The morbidity of words and phrases

Words.  Phrases.  Sometimes they are just words and phrases. But while the pandemic, plague, epidemic whatever you want to call it words become like tiny cuts. Eventually it leads to death in the mind by a thousand cuts.  

The Words: vacinate, mask, testing, virus, normal, heroes, morbidity, phrases like re-opening the economy, surge capacity, protecting our healthcare workers, lack of leadership, social distance, contact tracing, a vaccine is on the way. There are others of course. They all are on everyone's lips, at least on TV. 

These words and phrases become wearying, full of grief, ponderous. They strike deep within you as your sleep is interrupted by dreams with these words and phrases and you wake up and don't remember that it was those words that disturbed your sleep. We find some other thing to blame. Maybe your spouse, your friend, your partner, your child, your pets or not having any of these you blame yourself. But say you have a child who lives elsewhere.

A sometimes conversation by phone to an adult child.

"How are you doing?"
"OK"  
"You got food?"
"Yes."
"Exercising?"
"Yes."
"Social distancing?"
"Yes."
"Still working from home?
"Yes." 
"Need anything?"
"No." 
"How's P_ _ _ _ _?"
"Good. How are you and K_ _ _ _ _ "
"We're good too." 
"Great."
"Just checking in. Love you."
"Yeah. Same. Thanks. Later."
"Yeah, later."  

What else is there to say, to say what is meaningful, to have an original thought or any other thought than. . . . The words, they cut. The cuts are not deep but are slight, thousands of them and they torture. We are alive but are asked to think of the sick, the dead. The Sick. The dead. The most vulnerable. The end of life. It could be you next. Don't touch that surface. Wash your hands. Look out from your window. Don't forget the heroes. 
                                    * * * 

Last week you were being thoughtful hearing those words. Suddenly today you are in pain, crying out for relief you think but you are in a coma. You feel but no one can see.  Air is being pushed into your lungs by a machine, a ventilator. No you don't feel it only the words spoken of you by others playing the sympathy card for you who are still well, the not yet ill. Or maybe you've had it and didn't know. Anti-bodies, another word.  
                                     * * * 

You wash your hands. Suddenly you feel clean. You sit down. Turn on the TV.  Yes, you still have TV your connection to the outside world, you're grateful you didn't cut the cord. Your mind drifts off for just enough time to remember the phrase "cut the cord." Such better days that was. You're now happy you didn't cut the cord. What a great phrase. And now you think of your old friend, Ray. He never cut the cord either. How you grieved then when he died. But now how glad you are that your old friend died last year. He's not a statistic of this maelstrom. He will always be remembered otherwise.  Oh and the two of you would laugh about everything and everyone. But would we laugh today? What is there to laugh about?  

In most adversity there is always something to laugh about because a quick turn of a phrase can do that. But it's the actual phrases of today that can't be turned anywhere for a joke. They mean what they mean and maybe in ten years there will be laughter. There will be jokes.  Jokes that only the passage of time allows. And the words will go back to the dictionary where they belong and to some ordinary reality. And the phrases they will be forgotten too. There will be new ones. But maybe you won't be around for those.   

My latest political musings

My political musings: The Nazis in Germany and Fascists in Italy (I couldn't say about Spain or Portugal) came to power for a number of reasons. Key among them was propaganda and a worldwide depression. Nazis and fascists are strong words but they are applicable only to history though there are groups trying their best to bring them back officially. So far they are only viewed for the most part with opprobrium. They are not applicable today in the sense that they were in the 1930's. But the commonality is the same in terms of the push towards right wing extremism and authoritarianism. The left countered the right in Germany and in Italy at that time but they failed and were decimated. And it required a world war in the 1940's and the will of the people to end those regimes. The world was so different then politically, culturally, socially, racially, technologically and economically. The left today here in the U.S. varies in their ideology and is not very unified. And it doesn't seem to me that it is any more effective than those activists of the 1930's. However, I won't say it has failed yet. There is very little overt violence of course which helps to limit the force of the right. There are no pitched battles in the streets at this time. Charlottesville in 2017 was, however, quite horrid and worrisome. For now the right has control of the message and they get the media to participate, yes, even the the "objective" main stream media. And currently we are seeing an economic depression but not one brought on by the initial failure of the financial systems. Yet it is possible that things will not spiral out of control. But I can't say it is possible it won't. Notice I can't use the word probable in those two statements. Are we screwed? I don't know. Can it happen here? If it does, the world is screwed.