Corona, Mon Amour
Mar. 26th, 2020 02:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kimberlysteeleDear Coronavirus: First they ignored you, then they laughed at you, then they fought you, then you won.
Coronavirus’s power was not in its ability to shut down schools (hilariously, when the kids in my local schools got the news school would be closed for three weeks starting March 16, the cheers were deafening) and it wasn’t in its ability to ruin small businesses. Its true power was much more occult: it brought our culture face to face with the one thing it is far too afraid to talk about: the fear of death.
Simply put, the people on this planet in the current era are afraid of aging and dying. For this reason, it is perfectly normal for a modern human to put herself or others through the worst forms of degradation, torture, and pain in order to extend time spent alive a few more precious days, months, or years. Even those armed with living wills and embossed DNR jewelry easily find themselves on the business end of a feeding tube or an iron lung because that’s the mandate of modern times. Forcing someone to live has become so fashionable that it’s fine to keep hydrocephalic babies alive despite the torture of living with deformity and disease. The pro-life movement does not stop at the fetus. In our culture, keeping someone alive through pain you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy is a way of screaming “I LOVE YOU!” to all and sundry. Because there are a few Stage 4 cancer victims who cling to eking out a few more years at all costs, the culture has presumed every Stage 4 cancer victim feels the same way. Because an Indian woman from the untouchable caste eats her own vomit in an attempt to survive, or because the Donner Party ate its own dead, it’s assumed that the killer instinct to survive becomes universally active when a threshold is reached. I am aware that I will trigger lots of sensitive souls by saying the above out loud, however, if you are triggered by what is no more than an honest opinion from a silly individual like me, perhaps it would behoove you to ask yourself "Why?" before coming down like a load of bricks.
One of the reasons I admire the Samurai of medieval Japan was the notion of Bushido: honor until death. A Samurai was disciplined, dutiful, and willing to kill himself for the honor of his lord. If necessary, a Samurai would commit ritual suicide, and he would vastly prefer a noble, self-imposed death to an ignoble, sniveling, fearful one.
What Corona brought out, except in a few rare and shining cases, were the snivelers and the cowards. It takes a special kind of stupid to visit a bunch of stores in order to hoard toilet paper, and despite my better self’s admonitions, I found myself hoping police would find a TP hoarder accidentally mummified in the stuff, having starved to death cocooned for warmth in his doom bunker because he forgot a can opener. Other dingbats are still acting out a contemporary version of the Masque of the Red Death, licking toilet seats and aluminum anti-perspirants for Instagram clicks. If this made you think of the phrase Darwin Awards, you’re not alone, but since I’ve mentioned Darwin, I’d like to point out the staggering irony of a leonine, solar-named virus stalking and killing the weakest, oldest, and sickest of the human herd. Nature is cruel and her limits are harsh. Why is this a reason to freak out?
When this thing began, I thought, “Oh no, all of the sad sacks who lust after the Apocalypse are going to try to DIY one out of this.” That’s exactly what they did. Coronavirus, no matter what anyone wants to make out of it, is not a heinous child-killer/disfigurer like polio, measles, or mumps. I live by a graveyard that is full of little gravestones of babies and kids who died of past epidemics, and not once did the Victorians shut down the entire world economy because of it. Young people do catch the virus, especially when they party on beaches and lick toilet seats, but when we’re honest, COVID targets Boomers. Boomers who have a sense of proportion would have insisted on triage, not the closure of every tiny mom & pop restaurant. The old and comfortable classes weren’t in the front lines of COVID; no. Millennial grocery store workers and Gen X small business owners are the ones paying for Boomers to luxuriate in their terror, in blood when necessary. Nurses and elder care assistants haven’t had a single day off lately, and nobody seems particularly concerned about their welfare.
One trend I’ve found unappealing to watch is the tendency for members of the upper middle class and their aspirants to use Coronavirus to virtue and fragility signal for themselves and their families. By constantly chattering about their own fragile condition, or that of a relative who will surely die if they catch Corona, they can do double-duty political correctness policing and virtue signaling if anyone has the audacity to question government lockdown. If the Left wants a docile, welfare-dependent state and is using the Coronapocalypse to get it, they messed up bad by accidentally shutting off the flow of illegal labor and by almost utterly ruining the tax base they wanted to extort. As popcorn-worthy as it was to watch the Left shoot itself in both feet via a suspiciously bio-tinkered looking virus from a fishy Chinese lab, I’m anxious to try get the business I built from scratch 23 years ago back on its feet. Wish me luck, because like every other working class person in the US, I’ll need it.
