It's The Pandemic, Stupid...

 I really start wondering if I'm going to wake up from a terrible nightmare when I look around at the news at large of late.

First, I see the alleged Supreme Court - I note "alleged" because while it is the highest court of appeal in the American Justice System, it may not be staffed by intellects which might be able to hold candles to ... well, in some cases, I'd suggest the average children three or older in daycares might have more of a handle on "justice" than some of the fools in robes on that court.  Anyway, before I diverged, my intention was to note that a vaccine/mask mandate really should not be required.  I mean, you would think that, when confronted with a modern-day threat to one's very existence, with ample evidence that we have a medication which can overwhelmingly reduce the effects of the virus, and even aid in people surviving it's infection, one might consider that it was sheer self-preservation which would encourage a vast majority of the intelligent people in this society to seek safety.

And I do wonder if that is, in fact, happening.  Yes, I am aware that no one was ever convinced their position was wrong because they were called stupid.  I don't expect people to rush to get a vaccine because I said so.  I can only help those who choose not to be vaccinated do experience the ultimate price COVID requires, and they die.  That is, my friends, how the breed improves.  We filter out, typically by natural selection, those who fail to surpass the various challenges.  And this right here is one of the more obvious, larger, and more deadly threats.  

But then I see where people wish to restrict others from voting.

And ain't that a really stupid move.

We saw just how thin the line is between democracy and, well, lunacy.  But because I was one of the fortunate few educated before the whole "No child left behind" business that simply destroyed the American Educational system, I happen to have a certain amount of insight which some may not have.  

And that goes a little like this - any group that selects it's own leadership is 100% at the mercy of that group.  That is, the majority of the group must support the system, which fairly and equitably selects the next leader.  What that previous president dipshit did was sow disinformation, outright lies, and really bastardized treason, which is horrifying due to the oath he took, and then violated, to protect that which allegedly aided him in what little profit he has truly managed to make.  But here's the bottom line - if you restrict the number of people who can vote, those who cannot vote are, by very definition, disenfranchised - and those who believe they have no voice in a system will not believe in the system.  Thusly, those who have no voice in the system will seek to replace it with a better one.

You doubt me?  I only need to go back a hundred years.  A population, led by a historically rich leadership (that is, a leading cadre which can point to many years of being leaders as the traditional leadership) found themselves with little to no expectation that the leadership was interested in their overall well being.  That is, that leadership was distracted by other problems, and sought to devote their energies, and the massed cooperation of those whom they led, to overcome those problems.  

Due to the absolute disregard for the overwhelming cost which others were asked to pay to overcome this overwhelming problem, they decided their continued existence in such a system was not to their overall benefit.  That is, the system continued to disregard their discomfort, and horror, and they chose to band together and seek a change of the overall ruling leadership, and replace it with something more responsive. 

Thus the Russian Royal Family was executed in a wood, and the promise of a democratic and responsive leadership was replaced with a truly terrifying system which quite probably killed more people during "peace" time than had died in any war - simply to maintain control.  

And America is a whole heck of a lot more populated and better armed than the Russia of early last century.  Thus any pending revolution to overthrow any system rife with corruption will lead to a hell of a lot more dead people than have died so far during this pandemic.  I note that not to glory in the threat, my friends,  I simply note it because if the nasty stuff hits the rotary oscillator, there's an awful lot of crap to go around - a lot of people are going to die.  

I have no reasonable expectation to avoid that fate, should it come to that.  I'm nowhere near charismatic enough to become any sort of leader, and I know I'm not the type of person who may be able to motivate thousands, or hundreds, or tens.  I'm just the lunatic out howling against the wind, seeing that there are plenty of idiots out there who think they will be able to do what it is they want to do if they can get it so that the people they don't like can't vote. 

Brilliant thinking, there, to eliminate the voices you don't like.  Thing is, the bottom line is that America is all about making sure everyone gets heard.  Sure, it's annoying when some fellow manages to stop progress and prevent a road going through a swamp all because there's a half-hundred or so frogs that exist nowhere else on the planet.  And who needs those frogs, right?  It's not like they might cure cancer or anything...  Or maybe they could.  But if they go the way of the carrier pigeon, the dodo, and the countless other species we've overcome and eliminated, no one will ever know, right?  

Which is the problem.  We don't know what the elimination of any one thing might do, long term.  We do know that resources are limited, we need to manage them, and we need to make sure they're around for the future.  And that includes opinions.  Sure, I might consider someone who voices the opinion that the vaccines for COVID-19 are nuts - but they have the right to hold that opinion.  And I can hope that, eventually, they will learn just exactly how useful their resistance will be.  Such as a small note on their tombstone, assuming there are a few family members around to hear their last words, or bury them.  It's not too far a push from where we are now to a horrifyingly mutated version that brings the omicron level of infectious behavior with a black-death level fatality in the face of modern medicine.  

For you see, another thing I learned way way way back in the schooling I did get as a child was that there are many smart people out there who do study scary things, and some of those smart people know a heck of a lot more than I ever will - and I believe that they're trying to make sure there are more of us here, not less of us, because more of us make the world work better.  I refuse to believe that there are people in antivirus research who are as dumb as some of our elected congresscritters.  Bottom line, my friends, is we're all guilty of having the sort of leaders we've voted for.  Some of them are truly smart, decent people.  And some are about as moronic as you might expect.  

So yeah, I find the biggest problem we do have is there's no fallback.  We don't have a backup planet we can hop on because this one's gone to hell.  All I know for sure is that the raving lunacy that seems to have infected a fair number of people may lead to more fatalities than it needs to continue.  I can only hope that the survivors are the smarter folk, or in a few hundred thousand years, someone's going to look at a pile of rocks and garbage and wonder just what the hell drove us all off the cliff.  Assuming there's anyone who comes along to notice we were here at all.  It could be we're just going to be another footnote in the universe as a species that showed an incredible amount of potential before flushing it all down the drain because we were too stupid to get together and survive.  Which I expect is what happens to many civilizations out there.  Because while you might think this is everything, the truth of the matter is when you look up into the skies, they go on.  And not just forever, kids.  They go.  They go for so far that we have not yet found the edges.  We haven't been around long enough yet to be able to see that far away.  Because that far away keeps moving away.  So to think we're all there is out there, that's just the sort of idiotic thinking that will get us buried pretty damned quick.  And quite possibly, appropriately.