Social Distance, Shelter in Place, Lock Down

In 1920, when the clock struck midnight that New Years Eve/Day, the world began to change. The year 1920, brought us prohibition, bathtub gin, flappers, shorter dresses and even shorter female hairstyles, while men took on a more dapper style with with wide lapels, pin stripes and fedoras. It was also the beginning of many Americans owning motor cars, radio's and telephones. All of these things changed everything about us, from how we dressed, to how we drank, got around, got our information and how we communicated. The world in fact seemed to be a bright new place in 1920, ushering in products and opportunities which would have a profound effect on our culture, jobs, homes and life in general for all the decades that followed. With WWI over and Henry Ford's advances in manufacturing with the assembly-line, 1920 set the decade up for what looked like unending fiscal and personal success. On the surface America was shiny, but like any year and any decade, there would be cracks in the facade and the shininess would fade. Still though, we were working our way into an unforgettable 20th Century.

Now, looking at 2020, the world once again changed on New Years Eve/Day, but into something far different than what we celebrated a hundred years before. As we said goodbye to 2019 and drove headlong into the new year and new decade, our world and our country were far from a joyous and exciting time and place. Going into 2020, we drug a lot of baggage from the past year that had been building far longer than the previous decade. We brought in political unrest, racial unrest, Constitutional unrest and a loss of morality, faith and humanity as we had become a world in which our own individual self-interest was our goal, we were our own gods and humanity was only an after thought as long as we were getting what we wanted. We had become a world where the only conversations we wanted to have were the ones in which we were agreed with and in which our opinions came out of the mouths of others. We had quit sharing ideas and growing in an effort to be the loudest voice with the only opinion. We were a world of fake news, fear mongers and power hungry, money driven leaders. Worst of all, because we the people had lost a sense of who we were, we became ripe for those who told us we needed to be taken care of, led and controlled for our own "best interest" and safety. We were blindly following those who cared nothing about any of those things, but only the power they could control us with.

Yes, this is what we ended 2019 with and this is what we entered 2020 with. Now, five months into this new year and decade and we seem to be losing ground, losing stability and losing our rights as free individuals in a free country. The worst part, no one is actually taking our stability and rights from us....we are simply willingly handing them over with the misconception that this will keep us safe. Welcome to 2020. My how a hundred years has changed us.

Much has happened this new year globally and much has happened in my life personally. It has all made me very introspective and emotionally frustrated. It is one of those times where I have to get it out or mentally choke on that which I find emotionally breaking. So here it goes:

As we came into 2020, we were still dealing with an unprecedented Presidential Impeachment where the news was fake and the "facts" were fluid, changing as the agenda saw fit. Of course in the end, it was nothing more than a gigantic waste of taxpayers money, congress did no actual work and the American people, regardless of which side of the fence they were on, were forced into the acknowledgement of just how little our elected officials actually cared about the good of the country as they were willing to raise the debt with a legal farce and attempt to destroy an economy that was struggling to get back on it's feet.

Once the impeachment charade was over, there was barely time for Nancy Pelosi to remember that her job entailed more than trying to impeach her nemesis, when we were hit with the Corona Virus (i.e. COVID 19). Now I won't rehash the onset of this virus, the stupidity of those who ran out to buy enough toilet paper to get through the decade or mass hysteria that ensued in the early days of this pandemic. After all, I have already written a couple of blogs concerning that and I am sure you all know by now how I feel about it all.

No, what I want to discuss on this blog is the here and now and the whole lock down, shelter in place, social distancing, killing our economy and making us all angry assholes thing.

For most of the country and I guess a good part of the world, it was at first suggested we "social distance." While the words were familiar, their term is now one that will go down in history as a key phrase to the 2020 pandemic. In my opinion, social distancing was nothing more than common sense and I took it to mean, if you are feeling unwell, don't go to work, don't go to the club, don't go to the store, don't go to school. You should stay home and take care of yourself, thus preventing the spread of your germs. Apparently what everyone else heard was: Run out and shop like there is no tomorrow. Breathe on everyone and become angry if you are not able to buy more than 100 rolls of toilet paper and 25 canisters of disinfectant wipes. I'm not sure how social distancing meant such different things to different people, but in no time, we were off and running with the spread of the virus running rampant.

