It’s front porch weather again. We can see a swath of our little town from the front porch. We have a glass table out there, and it’s a tight fit for a fat man, but there are four chairs. If you’re in the chair with your back against the house, your view is across the street. You see the traffic pulling up to the drive through (or ‘drive-thru’ in American commercialese) take-out at Duncan Doughnuts (or Dunkin’® Donuts) — and, BTW, it’s also got the 31 flavors of Baskin-Robbins ice-cream, because, well, BR is a Dunkin’ Brands brand — for some first class American junk food. I’m not dissin’ it. I’ve put on many a pound over there, though not since the pandemic shook all such ventures up. The porch view from the opposite seat, the one with one’s back to the street, is of the garden and the lot with its expanse of lawn, and the living fence, with some of its lives in jeopardy, and of the newly re-ownered restaurant, formerly Butcher Boy Burgers, now called Duo. At Duo, patrons park and cue up one at a time for a shot at some take-out.

This diminution of our freedom to sit down in a public restaurant is the very lifestyle that is so contentious. The pandemic ripped through New York, after ripping through Wuhan, China, and northern Italy, then the rest of Italy, and, of course, Iran, Spain, and then, let’s not forget about Rantoul Foods, the meat packing/processing plant a mile and a half from where I type. They’ve got a good batch of cases and fatalities up in Chicago, too. In fact, it would be easier just to say that it’s an ongoing global pandemic, you know, with serious consequences still being discovered both in terms of who’s gonna get it, who’s gonna survive it, who’s got it and doesn’t know it (yet… or ever), and who’s had it. Those who’ve had it and not noticed have antibodies, but tests for same are not all that reliable (50/50), and then there’s the issue of immunity. How long does immunity last? Immunity for the common cold, another corona virus, is pretty short lived. What are the long-term, or short term, consequences for those that have clawed their way back to something like health from a serious case of it? Are they really home free, health-wise? The unknowns outweigh the knowns.

This is reality. Keep an eye on it, folks, because we’re easily distracted by a haze of falsehood, a miasma of aggressive, bloviated, manufactured and distributed bullshit that makes reality recede into the distance as swiftly and expertly as that car now leaving the drive-thru take-out window at Dunkin-BR. This week, protests and civil unrest, not to mention looting and suiting up in riot gear, have gotten going because of outrage over a well-documented — and, BTW, there is no way anything is gonna slip by the ubiquitous phone camera — unprovoked murder by sadistic police officers of a handcuffed black man, the allegation against whom was as flimsy as a counterfeit twenty dollar bill.

But I’m thinking of LAST week, when armed men and placard bearing women, or vice versa, mix it and match it, went around proclaiming that our fear was trampling on their freedoms. They yelled this at the closed doors of public buildings. And, see above, we watched the media, and we all saw this happening. And because the cameras never sleep, we also saw armed men, (or supposedly armed men, since some of the weapons were made of wood, painted blue), as they sat down outside of a Subway and ate their take-out. Well. A poor trampled upon victim of tyranny needs to eat. And we applaud your choice to support one of the healthier junk food establishments. Sir.

I think I’ll skip the stirring rhetorical conclusion. Just put it all together on your own, like a Kung Pao Chicken Stir Fry kit. The murdered man, killed in the street next to a patrol car, one that he had willingly entered in hand cuffs, and had been then hauled out of, and forced to the ground, set off a world-wide protest that got co-opted by a diverse assortment of people that want this to go wrong, or just want free stuff, or to break windows, which made pretty much everything drive-thru take-out, including malls and Macys. Let the weeks be concatenated, and give us some persistence of memory in our collective dementia that we might imagine getting some Subway and Dunkin free of charge! Throw in the image of a woman, whipped up into a frenzy of foolishness by Fox, waltzing into a Walmart with a mask on, because the tyrannical signage says one MUST, and then ripping it off in a display of pique as soon as she’s set foot inside the automatic door. The tyranny of a condition of admission cannot be enforced by common sense once the door swishes shut. Imagine now that the Walmart has no glass or doors, it’s been boarded up and closed by curfew. Suck on those salty chicken fingers, whore of Babylon.

Don’t ask me. What are we fighting for? Again? Against the tyranny of take-out?