It will come as little to no surprise to those who know me that once again I am full of crap. For all of my talk about wanting to start conversations and promote rational dialog, after too much news and social media and a bad day out and about trying to do my grocery and pharmacy shopping in COVID-land I cut loose with a good old fashioned mouth foaming, obscenity spewing Facebook rant about… well, about pretty much everyone who doesn’t think like I do.
Like most self-indulgent rants it felt good at the time and to my amusement, I started seeing likes and other reactions to my rant.
Haha. Hey, that’s funny, I’m getting more reactions to this than I do to things I write seriously. Hey, maybe I should start writing all my posts as if I was going to have Samuel L. Jackson read them. Haha. Ha? Wait. I’m not sure that’s funny. Did I just get attention by going Def Comedy Jam? Is this really any different than the shock style media that I complain about so much?
Over the course of the next day, I watched my off the cuff rant get more traction and more re-distribution than everything else I have written put together. At last count, it was up to 12 shares (yeah, I know, not exactly viral, but it’s still more than anything else I’ve published), some of them from people that I not only don’t know but with whom I have no mutual friends. These are friends of friends of friends (or even more distant) who are reposting my rant. In some cases, people are apologizing for the language even as they share it.
Oh crap, maybe I should revise it. Maybe I should add a disclaimer. Maybe I should just take it down, would that remove all the shares? This is definitely going to come back to haunt me if I ever run for president. Or just maybe I should take this and figure out how I could have gotten the same reaction without the four “Fuck”s, two "Fucking"s, and one “Assholes”. Admittedly just removing the profanity wouldn’t stop it from being a self-indulgent rant, but it would be a start.
The main conclusion I have come to though is that I need to own it. One of the many things I lecture people about is being aware that there are no take-backs on the internet. If you say it, you’ve said it and you don’t get to un-say it. For better or worse I wrote this and I hit "post".
So for those of you who are not on Facebook or who missed it, here then, in all its glory, is my most popular piece of writing to date. Originally posted 5/25/2020
You know what? Fuck subtlety. Fuck eloquence. Fuck trying to find clear, non-accusatory ways of saying things.
What the fuck is wrong with people? Are Americans really so fucking stupid they won't even act to protect themselves if not others?
Now not only am I seeing macho young rednecks at the store without masks I'm seeing people who are either in or bordering on high-risk demographics walking around without masks looking vaguely defiant. It's like they are just waiting for someone to call them out on it so they can make their stand for the right to stupidity.
This is not that fucking complicated. It turns out that lots of countries figured it out in time to stop the spread at a few thousand cases and a few hundred deaths.
Yes, I know the argument that you can't compare the US to New Zealand or South Korea. The US has more people, it is more spread out, blah blah blah. So let's compare the US to China.
China has over 4 times the population of the US. When COVID-19 hit China absolutely nothing was known about it. They started with zero information and zero time to prepare.
In Mainland China there are fewer confirmed CASES, around 83,000, than there are confirmed DEATHS in the US, Over 98,000 and climbing. Let me repeat that in case it wasn't clear. In the United States more people have DIED of COVID-19 than all of Mainland China's cases put together, Active, Recovered, and Dead.
When China passed 1,000 dead in February people were horrified. "The Chinese government doesn't care about its people. How can they let this happen? Why don't they do more?"
When Italy passed 10,000 deaths in March people were horrified.
Sometime today or tomorrow the US is going to pass 100,000 confirmed dead from COVID-19. Where is the horror? Where is the shock? Where is the call for action? Why is it that all we are hearing is from the idiot fringe who want to pretend that everything is OK and we should go back to Business as usual?
Newsflash Assholes. This is not the Flu. Over the last 10 years Flu deaths in the US have ranged from 12,000-61,000 Per YEAR. Again, the worst death toll in the last 10 years was 61,000 in a year. We are approaching 100,000 dead in 3 months. What will it take for you to take this seriously? Do COVID-19 deaths have to exceed all other causes put together? Guess what? Keep it up and we will get there.
Your boredom and bad hair month are NOT more important than people's lives.
You tell them, son. Your mother and/or I must have done something right at some point.
ReplyDeleteI think it just resonated with people Darrin. I think a lot of people are fed up with rationality and common sense being ignored and scoffed at. I know I loved it. I read the whole thing around to my husband. And, honestly, it particularly spoke to me *because* you’re typically so rational and calm in your posts. You were clearly at the end of your rope and that’s how a lot people are feeling.
ReplyDeleteProofread BEFORE you post Susan! I read the whole thing ALOUD - not around. 🤪
DeleteThanks Susan. I think you are right about the extent to which people are fed up. The reactions were almost all positive. About the worst thing anyone said was the Woman who shared the post with this caption.
Delete"Sorry about the language but, this is so important!"
I think I just needed to remind myself that this is an aberration and is not the direction I want to go with writing no matter how much attention it draws.