Social distancing then went from use common sense, to now you all are going to shelter in place. This was the step where the government decided that we couldn't be trusted to use common sense, so they were going to get a bit heavy handed and start enforcing laws that didn't exist and spread the word that the government and not the people were in charge. Now in all fairness, the people did act a fool over the social distancing, so we basically handed them the authoritarian governmental grounding that they gave us. The shelter in place was the beginning of school closings for the year and a limiting of numbers of people who could gather in any one place. It started at 250 and gradually made its way down to 6. I was afraid I was going to have to start kicking people out of my house.

Finally, we went into full on lock down. I have hated this terminology from day one because it is subliminal terminology which brainwashes us into believing the government can legally control us in the guise of "protecting" us. Without written laws on the books they cannot, but that did not and does not stop them from trying to intimidate and over reach. Lock down is a term used in prisons as a means to control a population. In the last couple of decades, it has made its way into our mainstream thought processes as a term of "safety" in instances such as school shootings. The bottom line though....lock down is still a means to control a population and control us they have.

During this lock down, we have been forced (again...no laws on the books and completely unConstitutional) to shut down businesses, social gathering places and we even been prohibited from having graduations, funerals and church services. We have been forced to wear masks even though "science" tells us that they can cause more health problems than they solve and people have been encouraged to turn on one another and rat out their friends, family and neighbors to the "authorities"  if they "think" they are breaking non-existent laws. Meanwhile, our economy that was just about back on it's feet has all but tanked. Small businesses are dying, big businesses are losing ground and all the businesses that were gradually coming back to the United States in the last few years, may have to leave again, just to survive. And even though all of this started months ago, we are still being forced into government mandated restrictions based in nothing but their say-so. Blessedly, some are wising up and realizing we can't continue this crap indefinitely, but certain governors of certain political persuasions are dragging out the reopening states, business and the economy as long as they possibly can. Why?

While I have never been a conspiracy theorist, this whole situation would have any thinking person doing just that.....thinking. Never in history have we had a pandemic that has caused this kind of behavior from the leaders or the people. You have to ask yourself,  if  with the media we have, are we being given the actual facts? With the corruptness we have seen from congress, are the media being given actual facts? When you have medical professionals and scientists who can't agree on things as simple as the safety of wearing a mask and mortality numbers are not agreeing, you have to wonder just what the facts are? Yet we as a people, seem to cringe with each media report even when many of those reports have been debunked. We are so fear obsessed that we are throwing our rights out the door, for the promise of a little safety. We have gone from being the land of the free and the home of the brave, to the land of the controlled and the home of the afraid. You do realize that we are not the first people to be afraid of something. We are simply the first people to hand over our rights because of that fear.

Believe me,  I am not saying that COVID-19 isn't real and that it can't kill people. What I am saying is that COVID-19 has been a convenient excuse to cultivate fear and hysteria, to make the people dependent on the government, to pass legislation in bills that might not have passed otherwise (Nancy you naughty girl) and to conveniently change the rules of an election year and how we might possibly "be allowed" to vote. It has also set the stage to change how our children will be educated, how we shop and what will be available for us to shop for and even how we will be able to do business.....if many even have businesses left. It's all a little too iffy for me to fall into what the government would like me to believe. I have too many questions and there simply aren't enough accurate answers.

Now I know that there are those of you who have lived in fear since the moment you heard the word "virus." In fact, I know there are some of you that haven't been out of your homes except for extreme needs since March and you are extremely angry with those who do go out (unless they are deemed essential...another word I hate.) I also know that as you read this, you are already thinking of all the stats, articles and statements from medical professionals that you can argue back at me with. To you I say, don't bother. I have read so much on both sides and I really don't believe much on either side. I also am not going to argue this with anyone. These are my thought and my feelings.....and maybe they will be my undoing, but I refuse to spend my life as a prisoner of fear. I have social distanced, sheltered in place and even locked down. I am done. Now, like it or not.....from this day forward.....I'm going to live my life. Now where's my flapper dress and my automobile? I'm going to town......and ain't that the bees knees! ;)