Things Are Bad

I’m having a hard time finding stuff other than the failure and eventual collapse of the USA to write about. So I guess I’ll write about it because it’s consuming my thoughts and this blog is looking a little bare otherwise.

Warning: Negativity and bad news below.

I am very concerned about a few looming catastrophes coming up, and I’m not really hearing any kind of reasonable solutions for any of them:

1. School. I do not understand how September will bring in anything other than complete disaster for the country. Parents were already in a unworkable situation since the spring, but now they have to decide between having time to work by sending their kids into danger (which of course increases the risk of catching the virus for students, teachers, AND parents) or home schooling and being unable to work. Some teachers are thinking about retiring early because of this garbage situation they’re in. (Side note: this country’s treatment of teachers is terrible and we should be ashamed of ourselves.)

2. Rent. I keep seeing the “25% of NYC renters skipped rent this month” stories and I don’t understand how people (many of which are currently deeply in debt) will be able to get out of months worth of additional debt to landlords. And eviction relief just ended.

3. The President. He’s obviously getting more and more desperate and out of control as this goes on. Everyone loves to drop the “But we’ll beat him in November! Vote!!” statements at the end of political comments but we don’t have until November to beat the education crisis. On top of that, it should be very obvious at this point that the government itself will not fix its own corruption (and voting results are affected by said corruption) so I really don’t know where the confidence in voting him out is coming from.

4. And then obviously we have the virus itself. I knew very early on that once the US government decided it wasn’t worth trying to do anything to address the virus, individual Americans were going to completely drop the ball too. My faith in people doing the right thing here evaporated long ago, so most of my hopes rested on a vaccine. But we apparently don’t know the full story on coronavirus antibodies (there are still questions about how long they last), so maybe that’s not gonna get us out of this mess either.

Those are just the most pressing issues on my mind right now. Meanwhile, discourse on the internet (specifically in the places I spend my time) sucks, people seem to really prefer staying ignorant of things around them until they start to fail, and lots of Americans still support a lying, corrupt, racist, reality TV show star who doesn’t understand that letting the country succumb to a deadly pandemic isn’t a good plan. I don’t have any kind of optimistic summary here. This situation sucks and I’m not really seeing how it gets any better.