Be good, and you will be lonesome,
Be lonesome and you will be free,
Live a lie, and you'll live to regret it
That's what livin' is to me.
-Jimmy Buffett
And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.
-Mark 10: 18
Growing up, one of the most frightening movies I had ever seen, have ever seen, was the campy thriller "Night of the Living Dead." Shot in black-and-white, it follows a group of folks over the course of a harrowing 24 hours in rural Pennsylvania. A virus has broken loose across the country, reanimating the dead who transmit it with a bite. Given that the zombies are also cannibals, there's a lot of biting going on. The uninfected group shelters-in-place in a farmhouse as the radio news is filled with stories of the pandemic raging across the country, with swarms of zombies roaming the countryside looking for supper.
A daughter is bitten, and her family pulls her into the house to save her from the ghouls. You can see where this is going. Pretty soon, she's infected her parents, while at the same time the hills around the farm fill with the undead, trying desperately to get into the house and feast on the survivors.
This movie troubled me deeply (what kind of a parent lets an nine-year-old watch this? I guess that's another story for another day). It wasn't really the gore, although there was plenty of that. It was that these zombies were the shells of people, often people our protagonists knew and loved. But something had happened. They were infected, their minds disappeared, and they drifted along in an endless nightmare, oblivious. And the living were faced with the horrible task of barring the door to a friend, to a child, once it was apparent they were infected and no longer themselves. I cannot imagine that sort of pain.
Except, in a way, maybe I can. Over the last few months, I have watched one friend after another slip into a fever dream of conspiracy theories, fueled by an alternative media that transmits a virus of ignorance and hatred. I see them on Facebook cradling grandchildren, smiling in the kitchen with a glass of wine raised in one hand, and otherwise appearing to be the people I had grown to love over decades. Then one would include me on a thread that links to a podcast explaining how our voting machines are a form of foreign infiltration that are programmed to change votes for Trump into votes for Biden (but not, oddly, to change any of the down-ballot Republican votes). They post links to folks claiming Joe Biden is a Chinese agent, or his son is a Ukrainian agent, or any manner of twaddle that's being peddled these days as MAGA begins to list and take on water after encountering the iceberg of 3 November.
One by one they are blocked, then unfriended, then last night told by me on Messenger that I didn't want to hear from one of them again. They had the virus. They assumed I did as well, given that I am ex-military and a lawyer who mostly represents large businesses--the equivalent of a drag queen on Castro Street during the AIDS epidemic. Of course I'm infected. But, as it happens, I'm not.
Last night's exchange was especially painful. That was my son's godfather, my squadron mate in combat, my drinking buddy whenever I made it to DC. Back when I was ordained, I helped plan his son's funeral while sitting at his kitchen table emptying an ice chest of Budweiser and letting him ruminate on the awful thing that had happened. I loved that guy. Where did he go?
My tribe, my ecosystem, just keeps getting smaller. My old Desert Storm posse--gone. The folks who filled my life in Bay County, which voted over 70% for Trump--gone. My faith community--mostly gone. My family elders who animate some of my happiest childhood memories---ditto. I sit here mostly alone, holed up in the solarium and mourning the shells of loved ones roaming around outside this safe space peddling nonsense to each other and shouting down anyone who has not yet caught the virus.
It seems I am not alone in my predicament. So much has been lost, probably forever:
Then again, these zombies can speak, and would push back that I am the one who's lost his mind from too much MSM (although P and I literally never watch television). I am a sheeple. I am a libtard. Can't I see what "those people" are trying to do to the real America?
In that regard, I reckon I just need to trust my judgment on this. Discerning reality at our place does not mean culling the online news for viewpoints with which we happen to agree. That is like wading maskless into the mosh pit of ideas. The virus won't be far behind.
Another marker I have noticed, and I tread lightly here, is as a precursor to this madness there appears a sudden burst of a brand of fundamentalism that is long on the Hebrew Bible and pseudographical Paul, and lean on the beatitudes. It's God the angry rulemaker, telling slaves to accept their fate and women to cover their heads and shut up. I guess that's how a woman accommodates the cognitive dissonance it must take to wear a "Women for Trump" t-shirt. It is a massive failure of our communities of faith, where all one need do is come through the door and sidle up in a (usually nondenominational) pew, and pretty soon one is as infected as everyone else inside.
Of course, generalizations always carry a measure of falsehood in their tidy explanations of what we are witnessing. There are also communities of faith where love reigns and reason is not a test from the devil. In all this sad solitude, maybe I need to find my way back to one of those places, and surround myself with others who've lost their communities to a virus that has torn us apart.
Meanwhile, this morning there is space for humor. Lead counsel for the Evil Empire started melting at a press conference yesterday. I cannot look at the photo and hold back a giggle.
Damn near 50 degrees this morning in Corning. It's going to be a beautiful day. I'll mediate a Hurricane Michael insurance claim, then work on a memo where I'll attempt to explain Delaware's double-derivative basis for shareholder standing to a judge who did nothing but family law for most of her career. And so it goes.
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