You know, it was like a scene out of a rejected Rod Serling skit yesterday. My wife and I decided to make the 2 hour drive to the other side of the Big Island before the sunrise to take advantage of the Kailua-Kona Costco kupuna early opening so we could augment our home provisions … it’s obvious to us that this Covid-19 business is going to go on for months — not weeks as the Large Orange Pustule had presumed. So after a long, rough and wet drive clear across the island we pulled into the parking lot and it was bizarre… a half hour before opening there was a line that went practically around the entire warehouse structure of people our age and older, mostly ambulatory, all silently mumbling to themselves or else buried in their cell phones.
Frankly I hadn’t seen anything like that since the last Arab oil embargo back in the ‘70s at gas stations, but this was different; the character and mood of the people was dark and resigned — and here in Hawaii, that kind of thing used to be unheard of; the norm is more often generous smiles, banter among strangers, neighbors doing “talk story” in the parking lot... none of that is happening now. Getting to the back of the line was especially challenging, as the hip replacement surgery I was supposed to have received this month was cancelled with no future reschedule date and the ⅓ mile walk around to the back of the building wasn’t exactly the most enjoyable experience I’ve had recently, especially since doctors here are now scared out of their minds to prescribe pain medication that treat actual pain instead of inflammation… thanks to republican deregulation and pharma greed, among other contributors — but I digress. Anyway, some few were wearing the obligatory N95 masks (likely holdovers from the 2018 Kiluea eruption times, since masks and respirators are otherwise currently unavailable anywhere here, even online); still others (including us) wore disposable gloves. One lady in line provided a few brief moments of humor when she showed up wearing a large clear plastic bag on her head that covered her shoulders, perspiring profusely in the tropical sun therein and looking very worried (I got my wife to bust out laughing when I quietly whispered in her ear, ‘I wonder if she read the printing on it that says ‘This is not a toy’?”). Most everyone dutifully kept the obligatory six foot distance between themselves, and there was only one instance I saw of line cutting — a sour old woman who obviously acquired a strong “I don’t give a shit” attitude at a very early age and consequently decided to retain it into adulthood as a core personality trait — But for the most part it was orderly… almost like a funeral reception receiving line, but out of doors with pleasant mid-70s ocean breezes wafting in from the shoreline with everyone dressed in casual tropical attire.
It took us an hour of agonizingly slow progress as we geriatrics hobbled and shuffled along before we were finally able to flash our member cards to the entrance staff and begin to collect the items on our list — but as I tooled around the aisles in the electric shopping cart while my wife picked the items from our list and put them in the basket, I couldn’t help but wonder about that experience outside: specifically, how many of those fellow seniors are responsible for voting for the Large Orange Pustule and his minions responsible for consigning us all to this state of affairs? And, now that they have to comply with the new stay at home rules, deal with the financial consequences and possibly endure the heartache of losing a loved one to this disease, will any of them change their minds about their allegiance to the republican party and its brand of misanthropic conservatism?
Well, I’ve been on enough trips around the sun and I’ve seen far more implications and consequences of unbridled, unchecked, uneducated, undisciplined and unregulated human nature than my eyes ever wanted or needed to see — and it’s really quite remarkable: the one single thing that has remained invariable from the moment I began observing people as a kid while reading and studying history is that where humanity’s inability to learn from its mistakes is concerned, not a damned thing has changed; it’s been engrained into people’s DNA from the beginning to think that the current iteration of homo sapiens is too “exceptional” to pay any mind to past precedents. (and yes, that applies to me as well: I’m not proud of the failed relationships and short-sighted career choices I made along the way that caused me and those I cared for great misery for years) Oh, we’re great at technology once the wild eyed religious fundies and the politicians with their agendas stay away — we can build wonderful things from the earth’s bounty and manipulate the laws of physics that we can understand — but when it comes to treating each other and our home in this universe with the kind of respect they deserve, we as a species are essentially barbaric leeches. Because of it our oceans are dying and their water levels are rising from melting arctic ice, our air and lands are being poisoned and raped wholesale, and we elect governments where once they at least cared enough to TRY to put a shiny happy patriotic face on their wars and assaults on natural resources, we now have a smash-and-grab government that is perfectly contented to, as Scrooge in Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” mused, “… deplete the surplus population” for the sake of the economy and reelection prospects.
And over 40% of our voting public STILL approve of the Large Orange Pustule.
I would ordinarily rest my case on that single point, and summarily disregard the usual sanctimonious retorts who would piously claim that painting humanity with such a broad brush is disingenuous… after all, look at all the beauty and wonderful THINGS mankind has created. Yep, that’s a fact, for sure… and pretty much all of it was done for money or someone’s approval just in order to stay alive, too. But believe it or not, for me there is a glimmer of hope in all of this, based on my understanding of human history: death is far more than a painful, ugly “existence relocation plan”; in a larger sense given enough of it under certain circumstances it can be a powerful change agent for good, if only the religious zealots, the political opportunists and the petty hustlers will get out of the way or else get forced out at the ballot box. And I am beginning to see glimmers of hints that the upcoming youth just might start to be getting sick enough of this kind of existence that they might not make the same mistake that my generation did in 1972 - which was make a lot of loud, blustery noise about the issues of the day to get popularity points and “exposure” then stay home when it came time to vote. That damned war could have ended in 1973, but it raged on for two more bloody, expensive years at the hands of another republican gangster. Maybe if they look at that relatively recent bit of history they could see the consequences of inaction.
Actually, if they harbor any expectations to survive at all, they really don’t have a choice this time whether they know it or not; they’d likely not care much for the kind existence that’s coming unabated.