I’ve more or less ignored this blog since the COVID-19 pandemic began—er, not so much ignored it as became so overwhelmed every time I opened up a blank page to write that I would stare for an hour and nothing would come out—or what I did produce didn’t meet my standards. This post might not be any different, but alas, I’ll give it a solid try.
The overwhelm come primarily in what, exactly, to address, and whether or not I even should. There’s so much. So much happened in 2020 that it almost feels like to choose one topic to begin with is to, however inadvertently, rate them in order of importance. In that sense, one could argue I’ve had anxiety in feeling a need to censor myself in such socially fraught times, and the fact is that wouldn’t be untrue. But it also wouldn’t be the only reason.
Another is the unshakable feeling of “who gives a s**t about my experience?” To be honest, aside from the regular stressors that come along with a person’s daily routine becoming suddenly and completely upended for the unforeseeable future and the normal effect of living in a prolonged state of social isolation and a general need for more vitamin D, I haven’t been particularly impacted by the pandemic, at least not financially. Which brings me back to who gaf about me? But I suppose we all have free will, and no one is being forced to read my admittedly disorganized thoughts, so move forward at your own will, I guess.
Because I’ve spent so much freaking time in my house for the last year, I’ve had a lot of time to read a lot of things and form a lot of opinions; I’ve also changed a lot of previous opinions based on new information as well as further solidified a few I’d held since I was a teenager or younger—namely that we need more than two legitimate political parties if we are to stand a chance of avoiding at least some type of civil war. At the very least, we can’t go on like this, with both sides becoming increasingly radicalized and so many families, long-term friendships, and other relationships being destroyed over the inherently divisive nature of a government controlled by only two vastly (and growing vaster) different legitimately recognized political parties. But what do I know; I have a graduate degree in psychology, not political science.
Emotionally, this year has been a roller-coaster. I’ve never been too prone to depression, but there were some entire weeks when I couldn’t stop intermittently weeping throughout the day. I had to go on a full news hiatus for a couple months because I sank into a deep depression that every story had me crying in frustration, and they were hard to avoid even with a social media timeline meticulously and strategically curated to only show me content about cute animals, music, and special interest groups. Everything from the disinformation to the baffling hate and vitriol from both sides, the memes intended to misinform and belittle each other for every difference in opinion… And most frustrating of all is that a lot of these people debasing each other in endless comment-thread wars actually agreed on many of the same issues but disagreed on the semantics lobbyists use to gaslight people. Just think of how the names of bills and proposals and political hashtags mislead:
- Patriot Act (early 2000s): Implied one who did not support it was unpatriotic, which was basically a slur in immediate post-9/11 times; denied 4th Amendment rights to citizens
- #DefundThePolice: Implies supporters want to “fire all the police,” while a more transparent hashtag might be #HireMoreSocialWorkers
- Black Lives Matter: Easy target from white supremacists; really means “Black lives matter too”
- Not quite related, but don’t even get me started on identity politics. It’s simply getting out of control and leading to more violence toward the LGBTQ+ community, which was definitely not its intent at all.
Social media has been one of the few ways to connect to people during this time since I’ve historically had a back track record with reaching out to people on my own, but at the same time, it has been depressing seeing everyone’s posts about how they’ve had to block and unfriend so many people they were otherwise close with over differences in ideology. I have a lot of connections with people whose beliefs I vehemently disagree with, but not “muting” or otherwise cutting them out of my life is essential to understanding where people who disagree with you are coming from. Also: I know they’re otherwise perfectly “good” people, wo why TF would I cut a good person out of my life because they voted for whomthefuckever? It’s asinine.
If we are going to live together in this diverse society and be tolerant, we need to be respectful and tolerant of everyone’s point of view if we’re ever going to make progress toward solutions that work for most (if not all, which is simply not possible) people. It’s just… so frustrating that we can’t see that we’re dividing ourselves by continuing to spew bile at each other instead of listening, reflecting, and carefully considering that other peoples’ life experiences have and deserve merit.
And… this rambling, incoherent summary of how I feel about some of the main things that went on during the time that I’ve been avoiding writing about it is the reason I’ve been avoiding writing about it. Every time I stop to try to form a coherent expression of … just … all the things: straight-up word salad. If I attempt to go back and edit this, I won’t even end up posting it at all, so here goes! You honestly deserve a prize if you’ve made it this far.
The Humble Pedant 