Absolutely No Hugging
I’m so glad we traveled when we did. Though all that money we could have made never entered our pockets, and all the money we spent is gone, I’m glad we went. In 2017 my now-wife and I quit our “good” jobs in Japan and hit the road. We left it all behind and took a risk. We backpacked around Europe, then Africa, then South America, with some crash-landing breaks back home in the United States interspersed therein. We spent a lot of money and didn’t make any money for a lot of that time. Nothing was guaranteed but we gave it a shot anyway.
At the end of last year, when we were finishing up the immigration process and my wife was about to move to this country, we knew we would head out on a road trip very soon after she got here. It was our reward for having been apart for nearly an entire year. And we did, right at the last moment we possibly could have. From mid-January to mid February of this year, we went out and saw as much of America as we could afford to. We slept in our car and most nights it was very, very cold. It was fun to be out on the road and do what we wanted, though travel has its own set of stresses. Little did we know it would be the last time such freedoms would be permitted.
Now borders are closed, flights suspended and mandatory quarantine periods imposed. Tourism is considered irresponsible and antisocial, if not outright banned. Travel as we once knew it is gone, and likely for a very, very long time. These restrictions are not temporary, as much as we might want to believe that they are. The Fear is too powerful. The plan is already in motion. I’m so glad we traveled when we still could. I’m so glad we were irresponsible back then, because now we can’t even choose to be.
The new fascism has already arrived. The post-post-postmodern Gestapo already lives next door. It is us, the resolutely polarized pseudo-society, the confirmation-seeking nonthinkers. Where once we as Americans came together, now dissenting voices are the enemy. It is the grocery store shoppers screaming at the mother and child to get the hell out for not wearing a mask. It is a man dying in a motorcycle crash and being counted as a COVID-19 death. It is Twitter, Facebook and YouTube silencing and deplatforming conservative voices and anyone who would challenge the mainstream narrative on coronavirus, government lockdowns and Black Lives Matter. Lies, deceit and tribalism permeate every cell, every atom of our society today. The desire for truth, to find the facts, has been all but abandoned by the masses. If CNN says it’s true, it’s true. If the New York Times says it’s happening, then it’s happening. If Vox says it’s a problem, then it’s a problem. No further thought, investigation or research is required.
And now we find ourselves where we are today, where we allow our state and local governments to shutter our businesses, force us to wear masks in public and bar us from entering our houses of worship. Absolutely No Hugging, they say. You can have your little meeting but don’t you dare touch each other. Keep that mask on or we will shut you down. Practice social distancing, obey all the rules and maybe we’ll allow your pathetic little existence to continue.
Where once government served the people, now the people serve their government and must submit to its every whim. Do what we say or else, the motto of 2020, the motto of your state government, the motto of the violent mobs destroying businesses in cities across our country in the name of fighting fascism. Newspeak rears its ugly head once again; the anti-fascists are the fascists, the new totalitarians bludgeoning us into conformity. If the government doesn’t come for you, maybe the angry mob will. Don’t hurt us, we reply. Please let us have some semblance of our old lives back. Let us pretend we are free just a bit longer.
That dream is dead and gone.
