One of my fellow amateur radio operator friends wrote this on Facebook:
“It’s becoming disturbingly easy to pick out the bad people based on their random comments on current political (by which, let’s face it, I mean moral) arguments. On the one hand it saves time. On the other hand, I did used to enjoy being able to assume that my fellow humans were often enough well-intentioned, reasonable, and likely to act in good faith.”
Listening in on HF, both 80 meters and 40, all SSB, last evening (since I couldn’t find the URL to the Zoom meeting that was the departmental awards banquet), and the OMISS nets weren’t floatin’ my boat, I was kind of surprised to discover plenty of evidence of what I think he means. Lots of complaints about ‘tyranny.’ Eugenics seems to be back as a thing, but that term is not used. Instead, ‘democrat’ now stands in for people who’d rather not ‘thin the herd.’ The assumption seems to be that meat packers (ie., undocumented ‘furriners,’ ‘aliens,’ ‘browns,’ … and, since it’s radio, a backflip is going on to avoid all the other derisive terms … are going to be especially attractive to the virus (or ‘plague’). Uh. Not worth firing up and tuning up an amplifier to key up and point out that the amoral, not to mention not necessarily living thing that is that virus is not discriminating in that way. Biologically vulnerable does not line up with the perceptions of the ‘survivalist.’
Within the same 12 hour period on Facebook, another op, in her big-hearted way, posted on Facebook about Trump and his desire to let politics and fealty to him determine who gets Federal aid in the current pandemic. The idea originated with Mitch McConnell, the 78 year old Senator and Senate Majority Leader, Republican from Kentucky, who has proposed on Fox News that he advocated bankruptcy in certain States. Here’s what he actually said:
“I would certainly be in favor of allowing states to use the bankruptcy route. It saves some cities.” The Fox News host cited a few (Blue) states, California and Illinois, that have high pension obligations. McConnell’s response: “My guess is their first choice would be for the federal government to borrow money from future generations to send it down to them now so they don’t have to do that. That’s not something I’m going to be in favor of.”
She wondered why we can’t all pull together, as in ‘one nation, indivisible,’ and was promptly excoriated by her less humanistic “friends.” ‘You voted for these problems,’ ‘you’ meaning we, the people of Illinois. The ‘friend’ wished us luck. In the back and forth, more ‘true colors’ emerged. Why try to reproduce it? Reading it, while listening to the rants on the radio left me feeling antsy and disoriented.
Sadly, I have recently realized that the mud depth in public discourse has reached the point, in all media and venues, that one needs waders to venture out and cast a line. Then, after struggling for hours, one reels in another empty boot.
These people are not ‘bad,’ necessarily. ‘Good’ and ‘bad,’ are moral polarities; these are all too human. The virus, SARS-CoV2, is an amoral entity. Part of the ‘natural order of things,’ it discriminates only, apparently, on the basis of available ACE2 receptor sites. We the people, all of us, have these. How thin does one want the herd to be? The tireless, non-human, non-animal, molecular accumulation does not necessarily stop until there are no more hosts. We are one species, under the gun, so to speak, vulnerable and running in our circles.
I finally turned the radio off and went to bed.