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Just over a year ago, I wrote down some thoughts about what might be coming in the, then, months ahead. I offered that my point in doing so was to be able to “look back a year from now” and see how close or how far off my impressions were.
Sadly, my (distant) hope that we’d all just recover our senses seems just as distant as it was a year ago. The essence of my then argument (I think) is that we were once again building up, through the accumulation of stress and anxiety, a fragility of spirit that could cause us to break suddenly and unpredictably. I think we can safely say that said break hasn’t happened. At least not yet, even if the stress and anxiety remains.
I also offered a short-list of possible major events that would divert us from the slow-boiling path upon which I saw us. One possibility was a war with China. While that has not happened, it actually seems even more of a likelihood than it did a year ago. Or maybe I simply picked the wrong adversary? Today, a hot war with Russia seems far too likely – an outcome that I would not have even guessed at twelve months ago. What else did I get right, wrong, or kinda right if wrong in the detail?
For that matter, are we even still wound as tight as we appeared to be back in 2021? Just the other day I found myself thinking that, for all the craziness that comes with election season, the atmosphere of dread has somewhat lifted. I was on my way to a large, public gathering and was pleased to note that the subtle sense of fear that might have accompanied such a trip a year ago is no longer present.
Back then, there may have been an element of projection. I feared the simmering anger in others even as I recognized a tension within myself. I wrote about my short temper when dealing with faceless functionaries. Six months later, most of the mask requirements had been lifted (and those that remained mostly avoided). Occasionally, in that intervening year, I’ve still had to deal with masked people when necessitated by medical treatment. I recall a few interactions.
In one such encounter, I was responding to suggestions with positivity. I know forget my exact phrase. “Outstanding?” “Excellent?” Some variation thereof to acknowledge that I understood and approved of the instructions. With each exclamation, my counterparts (there were two separate people involved) grew visibly more agitated. Finally one challenged me – “What did you just say to me?” I explained myself, which seemed to cause her to relax – but only slightly. She remained (as far as I could read behind her mask) pretty agitated with me even if she said no more about it. For the life of me, I could not and can’t figure out what she thought I was saying. From her reaction, I can only assume it was something vulgar and well as insulting.
In another situation, I was waiting for the doctor to grace us with her fleeting presence. To prepare, I was providing background information to the nurse/assistant. Despite my description of it now, to you, I felt that I was being fairly relaxed, calm, and not at all antagonistic, answering the various questions put to me. At some point, she stopped and apologized, asking me if her questions were angering me. I answered “no, of course not.” They weren’t. (The question, for what its worth, was my first name.). Again, I can’t imagine what she thought was going on based on my perception of the interaction.
Of course I blame the masks but it is also bigger than that. Even as I typed to you, today, how things were calming down, a vicious fight erupted on my town’s Facebook. Someone sent the cops to investigate their neighbor’s chickens causing battle lines to quickly form. Maybe while my own sense of trouble has momentarily ebbed, the rest of the world is churning along at a steady pace. Maybe it’s a combination of ubiquitous social media mixing with the learned behavior that grew out of our year-or-two of isolation. Is it now normal, expected, to respond quickly and furiously in public to the kind of slights that, a decade ago, we might have shrugged off or maybe grumbled about in private?
As I said, my big fear is that this is all a one-way accumulation of tension that can only resolve itself badly. It is easier for we humans to turn nasty than it is to relearn how to be decent and kind.
I’ve already updated you on my thoughts re: Stuart Scheller, so we won’t revisit that.
I kind of, tongue-in-cheek suggested that “maybe all Trump supporters will be jailed and the rest of us will live happily ever after.” Oddly enough, that seems to have the same generally-on-point but way-off-in-the-specifics as my other “predictions.” Depending on how you follow the news, there does appear to be a recent ramp-up in the intensity of investigations against Trump supporters (specifically those whose support Trump may have relied upon). Legal machinations and civil liberties concerns seem to have prevented the kind of swift execution of justice that the never-Trumpers would like to see, but this is clearly still a work in progress.
My final suggestion back then, again one I didn’t quite believe, was that the ‘rona could just blow over and with it all the dysfunction that it brought with it would fade away. I didn’t really believe that was possible and I still don’t. It is interesting, however, to see where we are with it as we are closing in on three years of pandemic panic.
In the last week or so President Biden announced that the pandemic is “over.” We must assume this is more of a political statement than a scientific one, or even one of policy. After all, the government medical agencies are still pushing heavily on vaccines and, as I said, most medical facilities are still hyper-focused on mask, vaccines, and other emergency protocols. As to Biden’s government itself, the fact the president thinks its “over” hasn’t prompted them to lift the State of Emergency, which they continue to use to provide money in the form or medical subsidies, unemployment benefits, and the cancellation of student loans. There was even an effort to “correct” the president’s musings, explaining that he didn’t quite mean what we thought he meant. That happens a lot with him these days.
In other words, the ‘rona hasn’t quite vanished and the rest of us have yet to calm the **** down, but we may yet be slowly drifting in that direction.
Long story short – it’s been a year and, despite its craziness, has anything really changed? We’re no longer in the same place we were in fall of 2021 but we’ve also, by no means, moved on. A shooting war with a major foreign power seems even closer than it was but the when, why, and even with whom remains elusive. The masks, lockdowns, and vax-ID checks have fallen (again mostly) by the wayside, but those who would advocate their renewal are still as passionate as ever. Perhaps this sense of calm is real or maybe it is an approaching election that diverts much of the “direct action” energy of the past few years into campaign contributions and political hit pieces.
Are we over it or just getting started? I guess we’ll have to check back again in another year.
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