Year 2021 As Tragedy And Farce

(Update: With many thanks to Driftglass for including this article at Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up! Please do me a favor and review my best articles of 2021 for submission to Florida Writers' Association's annual Royal Palm awards!)

As the year ends, today becomes a moment to look back and wonder at how we survived it at all.

(Christ. As I type this I just got word that Betty White passed away. FUCK YOU, 2021, DIE IN A FUCKING FIRE WILL YA)

Ahem.

The tragedy of the year stems from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, now rolling into its second year. Even with a vaccine program in place, even with all we know about how to fight COVID and how to reduce the risks... we're ending this year with a dangerously effective Omicron strain that's threatening to force shutdowns of workplaces and schools in spite of the Far Right forces obsessed to ignore the risks to stick to their own crazed Narrative.

The tragedy of 2021 got worse as donald trump - stinging from his Electoral losses in 2020 - refused to play by the rules of the Constitution and sent in mobs of insurrectionists into the halls of Congress to force that body from confirming the vote counts. For all the digging into the events of January 6th, we're barely seeing major arrests and serious punishments of the rioters and the culprits that we know so far who planned the whole attack.

If there'd been anything major going on all year long, it was the war of attrition between the madness of the Pandemic and the madness of trump's Big Lie. A lot of other crazy things happening in 2021 tended to tie into either ongoing crisis.

If there was any saving grace to this past year, it was how much of a farce the trumpian War On Reality could become.

The arguments trump forced his handlers to take - in arguing over stolen votes that were never stolen - led to those handlers and lawyers getting taken to the woodshed by judges who cut through every gaslighting lie they offered. These were lawyers who showed no sign of understanding the Constitution or election laws from beginning to end. The next sight we need to see of these inept lawyers should be them losing their license - like Giuliani - to practice law.

Everything coming out about how trump's inner circle coordinated and planned the January 6th Insurrection would be pure comedy if it didn't involve serious crimes. The very idea that they created a PowerPoint presentation to show trump how they planned it - and a sloppy PowerPoint at that - would be the crowning moment of funny whenever future Hollywood producers film the streaming miniseries about the riots.

As for the efforts in 2021 to fight the Pandemic, trump's early drum beats to push an anti-vax agenda to humiliate Biden and keep the nation in chaos led to the growing realization that trump's actions were literally killing off their own Far Right voting base... forcing trump's more recent calls to vaccinate falling on deaf - even hostile - ears.

Both nightmare and comedy at the same time in the same crises.

No wonder 2021 feels like a bad dream refusing to end.

Gods help us in 2022. 

Quick News Tonight Part I: Masking Florida

On Friday, the Leon County Circuit Court judge ruled in favor of the families suing DeSantis over his anti-mask mandates (via Jeffrey S. Solochek and Ana Ceballos at the Tampa Bay Times (paywall):

A judge in Leon County ruled Friday that Gov. Ron DeSantis and his administration acted “without legal authority” when barring universal mask mandates in schools, delivering a blow to the Republican leader as a growing number of school districts defied his order.

Circuit Court Judge John Cooper did not contend the governor violated the state Constitution when it came to providing safe schools or recognizing the local authority of school boards. Rather, he said DeSantis and his administration tried to unlawfully block mask mandates by improperly invoking and selectively enforcing Florida’s new “Parents’ Bill of Rights” law.

“Seeking to enforce a policy through executive order, and through actions that violate the provisions of the Parents’ Bill of Rights, is by definition, arbitrary and capricious,” said Cooper, who spoke for 2½ hours to outline his findings.

DeSantis responded by saying the court ruling was “not based on science and facts” and made with “incoherent justifications.” The Florida Department of Education, which was enforcing the mask mandate ban, said Cooper’s decision “discards the rule of law” and vowed to keep fighting in court...

This means that while DeSantis got punched, he's not down for the count and he's not going to budge on his "pandering to the ignorant trumpsters" agenda.

In the meantime, the COVID infection rates for Florida keep going up and nobody is slapping DeSantis in the face for every single number he's generating through his inaction.

Some Notes in December 2020

Just to get a few thoughts in:

After weeks of him stumbling across the nation from legal carnie show to legal carnie show, Rudy Giuliani finally tested positive for COVID-19, and it's serious enough that he's had to check into a hospital.

Because he'd been in Arizona recently meeting in person with Republican legislators, he's essentially forced the state lege to close down for quarantine.

Oh, by the by, Rudy and his fellow fraudsters have yet to convince an actual courtroom to buy their fake "voter fraud" scams.

