Alas we enjoy our captivity and

we love those who enslave us. I met an old friend on the street last night; to be honest he was more like a business associate — an actor -- who had been in my plays many years ago. He is what we would nowadays call a ‘nice gay man.’ He was heavily masked, so when he said hello, I didn’t refrain from asking ‘Who are you?’ (And if that is COVID-19 rudeness, so be it.) When he told me who he was I greeted him warmly. It didn’t take two seconds for him to say: ‘This is the first time I've been out of the house in months!’ and he peered at me warily. But after that admission -- was it an admission, or a defense of sorts?  -- I was speechless. Who was my friend speaking to? He certainly knows me well enough to know that I probably have been out of the house once or twice in the last 10 months, and so why would he find it necessary to tell me that he had not? Then I remembered that during the AIDS epidemic, he was one who denied being promiscuous, but I would see him, nightly, in some ‘house of ill repute,’ along with me, showering after an encounter with a stranger. It’s called blind hypocrisy; no more than that — blind obedience. And I think it’s time we came to terms with it. People are stupid sheep; we love mute submission. Erich Fromm spoke of it in Escape From Freedom many years ago. It was shocking — the notion that people, generally, wish to live in a dictatorship. Well never mind ‘herd immunity’ what about ‘herd mentality'? People are overall much happier conforming; doing what other people do. They don’t want to think, they don’t want to stand up in a crowd and raise their voice ‘I object!’ These days the only voices that are raised are those of anti-racism and as important as that cause is — when it comes to anti-racism all reasonable people agree and so it's almost a nod to correctness. (No one actually listens -- or cops would not still be killing black men -- but we continue to go through the protocol of pretending to). And all reasonable people agree with staying at home and watching Netflix. I have finally given up. I will continue to unleash my dissatisfaction here, in Another Blog That Nobody Reads, but that is simply because no one reads it, and there is nothing more safe than the notion that I am only talking to myself, for myself, and if someone overhears, well it’s their fault. You see, when this all started -- and we weren’t a month into it -- I was telling everyone: ‘there will be riots in the streets — you can’t lock people up in their own homes!’ but the silence was deafening, it continues to be deafening. Oh yes there are the crazy ‘conspiracy theorists’ (aren’t they mostly all ‘Forever Trumpers’ or something?) who go on about ‘human rights.’ But everyone has now accepted that when it comes to ‘public health’ we have no rights. For me even to speak of rights is ridiculous --I realize that now -- because how can you have the ‘right’ to put someone else’s life in danger? So we must now accept that this frantic scurrying out to buy toilet paper, the empty streets filled with nothing but the drug addicted homeless, this slow sad withering of our friends into suicide, young people giving up on their lives, independent business giving way to Walmart,  no theatre/movies/ concerts/galleries/art, the triumph of the digital world, the death of promiscuity, but most of all the meek, mild, shy, apologetic acceptance of all that is preached at us on television -- the fear, most of all the fear of everything of everyone, of life, of experience itself; this is our lot. Education in the traditional sense is over, as is reading. (I will continue to read of course, as long as books are available somewhere. It’s interesting that  Farenheit 451 never literally occurred —  no books were publicly burned — but they might as well have been, as no one reads.) I think we can take our cue from the news; when was the last time you heard about Africa? About The Middle East? About starvation in India (I guarantee it’s happening)? No that was what being informed used to be, but now we don’t need House, ER, Gray’s Anatomy, Code Black as the news is all medical melodrama (her dying words were ‘I don’t believe in this virus!’), and we will never be sated. School will become, for young people, a place to be inculcated to the party line, they will learn about self sacrifice, caring, that even feelings have feelings, that we must make sure to stay out of everyone’s way and not infect them. These will not be ‘live’ classes, no -- universities have gotten a taste of the money that can be made from online learning, rich stay-at-home-parents will I am sure figure out a way to put their kid in the basement and do online learning, as they do their yoga upstairs, and bake cookies --  but of course many can’t. And that is who will continue to serve us; the ones who have no choice, the inevitable underclass, those who we don't talk about the ones who are dying right now, the poor people of colour who don’t have raw fruits and vegetables in their neighborhood supermarkets, who don’t have proper health care, who don’t have time or money to go to the doctor, who are morbidly obese and diabetic, they will drive our buses and clean our streets and antiseptic-wipe all the banisters— there will always be work there (thank God!) as pandemic will follow pandemic. And we will be safe, as we didn’t want that kind of freedom, what we wanted was freedom from dangerous ideas, dangerous choices, the freedom from the notion that life offers any choice at all. Now we have no choices, and can’t we just face it? We are happy. We are happy with our lives of nothing. The notifications on your iPhone tell you not to be guilty about curling up during lockdown with a glass of wine and a box of chocolates. Run, don’t walk to your nearest pillow. No better yet make a little blanket tent in your living room, run the cord from your computer there, pop some popcorn, settle in. It’s not just a difficult winter; our lives our now a perpetual winter, and there is something about the cold and being inside that makes us feel so much more cozy than being outside in the sun, naked and hot, forced to make decisions, thinking, screwing, hugging, singing and making art. But that’s all gone now. No need to worry. It's what you always wanted.