Well, the last week has clearly shown us we are in the apocalypse here in the United States. COVID cases are spiraling out of control, climate change is fueling wildfires and hurricanes that are devastating swathes of the country, abortion is all but banned in Texas, with liberals screaming at leftists instead of conservatives. I am fully convinced that America is finished in all capacities. It’s simply a matter of time until the people who live here come to that realization. On to the wonderings for this shithole of a week.
New Spotify playlist as per usual
So we’re still waiting for the house sale to be finalized, but that’s the way this game plays out. This week, we had a brief scare when the European Union voted on recommendations to its member countries to restrict travel coming from the United States. Our destination is in Europe, and the news articles around this decision were either too obtuse or paywalled. I finally found a good breakdown, and it reads like something that applies to unvaccinated people only and restricting their entry into the E.U. Thankfully, my wife and I are fully vaxxed and shouldn’t be affected. But, I can assure you, I cannot stay in this nightmare land for much longer.
Being in Tennessee has likely heightened my experience of COVID. Our governor is less than worthless at this point. COVID hospitalizations are at an all-time high, and around 36% of current cases are school-age children. Of the 95 counties in the state, 13 are currently wholly shut down due to outbreaks. The state is simply refusing to allow them to adopt any form of virtual teaching yet lamenting over “learning loss.” I fully believe they are using this pandemic to kill public education, which fascists have reviled, especially since schools were desegregated.
I still get call-outs from the district because these people don’t know how technology works. The cowardly superintendent that runs our county’s schools has called parents twice, pleading with them to have their children wear masks and emphasizing this is not a mandate. He is proof that you only get to these positions in Tennessee by being a complying coward. I’ve read that other counties in the area are hiding full COVID numbers and concealing the cause of death for teachers. I can say I have not regretted leaving the profession in this state when I did. This is just going to get worse and worse until the bottom ultimately falls out. The people here are blinded by their perversion of the Christian faith that they have willfully blinded themselves.
Tennessee has more churches per capita than any other country (last I checked the stats), and I have never seen a worse representation of the teachings of Christ. Whatever this dominant religion is in America, it certainly isn’t Christianity. Like most fascist movements, it heavy-handedly adopts icons & symbols, but its purpose is to foment a raging nationalist fervor among its followers. Those who are in the “in-group” feel the love of Christ and woe to those who dwell outside that enclave. It warms my heart when I see American church attendance decline annually; the sooner this stain is washed out, the better for humanity.
And then you have the liberals screeching about the Supreme Court indecision on the Texas Abortion ban. They are all over Twitter, placing the blame solely on “Bernie bros” and lamenting for an imagined Hillary Clinton presidency. There is a complete absence of critical thought in these sentiments. I believe that something was deeply wrong with the Supreme Court when they ordered Florida to stop counting votes and handed the presidency to Bush in 2000, but that’s just me. Gore Vidal has a great quote, “We are the United States of Amnesia, we learn nothing because we remember nothing.”
This country’s two main parties are sports teams, with one of them refusing to use the power they have to do a damn thing of meaning. Today the Dems could begin work to expand the Court and thereby diminish the power of the Conservative justices. Congress could start the work to ratify abortion rights into law. Will they do these things? Nope. Instead, they will scream VOTE over and over as if they fix any problems when they have power. If you point this out to them, they will respond, “Oh, I guess you just love Trump then, huh?” Binary thinking. Only one or two, this or that, red or blue. The concept that there might exist better ideas outside this duality is anathema to them. There is no saving Americans; they have had their brains scrambled with centuries of propaganda. Best to cut loose and sail to better lands. I know we will.
PopCult Reviews 