A response to Carnival announcing cruises to resume 8/1 as “good news” in relation to a exponentially far more serious situation.
Think of the possible Zoom work shopped themes!
-“A once in a lifetime opportunity!”
-“Even if you don’t get “the 19”, you still get to breathe our horribly sub-standard marine fuel exhaust for up to a week or more straight!”
-“Pay to see the best views of floating plastic anywhere (just don’t look over the port side between 3–5 am)!”
These boats won’t sail. Who the fuck in their right mind is gonna work on them? Who will entertain them? Are they going to pay all the South East Asians more than $1/hour to die on the company “watch”? Are they gonna pay the Eastern Europeans more to bartend and work the customer service desks? Are all workers going to get their own rooms so as to comply with distancing? Obviously not. Which leads me to a much broader subject that no one has even begun to cover yet for a very important and explicit reason, and I’ll just stick to America’s policies here:
How many people actually like their job? Or their pay? Or their bosses? Or any combination of these variables that have up until now have equaled acceptable risk to one’s quality of life? The answer is very few. It’s all sorta fine and sorta dandy (and not at all surprising) that Big Business “X, Y,and Z” got a shit ton of money, under the guise that it allows them to survive until we can all go back to work for them in those previous positions defined as necessary and desirable(yippee!!). Except, there’s gonna be a shit ton of people who aren’t going to take those faux (neither necessary or desirable)jobs back.
There are A LOT of “good, hard-working Americans” who have in the past kept there mouths shut, kept their heads down, took whatever pay they were given and lived their lives the best they could with that allotment that they slotted into. And that’s OK, because this is what is taught as a basic intrinsic tenet of “The American Dream And How To Be A Good Citizen.” It might not always work out the way people hope (it doesn’t. Like alot), but that gets deflected as “not in God’s plan” or something else equally abstract. These assuagers of “A for effort”, “Gave it your best shot”, the cat on a poster saying “Hang In There”, or any other type of useless tripe, are reinforced and rubber stamped by society as acceptable and relatable therapy humor. This has helped to calm an unspoken larger anxiety so as not to cause too much disruption or consternation . Resultingly, the platitudes distract from the cause of said anxiety which is the reality that there exists the truly black soul of a corrupt, morally bankrupt, and greedy “first and only” society. The truth that America (and by extension, a majority of all the Western influenced world) has devolved into such a horribly morphed and disfigured monster, from what ironically started off as such a pure and wholesome idea of individual freedom and safety that has been the goal since the beginning of time, is just too much for many.
The obvious dysfunction of government, misplacement of values/priorities, and general lack of compassion or empathy has been exposed to even the most ardent of “nose to the grindstone” types. Whether each individual chooses to accept the truth in it’s depth of perversion in full, or stick to believing their CVS 2/$10 seasonal poster mantras on sale by the register is not known. However, the truth is now visible, undeniable and only debatable by the most obtuse among us. The obtuse will come around if others lead first. I mean, it IS possible in theory. This is known because they’ve proven it in their own previous actions of being obtuse by definition.
The impact of this pandemic (a term which I use hesitantly as a catch-all descriptor) has given large swaths of the world a respite from the incessant self-inflicted pressures of routine, if nothing else, and allowed a moment for the OPPORTUNITY of clarity. The ability to sit with tragedy, suffering, and injustice and actually witness it without the distractions of that daily grind. Even to those that might not know anyone personally affected by this specific Virus (certainly less likely by the time this all really calms down with vaccines and such), I’m going to go out on a limb and say that reverting back to working in ANY front-facing industry is going to look a lot less appealing. Also, even the greediest most emotionally dead inside assholes whom would theoretically jack off dead goats for $25/hour won’t even have the option of working such equally unappealing jobs, because there won’t be enough businesses to sustain such small margins in what will now be classified as “dangerous” or “front line” or some other equally weakly defined work.
These “new normal” classifications will exist for no other reason than the decades of lawsuits that are sure to come (Woohoo, more lawyers!!!), and will change a whole gigantic crap load on a legislative level. This part is 100% guaranteed to happen, which has the unfortunate consequence of scumbag pedantic semantics whores dictating the future priorities of society. 9/11, and the subsequent anti-terrorism mandates, was the zit you had at fourteen compared to how the complexion of America is about to change.
The scariest part is all of this is not that there is a newly unique, and wildly erratic in it’s complexity and lethality, virus with no cure or preventative vaccine that is killing by the thousands per day. The virus bit is rather baby shit in comparison to the larger resulting ramifications. In actuality, the scariest part is how few people can, or choose to actually see, what is about to occur. Those that do see it(the majority of whom won’t talk about it because they know it’s about to fuck up their own hustle) aren’t done grabbing their last little bit before the golden shrapnel stops falling from the sky.
Ultimately, we all are that cat from the CVS poster previously hanging by one paw on the branch. We all fell out of that tree. We all got out of the military grade burlap sack we landed inside (We’re Momentarily Free! We’re Out Of The Bag!), and are about to step off this land mine we all are currently are on top of. Only the few that understand the scope of the situation are attached to the ripcord (with the correspondingly enormous storage compartment, naturally) that will ensure safety, and they aren’t saying shit to the rest of us.
Proceed Accordingly.