The 2020 Hunger Games

It’s not often you start a post about the 2020 Hunger Games will listening to a 70’s soft rock essentials list on iTunes but I don’t claim to be conventional, average or ordinary.

Nor will I tell you how I self identify today for the simple reason of “I don’t feel like it.”

Besides what good would it do if I wrote it, screamed it or sent it out via smoke signal. Very few care and even those who do aren’t particularly interested in that kind of of narishkeit.

We live in interesting times my friends, the sort where we have the King of Fools in the White House an assortment of dolts and dunces spread throughout the country.

The lieutenant governor of my state has made it clear that his claim to being pro life isn’t very strong as he thinks it is more important to try and earn a buck than save a life.

It is so important to him he says he and his contemporaries ought to be willing to die to earn some cheddar for our economy.

If I call him somewhat obtuse, immoral and dumber than a rock I’d have to apologize to the granite in the kitchen.

Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot Revisited

Fear is rarely a good source of motivation and it often leads to bad choices.

I understand that financial ruin is particularly onerous and how it can push people to want to open things up again.

But I also understand sick and dead people aren’t particularly good consumers so it seems ridiculous to ask to open things up unless you have a strategy for doing so.

A strategy that includes significant amounts of testing so that you can use fact to determine if it is safe to open things up or if you are trying to imitate a horror movie.

You know how those things go, everyone thinks the killer is dead and just as they relax he/she/it comes back to life and kills more people.

That is a fun idea for a movie, even if it is cliche and campy but not so much in real life.

So instead of asking people to serve as tribute we ought to invest time and resources into doing this right.

Hell it is going to take some time to get people comfortable with the idea of eating at restaurants, taking public transportation and going to movies/concerts/sporting events again.

If you screw up the reopening you won’t make it any easier and you might make it harder for some of these businesses to recover but hey what to do I know.

More than a few people have told me they won’t be afraid of a virus they can’t see but are happy to follow the instructions of an invisible deity.

Some of them have tried to convince me I ought to accept the conspiracy theories they push and get upset when I refuse.

I ask them why I ought to buy in and they tell me about the wonderful experts who wrote them. I like to show them stuff from experts I trust and they tell me it is impossible to believe.

So I ask them how they can buy into their bible and they assure me I have to be crazy not to believe it.

“But Josh, you know our savior died and came back for you.”

“You forget I am Jewish. I don’t buy into that. I am not entirely sure I buy into the earth opening up and swallowing Korach, 40 years of wandering the desert and the parting of the Red Sea. Definitely can’t buy your stuff.”

“But Josh, there is proof in the bible.”

“Ok, I can point out mistranslations and things that were twisted. You can’t read it in its original form but you are cool with that. You are cool with something that can be argued is part of the longest game of telephone ever but won’t accept scientific facts because you find them inconvenient.

You got me.I was mistaken and I believe everything now.”

About now is when they walk away frustrated, sometimes cursing, except for those who invite me to their bible study but that is a different story for a different time.

Now is the moment where I say I never really expected to live during a time when the Salem Witch Trials could be conducted again, except I think they could or a version 0f them.

Final Words

I have more than a few thoughts and ideas about all this and more. I like the ‘more’ better but I writing about it elsewhere and not here.

Some of you think this could be the beginning of the end and some of you think death knells are hysteria and our finest hour is coming.

I haven’t made a final decision about either and not because I am a fence sitter.

But you won’t hear more on that now because I am the dutiful son and mom just called so I am going to call her back.

Before I go I will reiterate I have done a significant amount of thinking about what the pandemic could do and how I want to live.

It is not that I expect to die or anyone else, but you never know and it doesn’t hurt to engage in some serious introspection and take action either.