What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination?
The disorderedness of society has a tendency to call the second part of Ginsberg’s Howl to my mind. I’ve quoted it once before on this blog. Maybe I’m just read enough to be able to quote something when it seems apt, but not enough to quote that many different sources. When all you have is a hammer, I suppose.
COVID-19 is the occasion again for another post, or at least a reaction to the reaction to the reaction (I think that’s the stack depth at the moment, it can be hard to keep track sometimes).
There is the first order reaction - the dramatic and sudden reordering of societies. Social distancing, working from home, gatherings and sporting events canceled. And of course, the massive fluctuations in the economy and the stock markets as the algorithms and traders freak out and panic until a 15-minute reset gives everyone enough time to go outside and have a smoke and calm down. Wall Street probably needs more nicotine and less cocaine, but one can only expect so much.
A few days ago I thought I’d have a chuckle and so said to myself, “I’m 34 years old, I can do this with no repercussions to my mental health; I’m going to check on my 401k.” When the first entry in the rotating banner on the homepage for the site that manages my 401k was an article with the lede “Life comes at you fast,” I found it incredibly funny. Others have had less bemused reactions to the state of the market. There’s a handful of oft-dunked on tweet threads on Twitter, wondering why we don’t just get it all over with and let the olds die so that the market can re-stabilize. I know that there have been a handful of cable news interviewees complaining as much. Another “Won’t anyone think of the retirement funds!?” screeds landed in my Facebook feed.
We did not shut down public events and institutions to try to slow the spread of the flu. Yet we have already destroyed $5 trillion in stock market wealth over the last few weeks in the growing coronavirus panic, reports The New York Times, wiping out retirement savings for many.
In this one, I suppose, there’s at least feigned concern that more yet will suffer when it comes time to retire, to find there is nothing in their accounts. This is not to deny the impending economic hardships that will be ahead. In the short term, there’s going to be people coming to retirement that are going to be screwed. There will be more, due to testing and treatment and gluttonous insurance companies that are sure to bankrupted because of treatment for the disease, or some compounding effect (losing a job and income, losing a home, etc.). But with wall of that, I fail to see how leaning in to a mass die-off is going to help the market, they usually seem to respond better to more and healthy workers, but I’m just spitballing here. Which brings is to the third degree, my own reaction.
They broke their backs lifting Moloch to Heaven!
And we’re back to Ginsberg. The idea is repugnant. In seething anger I try to reason the motivations for why some may see something and pass it on with somberly nodding heads, instructing us that the ideas are “worth a read.” I try, and often fail, to read charity into the situation, and try to wonder that it’s a coping mechanism to the overwhelming catastrophe. To deny that the situation is not as dire, and so the consequences should not be so bad either. I cannot know if this is true, but it is less heinous than other possibilities.
In the end, I believe the root of this plan is in a shameful, utter hopelessness. The olds are going to die anyway, they say. Look at these charts! These actuarial tables! This glorious mathematics! Why, then, should we let a drowning man bring down a survivor? Why can they not be allowed to die and so decrease the surplus population? One post did the math to surmise that those at risk correspond to a handful of months of population growth, is this proof they are not replaceable? Particularly now that they are no longer productive members of society? They are drains on our resources as it is.
In Lombardy, the medical system is well beyond its capacity. They have essentially begin a war-time triage, making the choices about who gets life-saving equipment and treatment and who gets last rites. It is a grisly, terrifying, sobering reality. I am doubtful that they will not be the only ones to do this. These are hard choices, and I feel for those who have to make them, and I would hesitate to be their judge. This was, and always should be the last choice for a decent society.
If we think that we can jump straight there just so we can save a few dollars in our bank account, if we are unwilling to consider another life before our future comfort, if we are willing to trade the lives of our parents and grandparents and great-grandparents for a few crumbs, then we have no need to carry on at all. I am grateful that this is not the aim of those making policy now, but given that it’s not just coming from random extremists and that plenty are nodding along, perhaps without realizing what they are signing up to - it dismays me a little.
I’m with you in Rockland
where your condition has become serious and is reported on the radio