Delusion

Step right up friends, don’t be shy! You’re about to see the greatest show on earth– a show of such misguided bull— that you won’t believe your eyes! Watch as people deny that they’re living in a pandemic! Watch as people deny that their lives need to change! Watch as people actually believe that they can power through this time as they’ve powered through so many other catastrophes in their lives!

See the rising death rate? What’s a few hundred thousand deaths if we can still watch baseball. See the number of active positive cases spike into the millions? What’s a few sick people if we can still go shopping and eat out. See the hotspots that are mostly nursing homes and prisons? What’s a few dead old people and criminals if we can still go to church? Yes, it’s a pandemic, but people are going to die in a pandemic and we just need to accept that.

See the brave men and women not wearing masks! It is their constitutional right to not wear one, amiright? See the poor fools who wear masks– they really believe that they’re protecting themselves and other people. They say it’s science– ha! What has science got to do with it? We don’t believe in science anymore. What good is science anyway? All it has done is cure and prevent diseases like small pox and polio. All it has done is find ways to increase crop production for farmers so we have enough food to eat.

See the children! The poor children who can’t go to school. They’re going to miss out! They might not get to play their sports that will get them into college and into a high-paying pro sport career! They might not be socialized correctly! They might not learn anything! Heaven knows you can’t learn anything over the internet, except which celebrities are dating and what kind of makeup to wear. The internet was created by science and, well, we’ve already shown you how useless science is.

And the economy! If workers are too busy teaching their kids they can’t be productive! People who aren’t working might not be able to buy things! Businesses might have to close! Job creators and investors might lose money! Normal people who are not lazy might have to go on the dole! Watch us as we ask for– no DEMAND– business as usual. It is our birthright, business as usual, we must have it.

Now, I’m going to warn you– this next part is scary. Watch as the poor begin to resist bearing the burden of normalcy. Watch as black and brown people protest carrying the white man’s burdens. Don’t let your children, named Ignorance and Want, show their faces. Turn away if you must from the shamefulness of it all. The shamefulness of the poor and oppressed wanting more. Wanting to survive by working only one job rather than two or three. Wanting to avoid being arrested and imprisoned for crimes that rich people, white people, would get a slap on the wrist for. Turn away as they cry out for help, for compassion, for fair treatment. Avert your eyes.

Do not let our shared delusion evaporate, for if that happens we might have to face the fact that we live within an unsustainable, unfair, unbalanced social structure. Don’t look to closely at the edges of that shared delusion or it might begin to fail and we might have to admit that white supremacy is at the root of our imagined democratic society. Don’t gaze too long at the illusion of equality, the illusion of opportunity to live, to be free and to pursue our dreams equally; for if we look at it too long we might have to stop fooling ourselves and begin the hard work of seeing each other as human beings in community with one another. To see each other as human beings who each deserve the respect that being human requires and human beings who all deserve a living wage and decent affordable healthcare and housing.

People, step right up and see all of these things and more. Only, keep your eyes closed or averted– it might be uncomfortable to see, and we wouldn’t want to be uncomfortable, now, would we?

Tags: covid-19, delusion, inequality, pandemic, protest, wearing masks