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The Doomsday Journals, Week 3
Mar. 20th, 2020 07:33 pmIt's hard to believe there are still people out there not taking this seriously.
The catastrophe is - it seems every day I discover a new layer to it, a new thing to consider. It's like we've been very very carefully building up an intricate domino structure of all the conditions to be perfect for apocalypse, and this virus is the push that will knock them all down.
(Yes, a friend did bring up V for Vendetta to me recently. Why do you ask?)
I mean, I've always known our system wasn't set up for this, with its terrible health care costs and the terrible conditions for workers. I've been prepared for the public health crisis (well, not "prepared," but more... thinking about those ramifications) since the beginning, since I realized everyone was saying "stay home if you're sick" and not really talking about all the people who can't afford to do that. I was prepared for people to go to work sick out of fear for their jobs since early on, thus endangering everyone else through no fault of their own.
Last week I started thinking about the layoffs, as people started staying home in earnest, as some businesses have (to give them the very very small modicum of credit they deserve) started giving people sick leave for this emergency. (You should be giving it to them for EVERY emergency, guys; you don't get to be heroes for doing the absolute least you could possibly do.) As many people choose to go home rather than going out, thus putting restaurants and small businesses in danger of closing.
It's worse now, as these things begin to be realized, as our governor shuts down all the restaurants, as we feel inches away from a "shelter-in-place" order like many states have already received. And I understand it, I understand it all, I know why and I even agree that it's the right thing to do. But I can't help thinking of all the other things that will happen beneath it, all the other ramifications. As I realize that schools are the main place that a lot of children get food. Again, to their credit, schools are now implementing programs to help with that, thus giving hourly workers something to do AND getting food to children.
(Public educators honestly ARE heroes and have been this entire time, working in a system that treats them terribly. They get no censure from me, though the same cannot be said about the man who sent my mother the high school counselor an extremely nasty email demanding that she get him all his son's homework - which hadn't been assigned yet and likely won't be at all, since teachers are scrambling as much as anyone else - and threatening to contact her superiors if she didn't do it.)
But it's not only those things that terrifies me, it's the larger repercussions. Economic collapse. I was too young in 2008 to understand the ramifications of what everyone was talking about, and honestly? I miss those days, because I still don't really understand how the economy works, but I understand enough to be terrified. The national emergency that's been declared - I know it was necessary for people to move fast, but I can't help thinking of all the other possible ramifications. Like the thought that the Monstrosity-In-Chief will take the opportunity to declare that because it's a state of emergency there can't be an election.
For that matter, I'm worried about the election, for a lot of reasons. (Worried that people won't vote out of spite and we'll have a reprise of 2016; worried that people won't vote because they physically can't get to the polls due to this whole thing.) But even more than that, I'm worried that there won't be one. Because my bottom line has been and remains the same - we need to get him-who-must-not-be-named out of office. And I am absolutely terrified we won't be able to do that.
I just - I don't know. It feels like this is the beginning of a fictional dystopia, and this is the plague that slides us into it headfirst.
I'll try to get more hopeful in the gratitude journal. That, at least, is a practice I want to keep up - because there is hope in all this, even if it's hard to find sometimes, and looking for it is - maybe all I can do.
The catastrophe is - it seems every day I discover a new layer to it, a new thing to consider. It's like we've been very very carefully building up an intricate domino structure of all the conditions to be perfect for apocalypse, and this virus is the push that will knock them all down.
(Yes, a friend did bring up V for Vendetta to me recently. Why do you ask?)
I mean, I've always known our system wasn't set up for this, with its terrible health care costs and the terrible conditions for workers. I've been prepared for the public health crisis (well, not "prepared," but more... thinking about those ramifications) since the beginning, since I realized everyone was saying "stay home if you're sick" and not really talking about all the people who can't afford to do that. I was prepared for people to go to work sick out of fear for their jobs since early on, thus endangering everyone else through no fault of their own.
Last week I started thinking about the layoffs, as people started staying home in earnest, as some businesses have (to give them the very very small modicum of credit they deserve) started giving people sick leave for this emergency. (You should be giving it to them for EVERY emergency, guys; you don't get to be heroes for doing the absolute least you could possibly do.) As many people choose to go home rather than going out, thus putting restaurants and small businesses in danger of closing.
It's worse now, as these things begin to be realized, as our governor shuts down all the restaurants, as we feel inches away from a "shelter-in-place" order like many states have already received. And I understand it, I understand it all, I know why and I even agree that it's the right thing to do. But I can't help thinking of all the other things that will happen beneath it, all the other ramifications. As I realize that schools are the main place that a lot of children get food. Again, to their credit, schools are now implementing programs to help with that, thus giving hourly workers something to do AND getting food to children.
(Public educators honestly ARE heroes and have been this entire time, working in a system that treats them terribly. They get no censure from me, though the same cannot be said about the man who sent my mother the high school counselor an extremely nasty email demanding that she get him all his son's homework - which hadn't been assigned yet and likely won't be at all, since teachers are scrambling as much as anyone else - and threatening to contact her superiors if she didn't do it.)
But it's not only those things that terrifies me, it's the larger repercussions. Economic collapse. I was too young in 2008 to understand the ramifications of what everyone was talking about, and honestly? I miss those days, because I still don't really understand how the economy works, but I understand enough to be terrified. The national emergency that's been declared - I know it was necessary for people to move fast, but I can't help thinking of all the other possible ramifications. Like the thought that the Monstrosity-In-Chief will take the opportunity to declare that because it's a state of emergency there can't be an election.
For that matter, I'm worried about the election, for a lot of reasons. (Worried that people won't vote out of spite and we'll have a reprise of 2016; worried that people won't vote because they physically can't get to the polls due to this whole thing.) But even more than that, I'm worried that there won't be one. Because my bottom line has been and remains the same - we need to get him-who-must-not-be-named out of office. And I am absolutely terrified we won't be able to do that.
I just - I don't know. It feels like this is the beginning of a fictional dystopia, and this is the plague that slides us into it headfirst.
I'll try to get more hopeful in the gratitude journal. That, at least, is a practice I want to keep up - because there is hope in all this, even if it's hard to find sometimes, and looking for it is - maybe all I can do.
