It is a wound

and it is festering. And if we ignore it -- I don’t know what will happen. Or perhaps it’s already happening, and they aren’t telling us. Who is ‘they?’ Why THE GOVERNMENT, of course. A friend of mine just had a brain operation, and today his best friend is taking out the stitches in his head — in my friend’s kitchen. Well, you know — COVID-19? They have more important things to think about; and after all, health care workers are grossly overworked and underpaid. Okay. But I just challenge where all this has left us. The wounds are very very deep and it makes no sense to just pretend — like good warriors, that we have not been wounded.  But our scars, you see, are not from the actual illness of COVID-19 — no. Very few have actually gotten sick from it (I don’t know a soul who has) and even fewer have died. But we have all been deeply affected by the lock down. I venture to say that we are, all of us, suffering from  PTSD. The life we are living is not a natural one, on the contrary it is profoundly unnatural, I would even say perverted, and we have been left with no work, no friends, but a digital world rich with pornography and Disney Distraction. The pornography is supposedly for the adults (I mean the kids don’t have access to that, do they?). And the kids have Disney (that’s all they need, or at the very least it'll shut them up!). What does a year (it will be at least a year, but with the variations, it may be -- the gloom and doomers say -- much, much longer) of being forbidden to hug, visit our friends, sing, drink, dance, meet strangers, hug strangers, have sex with strangers — what has this done to us? I don’t think we even know yet. Q-Anon survivors offer a tiny hint. They are lonely, bored, they have lost their businesses, and they have no hope, so they turn to their cellphones (that’s where all the answers are, apparently) only to find a spate of absolutely delectable lies that give them hope, because that’s what lies do. It is considered hyperbolic to compare anyone or anything to The Nazis, but could we at least mention the Weimar Republic in this context? Those people not only endured  a catastrophic depression, but were blamed for World War I. Don’t forget the blame part. It’s very important.  For we too, are blamed, every day, for impulses which were once lauded as admirable. Remember when reason was a good thing? (No more -- for now we can be more together because we are further apart) Remember when human intimacy was valued? (No more, you might give them COVID-19.) Remember when we were told not to covet, envy, or be jealous of, or spiteful to -- others?  (Now we are encouraged to report our friends to the police if they appear to be having more fun than we are.) But it’s not that, really. It’s the lies. I’m not talking about Trump’s lies, that’s another matter -- I’m talking about government lies about COVID-19. We’ve all heard of gaslighting, and that is what is happening around this illness. It’s much worse than what Trump did. Trump just made things up — he is certainly not blameless, but he is a master of manipulative rhetoric, not a master manipulator.What I mean is he merely tells you manipulative untruths -- they come at you, it’s a barrage, an assault, and it’s easy enough --or difficult enough -- as the case may be, to simply barricade yourself against it all, go back to Disney and/or pornography, hunker down, and remember how much you love your family and/or yoga and baking cookies, and ignore him. But when your adversary insists you be afraid all the time it’s another matter. Trump wanted us to be afraid, but not all the time. And by that I mean when he sensed we were not afraid he was not smart enough to immediately come up with another lie that would place us back in the clutches of fear again. Remember 'children'? The dreaded 'inflammatory disease'? Remember the danger that COVID-19 might have for children? There was a mysterious inflammatory illness that was thought to be linked with COVID-19, which is why we weren’t sending children back to school, because it might have been dangerous (well you can never be too careful). I have news for you: no such inflammatory illness ever existed. But the powers-that-be obviously thought that we shouldn’t be sending children back to school, so they made this illness up, and scared the living hell out of parents everywhere, for nothing. This kind of manipulation leaves scars; it does not go away. And now we are being told that even  these new vaccines, variants, mutations -- or whatever the trendy word is -- may make all vaccines obsolete. But, paradoxically, this just means you must get vaccinated the day before yesterday. It’s all about whether or not we are afraid enough, and if we weren’t afraid enough, then we migh just not put on masks, or social distance, or get the vaccine on the day before yesterday. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not an anti-masker or an anti-vaxer, and I believe there is such a thing as COVID-19. I do, however, believe, that you when you have been treated like shit it is quite necessary to acknowledge it (any abused woman knows this) because that’s the only way of not feeling that you are, actually a piece of shit. Being locked up in our houses, having our lives destroyed, and most of all, being lied to for a year -- well I don't know how to tell you this -- but this has consequences. People go crazy, get addicted, get very very angry, very anti-social, commit suicide  and, yeah, well -- I’d rather not go on. Of course we won’t be told about a lot of this, until it’s over; because it might take our minds off doing what we are told. I think of my friend having the stitches yanked out of his head. I said "isn't that a little dangerous?" My friend said that his friend has lots of experience taking the stitches out of the heads of other ‘criminals.’ My friend, however, is not a criminal. Or is he? I mean, aren't we all criminals? I mean, isn’t that why they lock people up? Well if you weren't a criminal before, then you might just be one now.