A couple of weeks ago a friend, with whom I have since had a falling out, was talking about how she was afraid of a race war. She kept saying that looters were destroying America in an over-reaction to an incident that only involved one cop and one victim. Much of what she said was so ignorant as to not warrant comment, but the idea of a war happening is one that took some hold on me.
Although I don't think it is a race war, I do believe there actually is a war going on. It isn't right versus left (although its outward appearances are certainly that), nor is smart versus stupid (something I tended to think until I realized a lot of people I felt were pretty smart seemed to be on both opposing sides), rather, as this mask debate has made perfectly clear, it a war between decent people and fools.
On the one hand we have people who are concerned about their neighbours, who are determined to try to do the right thing and who tend to get their facts from scientists and qualified researchers. They seem to understand the vagaries of scientific conclusions and would rather err on the side of caution if it is in the the public good. On the other side are those who have to adopt an increasingly absurdist world-view in order to maintain the belief that their delusional faith in a mega-maniacal moron is rational and reasonable.
This cognitive dissonance is borne by their inability to trust intelligent, educated researchers and their insistence that right wing agenda "information" sites are actually telling them the truth. They smugly believe that a steady diet of hate filled rhetoric is actually doing "research". And what research. Never mind the sex rings and conspiracy theories of control via face covering, what is underneath all of this is a contempt in the value of a human for just being a human. Instead, humans are fodder for votes; for money; for power; for status, and mostly, for creating a marketplace.We are, at our most basic, nothing more than potential consumers.
The right wing has become an inhumane enterprise where anyone who doesn't agree represents a dangerous and "fascist" voice. Voting against any social agendas like free health care, or free education or any social assistance, makes sense to these people simply because they believe people, at their most basic, are greedy and willing to take advantage of them. Because of their own political choices, they struggle to keep afloat themselves, so believe anyone who doesn't enter into the self-same downward spiral of defeatist lifestyles, will just end up burdening them further. They are so inundated by hate rhetoric from the established right, they have ceased to acknowledge the innate dignity of man or the intrinsic value of anybody. Instead they view others as competition for scanty jobs and diminished resources. Anyone who insists that humans are basically good and deserve basic human rights are delicate buttercups who expect hand-outs, and are overly educated and arrogant in their "superior" intelligence (the term pseudo-intellect is bandied about a lot).
This is the dumb-ing down of society and those who allow it happen, who believe they are representative of the new order of the informed as they buy into more and more absurd scenarios of hoaxes, conspiracies and "research", are the fools who are trading in their own futures. Instead of fighting to protect their children and create a working viable way of life (that people all of the world have been able to create), they instead prefer to consider themselves a marketplace and a "free" labour force devoid of human decency and any sense of community or social responsibilty. They parade mask-less in the streets hoping that their their ersatz saviour actually gives a flying fuck about them other then getting their votes and their money.
They are endorsing a policy where profit is more important than human lives, that life should be enjoyed by only the privileged few and everyone else should lead lives of suffering and hopelessness to provide that for them. To think otherwise is being a communist and after decades of propaganda, they know that that isn't any good. So the blanket descends on any measure of social responsibility and years and years of work trying to establish a decent standard of living gets eroded away by the very people who need it the most.
