(*** Sorry I have been a little slow this week, but long-story-short, I got COVID again (I think anyway) and it has been slowing my roll. I am finally just starting to get fully functional again. Enjoy the column! ***)
"Yet when I looked from that highest of all gable windows, looked while the candles sputtered and the insane viol howled with the night-wind, I saw no city spread below, and no friendly lights gleamed from remembered streets, but only the blackness of space illimitable; unimagined space alive with motion and music, and having no semblance of anything on earth. And as I stood there looking in terror, the wind blew out both the candles in that ancient-peaked garret, leaving me in savage and impenetrable darkness with chaos and pandemonium before me, and the demon madness of that night-baying viol behind me." -- From “The Music of Erich Zann” by H.P. Lovecraft
H.P. Lovecraft was such a gifted writer of horror because he had a knack for presenting people with what seemed to be the framework of a normal world that barely stretched across a chasm of madness and ancient impulses alien to the mortal mind. Lovecraft presents us with that terrible feeling that something is badly, dangerously off, but doesn’t quite allow us to place what it is. You can feel the tension in your body, the icy dread in your gut, the hairs on your arms rise up, but you can’t quite sense exactly what the danger is. That sensation… that feeling that something is warped, broken, and dangerously corrupted dominates, but as you look around, you can’t exactly put your finger on the source of the horror.
If you are an American, you can understand these feelings because you have lived through them over the last few years. You’ve seen people behaving like madmen; doing and saying things that would have seemed almost inconceivable even a decade ago. It’s as if you’re in the passenger seat and you can’t understand why the driver is accelerating as the car is going towards the cliff, then when you look over, he gives you just a bit of a mad smile, and you quickly see what appears to be an octopus tentacle slither under his shirt as he bursts into a fit of howling laughter.
If you don’t get it yet, read these headlines, tweets, videos, and quotes all of which were compiled over the last few years, and tell me if you still think something isn’t going horribly amiss in our country.
1) Is math education racist? Debate rages over changes to how US teaches the subject
2) Yes, People Really Are Eating Tide Pods. No, It’s Not Safe.
4) "Policing in our country is inherently & intentionally racist... No more policing, incarceration, and militarization. It can't be reformed." -- Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib
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6) Texas jury rules against divorced dad trying to stop 7-year-old son’s gender transition
7) “If you see anybody from that [Trump] Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd and you push back on them, and you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere." -- Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA)
8) The NFL Will Now Play the Black National Anthem Before Games, Lecture Fans on Race
9) San Francisco Streets Are Covered in Human Poop. Here's Why That Can Be Dangerous
10) Trump: ‘Hang Mike Pence’ Chants Were Just People Using ‘Common Sense’
11) Just stop already: The 'OK' symbol is not a 'white power' sign
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13) Syracuse U: U.S. Constitution is 'exclusionary' to some students
14) Feds: Saying you’re ‘colorblind’ is racist
15) Democrat Congressman: Seize Trucks From Protesters Headed To D.C., Give Them To Growing Businesses
17) "Every day, Black birthing people and our babies die because our doctors don’t believe our pain." -- Congresswoman Cori Bush
18) Woman Who Earned $200,000 Selling Fart Jars Hospitalized By Her Work
19) Apple to Remove 'Master/Slave' and 'Blacklist' Terms From Coding Platforms
21) "I am a no vote on the floor, on all non-diversity nominees. You know, I will vote for racial minorities and I will vote for LGBTQ. But anybody else I'm not voting for." -- Congresswoman Tammy Duckworth
22) Leaked Biden Plan Would House Violent Men In Women’s Prison Cells
23) FBI Tells Americans to Report Their Family and Friends for “Suspicious Behaviors”
24) Team Biden wants white teachers to undergo anti-racist ‘therapy’
25) Should We Be Having Kids In The Age Of Climate Change?
26) Military Has Spent 6 Million Man-Hours On “woke” Training Under Biden, Senators Find
27) College students 'in tears' over a banana peel in a tree because it didn't make them feel 'safe'
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30) U.S. Trans Olympian: "My Goal Is to Win the Olympics So I Can Burn a U.S. Flag on the Podium"
31) Threatening business owners with jail for wanting to open their businesses to the public
32) His Girlfriend Decided To Transition to Male & Says He’s Transphobic If They Break Up
33) Socialist students protest memorial to fallen police officers
34) Dean fired after saying 'EVERYONE'S LIFE MATTERS' in email
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38) "The CVS on my corner has started locking up basic items like clothing detergent. As so many families can’t make ends meet right now, I can’t imagine thinking that the way to solve the problem of people stealing basic necessities out of desperation is to prosecute them." -- Former New York Governor’s race candidate and actress Cynthia Nixon
39) Senate Report Says 9,000 Americans Abandoned By Biden During Afghanistan Evacuation
I hadn't realized how prolific you've been lately and get well soon!
Hard to know, day to day, whether we wake up as bit-players in a Jodorowsky film, or if the film Idiocracy or Orwell's 1984 are being used as actual instruction manuals by the idiots we allow to be in charge of us.