Disappointed.

“I. Am. Very disappointed.”
— Zorg, The Fifth Element.

It was Tuesday.

Back by the dish sink, a young manager and I were briefly discussing the spike in Covid cases when he tells me, with confidence, that he thinks the real problem is that there’s “too much testing.” That stopped me in my tracks. I looked at him to make sure he was serious, and he was.

“Do me a favor,” I said to him as calmly as I could. “Stop what you’re doing and think about what you just said for a moment.”

Just then others came to the sink area, interrupting our exchange.

Then, right before I clock out for the night, a few of us are in a discussion about Covid again and one of the managers informs me that the new girl standing right beside him, who I had taken to be a rather intelligent girl, thinks the whole thing is a hoax. I look at her. “Really?” And she just shrugs, confirming the allegation with some obvious embarrassment.

I exit stage left abruptly, telling everyone I would see them tomorrow.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: so much of what I detest about religion has come to infect politics as well. Unquestioning devotion to narcissistic leaders, for instance, and blind, uncritical faith in what they say. And while Trump is merely a symptom, a manifestation of an underlying disease in our global culture that will not be going away, his, specifically his general, narcissistic philosophy and dumbfuck ideas are beginning to be adopted even by those who aren’t necessarily members of his cult. Things such as:

– Anything I don’t believe in is a hoax.
– Any game I don’t win is rigged.
– Anyone with loyalty to reason and democracy rather than loyalty to me must be banished.
– Its always somebody else’s fault.
– Truth is born by saying a lie often enough, loud enough, and with enough confidence that others jump on your bamdwagon of bullshit.
– The real way to defeat this pandemic until we have a vaccine isn’t social isolation, mask-wearing, and quarantine, but to simply stop testing, because if we stop testing people for coronavirus, the number of cases will go down.

Years ago, I lived with a girl named Rena, who told me more than once that when she did something she thought would inspire her father’s anger, he tended to claim otherwise.

“I’m not angry,” he would say to her, “I’m just disappointed.”

And that hit her so much harder, the stinger went deeper and stung more than anything.

Shit like what I heard yesterday from my two coworkers makes me understand her father’s perspective, though. I don’t hate them, I’m not even angry at them, really, its just that I had hoped that they would think for themselves and reason it all out in their own minds, not follow the spray-tan so-called leader of the supposed free world.

So, yeah, I’m fucking disappointed.