January 2022 – Penultimate

The Past, the Present, and the Future walk into a room. Things were tense.

(crazy . . . 2: unable to think in a clear or sensible way)

Let’s start the New Year off with something crazy!

First, all the normal defenses don’t seem to work very well nowadays against crazy. Secondly, the crazies gain validation from any silence on your part when they make their declarations in conversation. (Note the Catch 22). And thirdly, crazies have suddenly presented as tons of people you know that you’d never have guessed were crazy.

Defenses. Normal defenses against crazy have always been experience, research, whatever logic and reason can be applied to such, education overall . . . etc. We’ve come a long way since we dropped from the trees, and, as a society, we’ve come to (rightfully) value and exploit this knowledge as we evolve. But, for the last couple of years, these defenses have been limping through space like a Starship that’s been hit with photon torpedoes. Scotty is desperately trying to get more power, and people are darting about the bridge trying to get the shields against crazy back up.

Silence. When people say crazy things in normal conversation, and you’re standing right there, it is easy and even desirable to say nothing; the crazy thing gets left hanging in the air. Or even supported. People don’t want to be confrontational as a general rule, and nobody wants to start a big thing. (I distinguish this situation of course from discussions that occur in the social media dog-park.) And, boy, there is a new discomfort being inducted into the Dictionary Of Feeling this year, and that is when someone says the crazy thing out loud about vaccination/pandemic, or Trumpism stuff. So, when I remain silent, as usually happens, I can see that validation of some color happens on the other end and I feel the discomfort of not correcting the statement. My discomfort stems from the forced choice of either being confrontational or, via an act of omission, affirmational. And the latter contributes to the momentum of something untrue and possibly dangerous to all.

You?! There is an elephant in the room. And it is an elephant. (That might be the wittiest thing I’ve ever said.) I’m referring to, of course, the linkage between politics and medicine in this case. There is one particular political party that has gone tits-up on reason here; I won’t say which, but a careful rereading of the beginning of this paragraph might help. (By the way, did you know that Democrats don’t believe in hand surgery now? And the Green Party thinks CAT Scans are all a bullshit hoax perpetrated by Big Tech?) And here’s the thing, the numbers involved are huge (millions of people have entered the utterly-unsupportable-belief-system zone) and the crazy goes well beyond all the reasoning shitstorms over the pandemic itself―it now also extends to theories about voting, immigration, economics, racism, democracy and insurrection. I’m sure I’ve missed a few. And people say things and I walk by it and think “You?!” And I always also think about how these people, who pass for normal in polite society, can waltz past the ‘secrets’ test: For example, think about all the people from all walks of life that would have to be involved in massive voter fraud, vaccination ‘tracking’, Coronavirus death-count inflation etc. . . and then wonder how it’s all able to be kept so secret, so out of range of being able to be proven, legally or otherwise, despite the most contortionist efforts of an elephant and its deluded following. Put a pin in that. Now, swear your girlfriend to secrecy and tell her that Frank is cheating on Gina, and see how long that secret lasts.

Examples. Despite all the possible collision fronts, my two fun examples below both involve the pandemic since they were the most recent, but I’ve heard all the other stuff by now too:

FUN EXAMPLE #1. Recently. I was doing some gardening with an acquaintance of mine, someone who is really a delightful person, and vaccination came up. I mentioned that I was fully vaccinated and she said she was holding off. She said she believed there might be tracking devices in there, and she didn’t really trust the government. Wow. I asked how this could be possible, practically, as in “Wow, wouldn’t that be really expensive, and how would they ensure only one tracking device got sucked up into the syringe for each shot?” (We’ve seen how multiple shots get drawn consecutively out of each vaccine bottle.) I said that immediately―of the million refutations at hand―and I don’t know why I picked that one out of the hat. I didn’t flash on any experience, any research on the issue, or yet apply a logic structure to the premise, or reason any deductions or inductions from it all. I just blurted this out because it was so easy and I was still not completely sure that she was being serious. But she was, and therefore the conversation quietly petered out. We gardened a little more, happy and well. Afterwards, I let the shock sink in. What the Duck? My questions were stones skipping off the surface of her water and I even detected a slight concern on her face that I might not be in-the-know.

FUN EXAMPLE #2 Very recently. I’m walking by a table with perhaps ten people and there were several nice, somewhat lighthearted conversations going on. I’d previously heard “The virus is just another cold” here and today, one of the more talkative among them -a different guy- declared that he wasn’t vaccinated because he didn’t want to be ‘tracked’. I just found myself saying casually “You really think you’re that important?” . . . A few people laughed and he didn’t seem offended and he continued “No, really, the government is tracking us.”. . . and here came his big punch-line . . . ” and we let them!” Said with gravity, and now everyone was watching us. You’d have to have been there to see, but there was still a joking atmosphere. And so I stopped walking and said: “Oh, really? They’re tracking you? There’s a bunch of people behind computer terminals watching you? (I asked his name) OK, (pretending I’m watching a computer screen now) Attention Everybody! I’ve got eyes on Rick! He’s going into a 7-11 now! If he gets another fucking Slurpee, I want drones in the air! That guy is going down!” Everyone laughed and it died down and I took a seat and we talked about other things. And he seemed like a pretty nice guy. This pleasant dissipation of tension was welcome, but I know it’s rare, and that guy really believes his stuff. I don’t think I turned him around on the issue with my own little verbal drone strike. He’s walking around out there somewhere, and as far as I know he has a legal right to vote.

So, how do we handle this? I don’t know. I do know that there is a major train of thought out there, posited by well-meaning people on T.V., that the best way to engage with this strain of crazy is to be deferential to the other opinion, acknowledge their belief systems and maybe gently try to find common ground while nibbling at the edges of the issue, and all the rest. Bullshit. Someone has to stand for something eventually, and I’m going to go with the tried and true science-and-reason thing. It seemed to be working just fine before that famous ride down the escalator.

If I’ve offended you, please note at least that I am addressing the second Merriam-Webster ‘essential’ definition of crazy in this post, and not the first, and for a reason: I’d like to believe that we’re moving through a temporary phase of a muddling of the sensibilities under the duress of some novel political (think elephant) and social (think Facebook/Podcasts) pressures and we’ll recover soon. We’ll get the smelling salts out soon enough and everything will be all right. (But really, I just don’t want my house to get fire-bombed.)

What is the real solution here? I still don’t know. “I don’t trust the sources” has become the mantra of those who would argue against science and reason in the same way that “You just have to have faith” is the mantra of the religious. Politics is a new religion for those who no longer require facts to construct their belief systems. And there is not much of a success rate with deprogramming religious people.

I feel like I keep stumbling upon victims of some kind of bizarre attack. I am reminded of a moment in Army Training:

I was sitting in bleachers with my Ranger platoon receiving training in chemical warfare. An instructor yelled out the following question: “What is the proper application of antidote if you come upon someone on the battlefield convulsing in the throes of a Russian VX Nerve Agent attack?!”

Staff Sergeant Edgar raised his hand and calmly said: “An intramuscular injection of lead via the M1911A1 syringe.”

Crazy.