We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
As I spoke with a friend this morning, we discussed the 'freak-out' and I immediately flashed to one of my favorite movies, so I thought I'd share. Wonka loved a good freak-out, and used it to his benefit to get to what he wanted. I don't think it's far-fetched to believe something too dissimilar is going on now. The boat ride was frightening, most of the participants were disturbed, uncomfortable and angry. It seemed the world was ending. Then...destination arrived, all was well and life went on, though not quite as before.
An interesting side note: none of the actors were told what would occur during this scene as it was filmed, many of the reactions are real. The children, unaware that Wilder was going to sing, thought he was going crazy.
Yup, it's getting harder not to note that the benefits of this dislocation are flowing to people who don't need physical spaces to do their jobs and the costs, both in economic dislocation as well as physical risk of proximity to the virus, are being borne by the people who weren't so lucky.
We shut down dine-in restaurants but not Uber-eats delivery.
I think it is more that the opportunistic are making use of the reasonableness of others to see if they can bleed off some advantage of a freak-out. There are those who are forever cocked and loaded waiting for any crisis to show up.
Remember that we will have convenient memories too. If the precautions work and the results are not so bad we will talk ourselves into the belief that we never really needed to do them. Our hunches about backward and forward projections on large events that are unlike what we face every day are notoriously terrible. We die from following those hunches. Hunches are much better for things you encounter all the time.
#2
Assistant Village Idiot
on
2020-03-19 14:52
(Reply)
