September 01st, 2021

Written July 7, 2020
CW swearing and sarcasm, opinions about Covid decision making

Ohio has turned into a 5th grade pandemic classroom.
 
To my right is the kid who supplies the entire school with Mad Magazine, Playboy, and cigs.  He wants the class to know that people die everyday from car crashes, smoking, and drinking. Just last week he crashed his bike into a whole mess of kids and infected all of them with his budding addiction and cognitive dissonance. From there his idiocy spread like wildfire. There’s no vaccine. And even if there were, he won’t take it.
 
To my left is the kid who explains that death is good for the economy. He knows people who died of Covid or who are living with organ damage from it, but it’s mostly their fault for getting it to begin with.
 
Way in the back is the kid who’s figured out that the bare minimum one must say in public and on social media is that one is pro mask. If one says that then maybe one can go ahead and enjoy cover when one explains how this virus is still a hoax.
 
Next to that kid is the kid who doesn’t give a fuck and absolutely loves that we have a president who is an extraordinarily horrible human being. She doesn’t actually watch the president speak or really read the news, but she’s enjoying herself.
 
At the front left of the room is an assault weapons wielding fiend who thinks that it’s a great tactic to intimidate public officials with, you know, weapons. He spends lunch and recess telling people the accurate terms for all of the parts of assault weapons. All his best conversations have happened at gun point in public.
 
Right behind that kid is a kid who just wants everyone to get along and thinks the world is a real shame and social media is a bully. If you ask her a question or confront her she’ll tell you to enhance your calm. She’s mostly unaware how our government functions which is fine because politics are mean. She votes however she was raised to vote. No matter what.
 
Next to the window is the kid who thinks that the greatest strength of capitalism is that no matter what it’ll never run out of other people’s labor. He needs meat. So fuck those workers.
 
He’s best friends with the kid behind him who’s parents for real will not vote for Joe Biden until Joe personally tells his parents that they’re right about everything. His parents also think critical infrastructure should fucking turn a profit so fuck the post office. His parents have no idea that Republican-controlled House and Senate and President George W. Bush manufactured a crisis for the postal service in 2006. No clue they required the USPS to prefund its future healthcare benefit payments to retirees for the next 75 ridiculous years. No clue the PO was required to divert more than $5 billion annually to prepay the health benefits of retirees who have not yet been hired. Down with stamps.
 
At the end of this row is a kid explaining how his freedom is under tyrannical attack. He’ll see you later at his vector, I mean church.
 
His BFF is a kid whose best ability is his ability to exist in a world made fresh each day with no collective memory of what the president said the previous day. He does not do Twitter and sees no reason to consider any of the 50,000 tweets the president has vomited up as actual words to consider at all. He’ll only consume heavily edited Fox News videos of the president. He has a velvet picture of Elvis and Sean Hannity on his bedroom wall. And an autographed pic of Rush on his night stand. Fuck Kaepernick. And Greta.
 
If you look along the back of the room you’ll see the gang of people unconcerned with per capita testing or testing at all. They say Taiwan is doing well with the virus hoax because of Confucianism. When someone explains to them that Taiwan is doing well because their Vice President is an epidemiologist with previous experience with SARS and they have a strong public health sector with an emergency command center they all chorus, “Libtard.” Except that one kid who just “lols” because he’s not that smart and he’s worried someone might ask him something he can’t answer.
 
Then there’s the kid whose utterly convinced the world is a worse place because she’s learning about an injustice. She’ll give you selected topics you’re allowed to discuss. But not respond.
 
Confused by things that cannot be turned off, put away, declared a hoax, or shot, the kid who sits behind me and over one seat has apparently been trained to expect instant gratification at all times and since pandemics are long, and boring and horrifically tragic and the benefits of interventions aren’t immediately obvious in real time, it must mean that nothing is working, it’s the deep state, and she doesn’t WANNA do it anymore. Bless her heart.
 
Her best friend sits next her. She’s against statistics. And vaccinations. Her FB page says, “Nothing is ever knowable definitively. Down with the Scientific Method.” Have a blessed day.
 
The kid on her left spends all day doodling tattoos on her desk, arms, and hands. “Let natural selection sort it out,” is today’s doodle. She’ll see you later. She has to go pick up her dad’s rheumatoid arthritis prescription and her little sister’s heart medication.
 
She hangs with the kid who believes there is one operational definition of liberty and part of that definition is forcing other people to comply with her demands and act like everything is normal no matter what.  She posts about how the constitution is a document for her to consume personally and to apply to her personal set of circumstances. Her personal set of circumstances are that she does not want to wear a mask. And she really wants to be angry about that. Also her boyfriend hates government. He thinks a national response to a national problem is stupid as fuck. He’s super fucking pissed he has no bleach. He wants you to watch Plandemic.
 
Sitting by the wall over there is the kid who loves false choices and shuns nuance. He hears your questions, but his default setting response bares zero relation to what you say. He employs the worst of all bad-faith assumptions in assuming that those of us obeying our state's restrictions and supporting the making of science-based policy are enjoying this shit show and don't care how long it goes on. He’s a vocal trump supporter, but also not registered to vote. Cuz voting is stupid.
 
Hanging in the hallway during class cuz learning is dumb as hell is the loudest group of kids. They think you get less economic damage by letting the virus spread. They demonize what they can’t understand, especially anything related to science. They think hospitals are enough of a solution. Hospitals that many times are working with inadequate PPE and lack of testing materials. They’re okay if you die at your shitty job so that other people can have minimal interruptions in their lifestyles-it's the right thing to do. They think using the DPA to supply this country with all the supplies Covid testing requires, with N95s, and bleach is insane. They just can’t wait for things to go back to the way they were. And they’ll pray for you.

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