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We don’t seem to like one another very much anymore in America. Not like we did before COVID, and not like we did before Trump. You’d think that the awful losses we shared during the virus and the shutdown would have made us more compassionate towards one another. That the visions of an understaffed, overwhelmed health system would prompt real action as a result. That people would demand free, accessible, effective modern healthcare for every resident of this great nation. I assumed that surely the counterproductive and clueless treatment of this terrible pandemic by an obviously inadequate President would prompt Americans to demand a swift return to effective government.
I thought that when we could finally come outside again and be together, we would be kinder, more compassionate, more tolerant. One million Americans of every ilk and stripe died of COVID before we had the vaccine. No one knew how to stop it, only to avoid it.
When we got the vaccine, I was sure that everyone in this great Country would do whatever they could, because now we could do something, to stay safe and keep others safe.
Instead, some people reacted as if being asked to wear a less than ½ ounce of cloth mask on the lower portion of their face was exactly the same as having their fingernails pried out at assembly by a gloating high school vice-principal.
Fearing shortages, or so one assumes, people began hoarding toilet paper. Toilet paper. One time I went to COSTCO very early during their special senior-citizen-and-therefore-more-likely-to-die-of-COVID hour before the public opening. It was a cold day, I had to walk there five miles each way in the snow, and so forth and I got there super early and saw that the line was already all the way around the theme-park-sized parking lot. All old. All cold. All looking for toilet paper. When the store finally opened, we all did the senior citizen version of storming the gates but by the time I made my way in and to the back of the store where the dry goods are, and I am a COSTCO ninja, there was not a single pallet of toilet paper to be found. Not a skein, not a pack. Nunca. Yeah. I kept thinking to myself: “But they all still have just the one asshole, right?”
I felt like COVID was ripping the scab off of the American psyche and that we were seeing what was underneath, the bloody fat cells imitating vermin in mud, and that once we saw it, we could neither unsee it nor make it go away. We saw each other’s worst impulses, stupidest decisions, most paranoid ideations.
We are not, of course, only our worse impulses or our most tribal, selfish views. We all have our good points, our moments of compassion and generosity, of inclusiveness, I hope. It’s just that…
During COVID shutdown I really missed everybody. I missed being behind someone too slow on the freeway, I missed running into a friend at TJs. I missed seeing babies and people on bikes and being able to shake a person’s hand or hug them. But now it’s like when you run into an old flame and feel that heat you once felt and arrange to go to dinner and everything is so awesome until those first five minutes are gone and he does that gesture that reminds you of that feeling of cheap revulsion at his utterly venial nature.You did break up with him for a reason and no amount of toilet paper can ever wipe that away.