Tim Barrus: New York Times
I am never shocked. But I am shocked to see the photographs.
This is called denial. This is called Nothing Happened. This is called death.
Cultural denial begins with leadership.
He’s steering himself. Only himself. He’s floundering. We did this to us. We must take responsibility for it. We bought the flim flam man. We are River City, and it rhymes with disease. The reality television version of leadership.
We elected a catastrophy. We are now living in a catastrophy. We are a catastrophy. The experts are wrong. There is no escape. We are in this for the long haul. The sullen crawling of our own length along. We can blame him but we must blame ourselves. What we bought were his haunting hatreds because they are us.
No evidence suggests we can emerge from a pandemic unscathed, we cannot emerge at all.
Casandra says we cannot change either our behavior or the systems that keep the rich alive. Pandora is right behind her. The box has been opened and making the convenient assumption that we have put the genii back in the bottle is called a lack of leadership.
Hollywood has always told us assault will come from bombs and guns. Even dystopia suggests benign authority will save us.
Nothing will.
Not authority or leadership. These are cultural illusions. We can’t prepare for the now. We are unable to prepare for the final act. We laugh at the past. People who spout statistics do not know what will happen next.
We cannot change. It is called leadership. It is called death.