Quick Takes on Quicksand

I see a headline today, “Hundreds crowd newly reopened Florida beaches,” accompanied by a photo of a bunch of people walking along a shoreline, expressionless, like zombies. That’s about right. “Permission granted,” says the government. “We should go outside today Martha,” says the Sheep-Man. “The governor says it’s okay.” 

The whole view reminds me of that scene in Jaws when the beaches reopen after the shark attack, and everyone stands around tentatively on the sand, trying to look natural but afraid to go near the water. In this case, however, the danger lies not in the water, but on land, where the masters of these obedient, emotionless “frolickers” monitor their behavior and make day-by-day decisions about whether to loosen or tighten the leash.

I am reminded, further, of the day, a couple of weeks ago, when a dear friend sent me an e-mail describing the stroll he and his wife had just taken along a stretch of Florida shoreline — until two policemen in full body armor ordered the mature, respectable, law-abiding couple off the otherwise empty beach as though they were ne’er-do-wells setting fire to seagulls. 


Pimps and prostitutes for world peace — um, I mean world health — or, er, world essential workers day — or something.

A bunch of mainstream pop music icons — i.e., the men and women who put the “prop” in propaganda — have been called in to stage “Live from Home” pseudo-concerts and “One World: Together at Home” progressive shill sessions to entertain their fellow slaves. Elton John and Lady Gaga — the Ghosts of Self-Conscious Costuming Past and Present, respectively — performed in the former setting; meanwhile, Beyoncé, looking like something Cat Woman dragged in, thanked essential workers, while naturally taking care to emphasize that a disproportionate number of such people are black, and therefore even more worthy of honor somehow. 

For fifty years, the modern world has gone down the rabbit hole of treating these greedy, cynical sex, drugs, and hate (aka “brotherly love”) merchants as eminent individuals, important artists, and spokesmen for humanity. Here is the pay-off for that disastrous shrugging off of all aesthetic, rational, and moral standards: a bunch of snobbish, self-righteous billionaires condescend to the little people about how they ought to accept their oppression as “for their own good,” while putting up with material hardships these A-list idiots will never have to suffer, even if they never work again in their lives.

Remember when the “one world” garbage was pitched as anti-establishment rabble-rousing? That mask is off now — or the subversives who ran that old version of the show have now become the establishment, such that the chants of “one world” now mean explicitly what they always meant implicitly, namely: “Obey.”

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