Today was National Hamburger Day. I wish this was the kind of frivolous thing people could widely enjoy, but there’s just too much going on to push the world in the other direction right now.
There were riots overnight in Minneapolis, triggered by the death of George Floyd, an unarmed black man who’d had a police officer kneeling on his neck for so long he stopped breathing. In other head-shaking news, the president signed an executive order today, basically trying to weaponize a temper tantrum that started when a social media network dared to fact check his comments, after different media sources have documented thousands of lies he’s told during his administration. And on the subject of lying, it just came out that Republican state representatives in Pennsylvania didn’t tell their Democrat counterparts they had been exposed to COVID-19 because owning up to the spread didn’t fit their political agenda.
Of course, each of these points I’ve raised are far more nuanced than how I’ve stated them, and I’m sure there would be people out there ready to argue against each point I’ve made, or perceived sides I’ve expressed on the issues. Fine. I concede I'm not the arbiter of all that is good and right and just. But what about scientists telling people to wear masks in public, and so many refusing to? What about people ignoring the guidelines meant to keep them and their loved ones alive during a pandemic? What about the institutional racism that too many in the country are willing to accept as just how things are? What about having a president who is more interested in being combative than trying to support and heal the country?
I don’t care how many celebrities film public service announcements from their rec rooms telling the rest of us how "we’re all in this together." It does not seem to me that we are, or that we will be anytime soon.
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