The numbers of COVID infections have skyrocketed since Halloween, and Thanksgiving did us no favors as a massive number of fellow Americans decided "fuck it, we're family gathering." 

Instead of coping with the pandemic, trump is threatening to veto a defense spending bill unless Congress revokes a Section 230 of the that gives private social media companies - Twitter, Facebook, etc. - the power to self-monitor any offensive, deceptive, or outright fraudulent posts (like trump's own BS tweets). he wants to punish Twitter for adding corrective claims to his lies.

Oh, and he's still setting up the likelihood of staging a coup d'état before Saturnalia, that bastard.

Oh, and as a follow-up, here's Julie from October meeting Julie from June. The visit from December Julie is gonna be lit:

 

Highest Risk

It's behind a firewall, but the New York Times has an article from yesterday pretty much saying "JESUS, THE SCHOOLS ARE THE HIGHEST RISK FACTOR IN GETTING COVID, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DON'T REOPEN THEM."

If we can quote from the CNN article that quotes the Times (written for CNN by Veronica Stracqualursi):

Internal documents from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned that fully reopening K-12 schools and universities would be the "highest risk" for the spread of coronavirus, according to a New York Times report, as President Donald Trump and his administration push for students and teachers to return in-person to classrooms.

The 69-page document obtained by the Times marked "For Internal Use Only" was among materials for federal public health response teams deployed to coronavirus hotspots to help local public health officials handle the outbreak, the newspaper reported.

The document was circulated this week, the Times reported, as Trump slammed the CDC guidelines around reopening schools and he, Vice President Mike Pence and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos increased their pressure on schools to fully reopen by the fall.

It is unclear whether the President viewed the CDC document, according to the Times.

This is, again, why we shouldn't elect to the White House a bankrupt moronic con artist who refuses to read. Back to the article:

The document, mostly comprised of CDC documents already publicly available, mentions reopening plans from states, districts, and individual schools and universities, identifying some proposals as consistent with CDC guidance and criticizing the "noticeable gaps" in other plans, the Times reported.

Not every state is ready to re-open anything (cough, Florida, cough, and for 2,000 of us a day THIS IS NOT A JOKE). As I've blogged earlier and as others are blogging (and screaming), our schools are a gathering place of far too many humans into far too many indoor locations incapable of social distancing nor keeping everything sanitized.

You think bars and restaurants and Disney theme parks are super spreaders? Your local middle school will be just as effective in spreading COVID, and in a more horrifying way.

Jesus, America.

Reopening the schools right now is a bad idea.

The Meaning of the Mask

It hurts to see my state of Florida bring out its godforsaken high-level crazy-ass madness on the global stage, but here it was in all its infamy this week:

It's like they were being forced at gunpoint to eat their veggies and brush their teeth at night.

It's been one of the worst reactionary movements I've ever seen in my life outside of "All White Lives Matter" from its maddening tone-deafness, willful rejection of science, and desire of each of those screaming anti-mask arguers to show off their prideful selves.

The one consistent argument - aside from the conspiracy whacko stuff like 5G transmission (?!) - is how the masks will hurt them by cutting off the amount of oxygen we need. The "I Can't Breathe" excuse, which is so tone-deaf as to be crass intentionally. It's also wrong, with report after study after proven demonstration shows us.

So why are these wingnuts absolutely fucking freaking out over the wearing of something that really doesn't harm them and only costs about 6.99 to buy (cloth masks available in menswear stores NOW) or 15.99 to buy as a 50-pack off Amazon?

Masks are symbolic. They have cultural value. And in this case, in this Age of Coronavirus, the mask represents health care.

But here's the thing:

The mask is not about YOUR own health and well-being. The mask represents the health and well-being of EVERYONE ELSE AROUND YOU.

The mask does not stop you from contracting the virus. The mask reduces the odds of you spreading the virus to everyone else.

The mask is a symbol of you looking out for others, that you are a caring and thinking person, willing to do your part for the community - family, friends, neighbors, even your enemies - health.

What does it say for those who reject wearing the mask? What does it tell us when these self-absorbed people go out in public proudly displaying their faces? What level of Pride is driving these people to expose not themselves but everyone else to the risks of COVID?

It's not so much that each of these screaming, mocking people are increasing the odds they get exposed to a lethal virus.

It's that each of these screaming, mocking people are willing to get the rest of us sick. They don't care for us, they don't WANT to care for us. It would disrupt their self-perceptions of superiority.

Which symbolizes exactly how dangerous their self-centered, holier-than-thou, egomaniacal rage-driven world-view is.

Gods help us, because the people who refuse to wear the masks clearly don't give enough fucks to help us.

Their selfishness is getting everyone else killed.