A Useless Tool

The first days of 2021 feel like 2020 mixtape re-release. As my most cynical friends have pointed out, January 1st felt much like December 31st, both days just being a Thursday and Friday during a regular week. The damage is done, though, and carries over. We have lost so much over the past nine months and somehow still managed to survive inside our bubbles. All connections have been severed, steady income and responsibility squeezed to a thin thread, and all plans have been swept off the table like crumbs. 

I can’t believe 2020 is done. I can’t believe this presidency is almost over. I can’t believe that vaccines for this virus are going out to people. Who knows how effective the vaccines will be, since there’s a new strain out there, and locally, LA people are too dumb to understand that it just takes one person, one moment to change your life. Following the dumbest holiday of the year (a countdown to what? To nothing!), people won’t gather as much, albeit a bunch of them who think they wouldn’t get it are going to have a huge meetup at club ICU. And the president? I’m hoping for a pay per view heel drag out of the house and hazmat level disinfecting to follow. The vaccines are hope, and if distribution isn’t screwed up, we’ll start coming back to life by spring or summer. That’s my optimistic take. But we’re not there yet. 

Nope, the numbers look horrifying. 

I want to take a moment, in hindsight, to mourn the people we've lost last year. 

IN MEMORIAM 

To all of my former friends who said that BLM is a terrorist organization, that blue lives matter, it's been nice knowing you. Blue lives? They are blue jobs. You don't wake up with a badge on. People do go to sleep and wake up black, or indigenous, or asian, or hispanic. Those who equated the riots with the protests, losing the whole pointy of things, who defended police brutality, will be on the wrong side of history and on the dark side of my attention. Yesterday's insurrection on the capitol building featured what you represent: White supremacy, fascism, and domestic terrorism. People waving blue line flags attacked capitol police. Ironic, right? Blue Lives Matter was created to respond to Black Lives Matter, to diminish the argument that black lives have value and should be treated with the same respect and rights as white lives. Kicking you to the curb for choosing the wrong side of this issue. 

To my former friends and colleagues who have insisted since the beginning that COVID was a hoax, I can't believe we were ever friends. Considering that you have intelligence on the level of a flat-earther and have pushed conspiracy theories about how it's no worse than the flu or that hospitals are making money from COVID diagnoses, or that the vaccine is a plot to track and control you, I am proud to say that I have swept you into the trash can marked 2020 and didn't look back. I realize how this works; It's not real until it affects you. IF you are still alive, I hope you see the light instead of going towards it, and that someday we can drink and laugh about how incredibly dumb you were. I hope you can take my neverending laughter at your horrible take on this without having your feelings hurt. 

Who doesn't appear in this in memoriam section? My republican friends, who believe in party values and don't align themselves with the current agitator-in-chief, are still close friends of mine. Other people, who have engaged in thoughtful discussion about politics even if we don't agree, made the cut. The cut? What am I talking about? This wasn't a purge, this was a moment-to-moment revelation when people reveal their racist (and yes, that represents an all-bad spectrum where any shade of it is intolerable) leans and anti-science/anti-rational pseudo-media beliefs. I still remember trying to talk to someone a few years ago whom I knew was a flat-earther. It was incredibly hard to have a regular conversation with him. Chats were brief. 

So if this reads as an incredibly frustrated, tense post about how 2021 is beginning with an exorcism of all of 2020's evils, it accurately captures how stressful it is to transition to a functioning society right now. I am normally hopeful in the present, but let's just say that I am embracing how difficult things are right now, and that's okay. I don't think it's going to stay this way for long.

I am already planning the next entry - the annual list of goals and hopes for the coming year. Let's shake this one off, shall we?