Diarist D-50
Entry for 3 January 2021
A cold, wet, morning in Middletown; a nation on the edge of political crisis; a world still sick with Covid-19 and only getting sicker. We didn’t listen to the doctors, the scientists, the voices of sanity. Instead, we (not me in particular, but too many people) decided to exercise our inalienable right to spending the holiday however and with whomever we damn well pleased; we traveled; we shed the virus and we absorbed the virus. We are about to pay the price for our heedlessness, and once again my preferred modality of Depressive Realism acquits itself all too admirably.
It’s difficult for me to say with much certainty what’s going on around the city, since we go out so seldom. The local YMCA wants to put a new facility in Tuhey Park, close to our house. The neighborhood is up in arms about this idea, because despite the city’s insistence that the park is only sporadically used, it is used, and we’d like to preserve and maintain this island of green space for you Future People, rather than pave it over with asphalt and plonk a great big building full of stupid exercise machines on it. On top of that consideration, the YMCA already has two facilities in town; it’s a private, not public, organization (and a nominally male and Christian one as well) that charges the public a membership fee to join; and there seems to be no shortage of ugly, disused industrial land and distressed neighborhoods in the city that could actually benefit from such an amenity. I imagine you will know by the landscape if we have succeeded in our efforts to prevent the park’s destruction.
Based on my few recent, trepidatious, forays to the supermarket, the pharmacy, the doctor, and the dentist, the general population seems to be finally getting the hang of pandemic mask and distancing protocols. Maybe. As the death toll mounts, ever fewer people can claim not to know someone who has contracted the virus, or died of it. In the absence of any leadership from the people we ostensibly elect and pay to be our leaders (or “leaders”), it seems that the only motivation to stop the spread arises from personal integrity or fear. The deliberate atomization of society by those corporations and politicians who stand to benefit from our disunion may well be the end of us, and the coronavirus is working in their favor.
We spent a great deal of October, November, and December downstate with my wife’s parents (they’re the only other members of our quarantine “pod”) helping them get through recovering from their recent surgeries. Cooking, cleaning, taking them to the doctor, etc. Things did not feel so safe in Dearborn County. It’s big Trump country down there, and many people seem not about to let some little virus interfere with enjoying their shopping, sporting, and dining out [hard eye-roll]. The entire reason we were called into parent-care duty is that my sister-in-law (who lives near them) can’t be trusted to observe proper virus safety precautions (“Everybody has a right to their own opinion,” she opines, which prompts in me a cluster of sharp facial tics and spasms just thinking about it). So naturally, shortly after my wife and I came home and left her parents to their own devices, they attended a Christmas party at my sister-in-law’s house, thereby undoing whatever preventive good we might have done them by keeping them away from other people. This has led to much family acrimony, as you may well imagine. I’m furious at them right now, but the only way to move is forward, so once again we suck it up and try to act as if everything is just fine, because suddenly we’re the only adults in the room.
In late October, feeling overwhelmed with free-floating anxiety, creative block, nameless guilt and shame, low-grade depression (who, me?), and a simple desire to delve deeper, I decided to resume seeing a (new) psychotherapist. It’s still too early to know how this is going or where it will lead—it’s difficult, yes, but my biggest takeaway so far is this: does no one do old-fashioned, long-term psychoanalysis anymore? I realize that I’m asking this from a place of privilege; I’m aware that hundreds of thousands of people—many of whom work on the front lines of the ongoing Covid-19 catastrophe, in emergency rooms and intensive-care units and so on—would do anything for some relief from the acute mental and emotional toll of their everyday working lives, but can’t afford it, or don’t have health insurance that covers it, or simply have no time because their jobs are all-consuming. But really, it is a dying science. So far, my therapist (who has a doctorate in clinical psychology and years of experience) has offered up a weak, tepid broth of cognitive behavioral therapy and rational emotive therapy and many other quick-fix nostrums, bromides, and platitudes besides, but I can buy a workbook or subscribe to a YouTube channel to use those. I need someone to ask probing questions and challenge my core beliefs, to commit to a long-term patient-analyst relationship. Perhaps I ask too much…
As for my physical health, recovery from last summer’s illness continues apace, though neither my wife nor I have felt very good the past few days. We’ve been sleeping a lot, not getting much accomplished. Today we cleaned the house a little and did some laundry. I browsed through the seed catalog I got in the mail yesterday. I never in my wildest imaginings would have believed that I would become one of those people who gets excited when the seed catalogs come in the mail, but <Gallic shrug>. Not a terribly exciting day on the home front.
But the news today, oh boy. As you are doubtless aware, Future Student of the Early 21st Century, on this day a taped teleconference between the lame-duck president and Georgia’s Secretary of State was leaked, in which Mr. Trump begs, threatens, cajoles, and otherwise attempts to persuade Secretary Raffensperger to “find” the roughly 11,800 votes he would need to carry that state, in direct contravention of 52 United States Code §20511 (Mr. Raffensperger, to his credit, was having none of it). A pair of runoff elections in Georgia on January 5 will decide which party controls the Senate. Steve Schmidt, who served as John McCain’s chief campaign adviser in 2008, predicted that the Republican Party would reach its expiration date on January 6, when a cadre of pro-Trump lawmakers threaten to attempt to oppose the Electoral College certification of Joseph Robinette Biden, leaving only an explicitly fascist party in its place. An anxious world cries out, what will happen? Only you know the answer, Future Reader.
(Aside, if I haven’t mentioned this already in one of my previous entries: For most of my life, I couldn’t wrap my head around how the NSDAP conquered most of Europe and caused so much death and destruction, in such a short time period, when its leadership was such a sorry, unpromising group of third-rate dead-enders, weirdos, drug addicts, occultists, lickspittles, also-rans, has-beens, and hangers-on. Now I get it: the scales have been lifted from my eyes.)
The November 3 General Election was kind of a dud, even if it did succeed in ousting the Grifter-in-Chief. A lot of money—a LOT of money—was spent on Democratic campaigns that went nowhere. Sadly, my high school friend who was running in a neighboring Congressional district was unsuccessful in her bid. Indiana, and Muncie, became even more Republican than before. If nothing else, the election made it clear that something is deeply broken in our system, and in many of our fellow humans.
Anyway, I’m tired and I think that’s all I have to say. Thanks again for letting me bum you out.