I think we need to invent a new kind of emotion for this stage of the pandemic, like emptysad, or ghost-tired
— Amber Sparks (@ambernoelle) August 7, 2021
For the last few years, I've been so buried in other projects that I really haven't had the time to write much on politics and the threats to democracy in America but, as you all know too well, my silence had obviously not led to silence on the subject online. Because of this, I've been less motivated to write and more into just curating content over on the Facebook Page.
As some of these last couple years' long projects start coming to fruition, though, it's time to re-up my blog game. One of my fellow collaborators on several books recently released, with more coming in the Fall, recently declared the rest of the summer to be "Heavy Content Summer" for both of us, so here I go!
hot girl summer is over it's time for the fall of society
— maura quint (@behindyourback) August 7, 2021
Whether or not this sticks for me, well, I've been optimistic about getting back into the political writing game before, but for today, at least, I offer this...
..........................................
I woke up to Dr. Fauci on Meet the Press this morning. Disheartening stuff before my first cup of coffee, popping me out of my blissful bubble of Olympics and novel writing that I've lived in, mostly, for the last few weeks. The choices that folks are making in some parts of the country, not just about their own heath, but everyone else's...
Ultimately, I realized, maybe just to get myself up and to work this morning, that we're locked into the Two Americas solution on the pandemic, and by the time the 2022 elections roll around, we'll know which America made the correct calls and which didn't.
With a pill of bitterness, I grumbled to myself, at least it will be wiping out the former guy's voting block and, after the massive gerrymandering and redistribution of House seats (a way larger threat to the future of our republic than the new voting laws), we need all the help we can get.
Unless we get, as Newsweek so over-dramatically put it, a "doomsday" variant rising out of Red America.
The Newsweek article is far less hyperbolic than this week's cover and the headline suggests, covering some basic science around the virus and the possibilities for mutation with this one. Not super new stuff for most folks who've ever taken a biology class, but it was a decent refresher on the basic situation we find ourselves in at this point.
The risk of a mutation defeating the vaccines is there, and of variants becoming more lethal, but the threat of such mutations is not as large as we might fear.
Still, over the last few years of miracle-level bad luck the nation's had, in the end, I think I'd rather defeat the new far right at the polls next year than risk them thinning their numbers through self-inflicted biological warfare.
Finally, here is a strong argument to get the rest of the world vaccinated, even if it is on America's credit card. We may not be able to do much about the choices being made in Red America, but it is still in our nation's best interests to make sure that we keep the threat of mutation as low as possible around the world.
This needs to be one of the very top priorities in Washington, and even in the private sector, including corporations as well as NGOs, to keep America safe.
