Consternation without Consolation

I am inconsolable.

Sorrow

I mourn the passing of our American way of life. It. is. gone.

I miss gathering with the Saints and singing the hymns of Zion.

I miss facing dozens of students in a classroom and watching them learn, and working with students one-on-one, and holding lab meetings.

I miss the possibility of traveling to Mauritius or France (or even Canada) to renew dear acquaintances, and a thousand other things which are no longer possible.

I miss being able to trust authority.

I am grateful to be able to be with my immediate family, and enjoy food and shelter, so the grief is not unmitigated.

Some enemy did this*

I believe that our way of life crumbled under an enemy attack.

I believe that we allowed this to happen because of fear.

America is no longer "the home of the brave," but now a country of the fearful cowering in their homes.

Even the military is afraid of holding "a 12 person, 45 minute meeting in a conference room," according to an informal survey conducted in Fairfax County, VA.

To see where we're headed, read the short science fiction story "The Machine Stops" published in 1909.

Our weakness as a people

America's greatest weakness: its people's fear of death.

Our way of life has been destroyed by some enemy preying on our greatest fear, the fear of death.

Two great experiments conducted by our enemies to test this: 9/11 and the corona virus**.

The outcome of the experiments confirm that, yes, the American people will fold and give up their way of life when faced with the threat of death.

A single unjust death can be used to enrage them to the point where they will burn down their own cities, unjustly killing many more people in the process.

I don't trust the numbers

The enemy is not just external. There are factions inside our country wanting to tear down our history and our Constitution. It is no longer possible to get accurate information. It is no longer possible to trust our leaders (whether elected or appointed) and our news media. An appeal to science is useless, as evidenced by headlines of the form "999 scientists agree that X" with ever escalating numbers, but contradictory conclusions. We are left to our own experience.

Within the last few days I have learned from trusted people whom I know personally that a) the illness is real and devastating, and b) that deaths are being wrongly reported as due to the illness when they are not. So, the threat is real, but the numbers cannot be trusted.

Personal fear

After 9/11, to prove that I would not succumb to fear, I took a flight as soon as possible, for no particular reason other than to demonstrate that I had not been terrorized. A very small thing but one that I felt very strongly about.

In the case of this corona virus, I am personally unafraid, but can't think of a big gesture. I do go about my life as much as possible as before. But I am met with disapproval. Fear has morphed into contempt for the unafraid.

I am no stranger to fear myself.

I am afraid to publish this point of view.

I feel the flood of contempt which would follow.

I fear that no one will actually even read this.

I fear that I will die without having had any positive impact on the world, and that that death, however it might occur, will be counted as a death from COVID-19.

I fear that the corona virus will get the last word (actually, a shout (right?)) in this post, hence this feeble sentence to prevent at least that.

Notes

*Matthew 13:28

**Freeze this video to see the outcome of this game of Risk ™. Not just America, but the entire industrialized world has been conquered. By a country which, if we can trust its own report (hah!), lost only a thousand of its own citizens.