Tomorrow will be the 14th day of this road trip. I am still at the very beginning, but certain themes are emerging. I am getting the opportunity to reminisce (mostly to myself) about the life I have lived but also and perhaps more importantly to get a clearer sense of where I am going.
It is a fortunate time to be taking this trip because the status of the moment makes me feel relatively safe about the coronavirus. The data leaves me pretty confident that if I get infected (especially with the omicron variant) I am very unlikely to get very sick. This is the combination of my vaccination status (booster shot of pfizer at the end of October) and the fact that the omicron variant seems to cause less severe symptoms than the original virus. Yet also the reports are that this variant is so much more infectious that the chances of escaping in seem too slim to make myself crazy. All that being said I don’t believe that this moment will last indefinitely. My worry is both that the boosters will not keep working indefinitely and that eventually the virus will mutate into something even more dangerous.
We are approaching a critical moment in the American experiment. As we approach the one-year anniversary of the January 6 insurrection I think we have to ask (and face the truth) about what would have happened if the mob had gotten a little bit further into the capitol on that fateful day? Does anyone think that they wouldn’t have lynched Nancy Pelosi ? AOC ? or even Mike Pence if they had gotten their hands on one of them. What would have happened after that? The 2022 midterms will be important, but it is all just a warmup for 2024. I expect that Trump will run again (with a vengeance) and his supporters will believe as much as they breathe that the only way he could possibly lose would be if the Democrats cheat. Consequently, even if the Democratic candidate legitimately wins the popular vote and the electoral college vote the crazies will believe that the election was stolen and that Trump was the authentic winner.
I began this trip worrying that the country was heading for another civil war but I’m no longer so sure. For all of the differences between the residents of the red states and the blue states, I think that most people really want the same things. They want to live in peace, they want to raise their children, they want to be loved and feel respected. Most of us/them operate more out of fear than they/we do out of hate.
I’ve been trying to figure out the state of the economy and it still seems primary like a giant pyramid scheme to me. Or maybe the better metaphor is a house of cards that will inevitably collapse. Or maybe, the best metaphor is that the corporations that seem to be making all of the decisions are a virus that is mutating into a more and more lethal version.
Climate change seems to be at the point of no return. Boulder County just had an absolutely crazy and horrifying fire (IN DECEMBER) that was coincidental with there having been no snow. Floods, tornadoes, fires, hurricanes are just the beginning
We may be at the end of the world as we once though we knew it and believed it.
and yet. The world has seemed to be at the end before. When the nazis were gaining control over most of Europe it certainly seemed hopeless to many.. If everyone had given up and chosen not to resist it might have been hopeless. But yet good people did resist and eventually the Nazis were beaten.
My short vacation in Pensacola has been lovely. Tomorrow I leave for Jacksonville.