Coronavirus’s power was not in its ability to shut down schools (hilariously, when the kids in my local schools got the news school would be closed for three weeks starting March 16, the cheers were deafening) and it wasn’t in its ability to ruin small businesses. Its true power was much more occult: it brought our culture face to face with the one thing it is far too afraid to talk about: the fear of death.
Simply put, the people on this planet in the current era are afraid of aging and dying. For this reason, it is perfectly normal for a modern human to put herself or others through the worst forms of degradation, torture, and pain in order to extend time spent alive a few more precious days, months, or years. Even those armed with living wills and embossed DNR jewelry easily find themselves on the business end of a feeding tube or an iron lung because that’s the mandate of modern times. Forcing someone to live has become so fashionable that it’s fine to keep hydrocephalic babies alive despite the torture of living with deformity and disease. The pro-life movement does not stop at the fetus. In our culture, keeping someone alive through pain you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy is a way of screaming “I LOVE YOU!” to all and sundry. Because there are a few Stage 4 cancer victims who cling to eking out a few more years at all costs, the culture has presumed every Stage 4 cancer victim feels the same way. Because an Indian woman from the untouchable caste eats her own vomit in an attempt to survive, or because the Donner Party ate its own dead, it’s assumed that the killer instinct to survive becomes universally active when a threshold is reached. I am aware that I will trigger lots of sensitive souls by saying the above out loud, however, if you are triggered by what is no more than an honest opinion from a silly individual like me, perhaps it would behoove you to ask yourself "Why?" before coming down like a load of bricks.
One of the reasons I admire the Samurai of medieval Japan was the notion of Bushido: honor until death. A Samurai was disciplined, dutiful, and willing to kill himself for the honor of his lord. If necessary, a Samurai would commit ritual suicide, and he would vastly prefer a noble, self-imposed death to an ignoble, sniveling, fearful one.
What Corona brought out, except in a few rare and shining cases, were the snivelers and the cowards. It takes a special kind of stupid to visit a bunch of stores in order to hoard toilet paper, and despite my better self’s admonitions, I found myself hoping police would find a TP hoarder accidentally mummified in the stuff, having starved to death cocooned for warmth in his doom bunker because he forgot a can opener. Other dingbats are still acting out a contemporary version of the Masque of the Red Death, licking toilet seats and aluminum anti-perspirants for Instagram clicks. If this made you think of the phrase Darwin Awards, you’re not alone, but since I’ve mentioned Darwin, I’d like to point out the staggering irony of a leonine, solar-named virus stalking and killing the weakest, oldest, and sickest of the human herd. Nature is cruel and her limits are harsh. Why is this a reason to freak out?
When this thing began, I thought, “Oh no, all of the sad sacks who lust after the Apocalypse are going to try to DIY one out of this.” That’s exactly what they did. Coronavirus, no matter what anyone wants to make out of it, is not a heinous child-killer/disfigurer like polio, measles, or mumps. I live by a graveyard that is full of little gravestones of babies and kids who died of past epidemics, and not once did the Victorians shut down the entire world economy because of it. Young people do catch the virus, especially when they party on beaches and lick toilet seats, but when we’re honest, COVID targets Boomers. Boomers who have a sense of proportion would have insisted on triage, not the closure of every tiny mom & pop restaurant. The old and comfortable classes weren’t in the front lines of COVID; no. Millennial grocery store workers and Gen X small business owners are the ones paying for Boomers to luxuriate in their terror, in blood when necessary. Nurses and elder care assistants haven’t had a single day off lately, and nobody seems particularly concerned about their welfare.
One trend I’ve found unappealing to watch is the tendency for members of the upper middle class and their aspirants to use Coronavirus to virtue and fragility signal for themselves and their families. By constantly chattering about their own fragile condition, or that of a relative who will surely die if they catch Corona, they can do double-duty political correctness policing and virtue signaling if anyone has the audacity to question government lockdown. If the Left wants a docile, welfare-dependent state and is using the Coronapocalypse to get it, they messed up bad by accidentally shutting off the flow of illegal labor and by almost utterly ruining the tax base they wanted to extort. As popcorn-worthy as it was to watch the Left shoot itself in both feet via a suspiciously bio-tinkered looking virus from a fishy Chinese lab, I’m anxious to try get the business I built from scratch 23 years ago back on its feet. Wish me luck, because like every other working class person in the US, I’ll need it.
