who seem hellbent on returning us to the 1950s, which were the good old days for white people of a certain age– like Mitch McConnell and the most recent former President.

The fact that Trump appears still to be the darling of the Republican Party should serve as an unsettling reminder that a sizeable number of Americans—including Congressional leadership—are living by a whole different set of facts and rules.

What has bothered me all along, especially during the pandemic, is that they really seem not to care about people or public health. They’re hellbent on keeping the economy going, and that’s about it. Well, that and their insistence on painting Dr. Fauci and others as the bad guys. And they are sore losers.

This gives me a bad feeling about our future as a nation. We shouldn’t still be seeing Trump everywhere we look. We shouldn’t be seeing him anywhere we look. His time has come and gone. His continued popularity signals more unrest and inertia to come, or maybe even the end of us.

Who do you believe?

MSNBC or Fox? Rachel Maddow or Tucker Carlson? They’re both loud and passionate and in your face.

The big difference I see is that Rachel is insightful and rational, and Carlson is a spoiled, privileged faux patriot and fear monger going off the deep end.

Other than that, not much difference.

Something else that gets under my skin is the incessant need by networks to get the scoop, specifically to know what the President is going to say before he has a chance to say it publicly. I guess I’m not clear on what purpose this serves. It doesn’t seem that far removed from bragging, from saying, “Look at us—we got our hands on the speech before anyone else, and here’s your exclusive look at the high points.”

I can wait until the actual speech, and the summation afterwards. I don’t need the reconnaissance mission, the one-upmanship. It seems childish, in a way.

Of course, if I know in advance the gist of the remarks, this frees me up to catch another episode of Antiques Roadshow or Triple D.