No Cake In The Break Room

It was inevitable at some point that the COVID threat would be behind us, where we could finally breathe easy, figuratively and the other thing. Ideally that looks like either negligible viral loads amongst a population or a robust and active infrastructure ready to respond to any flare-up outbreaks in ways that wouldn't strain it to the point of nullification. Two years ago I wouldn't have imagined it would have been a whole nation just eventually shrugging and wandering away from one another, mutually agreeing by default that we were "done with this shit" with absolutely zero regard for the facts on the ground. But here in April of 2022 it's far less surprising to me to see it play out exactly like that, mostly because of the fact that during the intervening period, I've been both alive and awake.

This is such a weird fucking place to live, man. I know there are definitely the "love it or leave it" people out there who don't want to hear that shit, but "weird" isn't inherently negative. The ways in which our weirdness manifests just happening to be actively, cruelly and self-negatingly so.

In most cases. Not all cases. There are great, unique, special things that make us stand out. Not the usual shit like "freedom" and "democracy" since those have always been relative cases deployed at select times to activate or eliminate societal forces as needed to maintain an equilibrium conducive to the constancy of orderly business. Police don't crack the skulls of every loud, disruptive protestor, just the ones they think will make people feel unsafe down where the good restaurants are. Fuck up a federal building all you want, but break a Walgreens window and they roll out the tanks. If you pick your targets right and fit the right profile, you can either be kettled and maced by forces of state control or you may get to run for governor.

OK, the bad things are known causes of tangential paragraphing, I apologize. But we also invented modern theme parks. We have insanely responsive customer service (relative to the rest of the world, trust me). We have a whole subculture of diners that serve breakfast all day. And we do pancakes like nobody's business. And as much as we are criminally abysmal at race and culture, at the same time there is probably no other country built specifically for assimilation (for better or for worse) of people from outside. It cuts both ways since every immigrant story is a story of triumph, even if the things they are triumphing over is horrible discrimination and neglect in their adopted homes. But at the same time, this place will find a way to draw you in, primarily as a consumer. That still counts! We're a marketplace with a flag and nuclear weapons. Citizenship and established credit are basically the same thing.

The marketplace aspect drives most things, including this "post-COVID" (I'm never getting rid of the sarcastic quotes on that, I'm sorry, I'm just not) transition. After a million people died, you'd think we'd need some kind of equivalent to a Marshall Plan to get us back on our feet, top to bottom. We transferred billions--in the 1940s it was billions, which is unfathomable, although now you can't build a football stadium for a billion--from us to western Europe to rebuild after the war. To be fair, a lot of what needed rebuilding was because we broke it, but to be even fairer, that's because the Nazis had it and wouldn't give it up. It was some nice shit too! Oh, and also we really, really wanted to make sure western Europe didn't get all salty about being all destroyed and destitute and start thinking about being communists, so it was an investment.

Now we've just got companies who had spent money and time early in the pandemic on advertisements about how much they really really gave a shit about whether you lived or died, now suddenly tripping over themselves to try to forestall this bullshit about a "new normal" where people could do their jobs from home with fewer hours, see their families, balance their lives, not kill themselves with stress and the destructive daily tidal wave of poison that is 100 million people commuting... Even me, who works in a no-profit environment, I'm facing a recall to office work for no visible reason except some fucking Boomer is in charge and likes it that way.

Maybe the problem is we should have done what western Europe did after the war and let it get out that maybe communism was an option. Maybe that would have gotten some free money and love* and at least a head-nod toward change in some way. But actually if they think you're leaning communist these days, they say it like it's a bad thing. Joseph McCarthy really ruined that angle for a lot of us out here just trying to get by. "Communist" is a charge more than a description, and has been for a couple generations. It doesn't merit you much. You get called that all the time these days if you're for things like fewer public mass shootings. It might have a future in it though. They thought the COVID vaccine was [something something] communist. Maybe when all is said and done and we let the waves and waves and waves finish crashing, maybe it will be only we the vaccinated communists left and we'll finally have a chance to get something changed.

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*This is America, don't fuck around, you know those are the same thing