Convergence of Dissonance

 I just heard on the news that the next four to twelve months is going to be a dark time with the virus. We are also having a presidential election two weeks from today. Make no mistake about it, we are having a convergence of dissonance.

I need to say something here about the news coverage. As one cannot find an absolute centralist view of what is going on, I will say here only that I do not listen to the conservative media outlets. So, while I have no idea what is going on in that world, I can at least talk about the one I know.

By the time this gets posted, there will be 221,000 dead from the virus. Wearing masks is still very political. What has caught my attention and driven me a bit crazy these past few weeks is how the news keeps talking and talking about the most obvious points that should change but they know it will not. There is a constant flow of redundancy going on and it is not helping matters. Over and over and over all one hears is the obvious and it is past wearing thin.

The problem is that there is an election coming up and most people are holding their collective breath to see what will happen. The present political situation has made any change in what is happening impossible. In the book "The Plague", at least the consensus of political people had a unified measure of attack, even if it was faulty and needed help by volunteers organized by Tarrou. The focus for an aid in the crisis was there. We don't have that now. And it is too late.

We are heading into winter and the flu season. The East Coast got slammed hard in the initial wave, along with the west coast. But now the rest of the states are flaring up and it is going to be messy. The amount of hospitals in the less densely populated states is not near what will be needed. Among the stream of redundancy on the news, this is now becoming part of the verbal wave.

Personally, this is a rough time. I have a bad feeling that the election will cause severe damage, no matter which ways it goes. It will only be a matter of degree as both sides are getting charged up. In all my life, I have never seen such things except on the news from other countries. 

This will sound harsh and perhaps insane, but I am going to say it. Because this virus is not as lethal as a real plague, it is possible that unification of the populous will never happen. The president survived it and is literally traveling the country every day to have rallies in support of the election. No one in power has gotten it and been humbled. Even the famous have been spared,...for the most part. There are a few people who died from it, but, thankfully, it has been relatively untouched.

There is no signal from any major point to somehow make wearing a mask and making sacrifices in the short term so that the long term will be much easier. This pandemic has done what most times of trial do: bring out the worst and best in people. The confrontation with the fear of mortality is either risen above or drowned within. This sea is now boiling with all the ingredients of a storm in place. 

Yes, that all may sound dire, but I assure you that this dissonance is real and makes rest impossible.