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A September day in 2021. Last year at this time, 2020, the pandemic was still raging, but Florida was open to tourists, of course. Florida was shut down only for a month. But most places – even Disney and its attractions – had protocols in place. Masks, social distancing, the usual things.\u00a0 Vaccines weren\u2019t available yet. But we were hopeful about an easier 2021.<\/p>\n
And for awhile in 2021, after vaccines were becoming available, we were hopeful that by summer, we would be free of this virus. We got our last Pfizer in late March 2021, at a CVS. It felt like a kind of liberation. In May we took our first flight in more than a year. Wore masks all the way to Montana. The summer was looking up. But by July, the Delta variant had taken hold in Florida and our governor, Ron DeathSantis, was holding press conferences about the dangers of the vaccines and that mask mandates were now illegal, and how people had a right to their personal freedom. You know, my body, my choice. Unless it involves abortion, but that\u2019s another story.<\/p>\n
No one was really sure how many new Covid cases occurred daily in Florida because the state\u2019s Department of Health had stopped publishing daily info. But the department did report weekly cases, a skewed number of deaths, and the number of new cases added up to more than 21,000 a day. Deaths in the U.S. per day exceeded 1,500. Our governor banned mask mandates in schools, outlawed proof of vaccination on cruise ships, in government buildings\u2026.and yet. In public places, I usually saw people wearing masks.<\/p>\n
If you’re unvaccinated and don’t wear a mask, then you’re one of the selfish.<\/p>\n
And during this time, I got summaries from those who hadn\u2019t been vaccinated about how I was being fed misinformation by the CDC, the government, doctors, science. The virus was no more than a cold. The virus was a conspiracy. The virus was created by Fauci in cahoots with the pharmaceutical industry. Bill Gates had embedded a spying chip in these vaccines. 5 G was infecting my brain. Blah, blah, blah.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s the vaccinated people who are infecting the unvaccinated.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s my moral obligation to speak out against these vaccines.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cTrump\u2019s going to be reinstated.\u201d<\/p>\n
And that, right there, that trump will somehow be magically reinstated to presidency on a date that My Pillow dude declares, is the real disease in this pandemic. The media calls it The Big Lie. But it’s the trump toxicity spillover into the Biden presidency, a kind of mental black goo that sticks to people\u2019s brains, blinding them so completely that they live in an alternate reality.<\/p>\n
This reality is ruled by aging white men so terrified of losing their majority that they enact oppressive voting laws and, in Texas, overturn a 50-year-law, the right of a woman to an abortion. No exceptions. You\u2019re raped by your father? An uncle? A stranger? And you get pregnant? Well, too bad. No abortion for you.<\/p>\n
So this is where we stand nearly a year and a half into this pandemic, a harbinger of the paradigm shift that is underway. I used to hope that maybe the old paradigm would just die out with a pathetic whimper. But trump tapped into the darkness of the American psyche, the toxicity of racism and misogyny, of building walls that separate us as human beings inhabiting the same planet. And here’s the fallout.<\/p>\n
Maybe it will have to play itself out. But if this darkness wins, we\u2019ll be living in Gillead, a new chapter of The Handmaid\u2019s Tale.<\/em><\/p>\n No, thanks.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A September day in 2021. Last year at this time, 2020, the pandemic was still raging, but Florida was open to tourists, of course. Florida was shut down only for a month. But most places – even Disney and its … Continue reading