A year playing dead

A year playing dead

2019 was the year that travel died. 2020 is a gift that just keeps giving. Bad enough to have a pandemic, it gave an opportunity for the wealthy to win the war on the poor and the righteous the right to enforce their rights over others.

Me? From 2009 till 2019 I traveled to over 40 countries. In January 2020 I went to Taiwan, barely getting back before borders closed. I canceled my trip to Spain. I have gone nowhere for 14 months. I acknowledge that I'm a bit bitter.

Yet my pain is unrecognized or of little concern to the Walmart Warrior or the Church of Spittle and Spit. So, Let it be Writ:

O Shopper... whatever is to be found in Aisle 6 has your name on it. Heaven-help that you do without or that you'll have to make do like you're Depression Era forefathers did. You need a new set of plastic bowls, a new plastic doll, a new set of plasticized brain cells (try Aisle 72).

O Religious Conservatives... how you formed a cesspool of disease by your version of god... who looks and thinks like you! Globalists and multiculturalism be damned. Science be banned! Blame the Chinese and kill off those brown skin people who are nibbling on your piece of pie!

O Xenophobia... we like your food but not you. We are never racist. No, no, no; yet, we are the pure, elected to judge and find wanting. Whether it's restrictions of Muslims or deportation of Africans, we are the eternal fatalists, incapable of change and we are never wrong. Only the strong survive, so say our musical gods. This Pandemic? A fortuitous excuse.

O Reagan... your War on the Poor has finally defeated LBJ's War on Poverty. You designated HIV as a gay man's disease and as long as gay men were dying you were fine with not funding research. It culled the unwanted, a bit like smallpox in blankets or the testing on Black men for syphilis. Remember Tuskegee? You obviously did. And your disgust and anti-science attitude was handed down and amplified when along came Covid. People couldn't blame you. You were already dead.

O Wealthy... with your fancy phones and fancy apps and fancy cars and IT jobs you could do by sitting at home... what did you care? Order Uber eats? Amazon? As for the poor... they should
have gotten a job that wasn't essential, like working in Walmart or cleaning hospitals or caring for the sick. *Ick* You didn't get your fancy degree to serve others.

O Ageism... get out of the way, or we'll shove you over the cliff. The empathy of the young was just pity. Our collective lack of empathy oozed as grandma gasped for breath. And "I won't get whatever you've got and if I do, I won't die" was the Mantra of the Millennial.

O Travel Restrictions ... no one welcomed from Black Africa where infections were low while Texans and Iowans went wherever planes could go. O Business Class... these restrictions never applied to you.

It is hard to not be bitter as friends whined about how their holy routines were upended. I shared toilets and showers, limiting showers to twice per week, limiting trips to the toilet by peeing in a container. Wore a mask in the hallway inside. Without a car stayed home. In the cold stayed home. Nothing warm was open. The library and cafes, were all closed. I had no access to a printer. Did I forget to mention I don't have a phone?

I look forward to traveling again. If movement = life... then I've spent a year playing dead.

© Copyright 2021 Kåre Enga [178.62] (30.april.2021)

~ 620 words.

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