{"id":9486,"date":"2020-06-29T19:22:55","date_gmt":"2020-06-30T02:22:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/douglaslucas.com\/blog\/?p=9486"},"modified":"2020-07-02T16:44:27","modified_gmt":"2020-07-02T23:44:27","slug":"texas-case-count-musings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/douglaslucas.com\/blog\/2020\/06\/29\/texas-case-count-musings\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas case count musings"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Note: In 2020, I\u2019m writing 52 blog posts, one per week<\/em>, released on Mondays or so\u2026except when I\u2019m not because reasons, pandemics, life, etc. This was going to be a placeholder \u2018oops\u2019 post for Week 26, but as usual, I kept typing…<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Note: I updated last week’s post some; you might like to take a look at it again: <\/em>Happy Rioting, Self-Defense, and Fucking Up Shit!<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Note added Thurs 2 July<\/em>: Links for recent articles at NPR<\/a> and the Economist<\/a> discussing COVID-19 spreading not by protestors but by parties, and a ProPublica article<\/a> from July 1: “Internal Messages Reveal Crisis at Houston Hospitals as Coronavirus Cases Surge” Blame those on top<\/a>, not your neighbor<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Photo by Keith Garner on Flickr<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

I have a huge blog post in the works, giving an overview of, and listing resources for, escaping the box of conventional psychiatry. But it’ll have to wait another seven days or so, as I need to sit this workweek out, at least in terms of blogging. Although I’ll keep typing:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For unknown reasons, I’ve felt sad today and late yesterday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here in Seattle, the past 48 hours or so, I’ve been thinking, off and on, about Texas, where I’m originally from, probably because of the COVID-19 news there<\/a> and everywhere<\/a>. More than 5,000 new cases per day now in Texas<\/a>. Over the past few months, Texans have told me not to worry about it. Around March or so, I offered to connect a regional hospital in Texas with PPE donors in Dallas; hospital staff declined, saying more PPE wouldn’t be necessary, though I suspect also the (current) neurotypical standard of seeing vulnerability as fault might have been at play. A Texas parent insisted to me that her adult offspring must not think about faraway coronavirus because it’s too stressful: I order you to stop texting these grown-ups about it, Douglas. Texans close to me recently went to gyms and salons and lectured me on their safety and how Trump would get this all fixed. (Except he<\/a> and his<\/a> are causing it.) But these are all well-documented, predictable reactions of propagandized humans to pandemics and politicians, just like during other outbreaks, such as this one a century ago<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The solution isn’t to vote for your destroyers but to arrest them, following realistic and practical steps<\/a> (informed action feels better than anxiety<\/a>), and thankfully although many of my Texan friends from the past few years have disappeared from my life \u2014 I guess they’re too weakened to risk the unpopularity pursuing unusual topics might bring; but, I don’t know for sure, since we no longer talk, typically \u2014 skyrocketing follower counts of, and widespread interactions with, good<\/a> accounts<\/a> show that more and more people globally are taking interest in helping themselves and others each day (instead of just buying and selling every last iota in a self-destructive race to the empty top), so maybe humanity will get somewhere, presently. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I also see many nice little evidentiary pieces of a better world. The neighbor out on his lawn playing his acoustic guitar and smiling, for the first time I’ve ever seen him smile. Customers in the grocery store swaying to the music from the overhead loudspeakers, when they were pretty much never doing that previously. All these little things add up: a reality with time for tasks other than serving powerful employers. Yet the clock is ticking till the unemployment payment boost evaporates on July 25\/26\/31 (depending<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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From the New York Times<\/em> link above: the United States is exceptionally diseased<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

So why the fishbowl picture at the start of this post? The past few days I’ve been unfortunately thinking (I’d rather think about something else) that the real core of reactionary Texas ideology is its premise that the individual is not affected by anything but the individual’s own willpower; the individual is not affected by the environment, and to speak of how conditioning or pollution or pandemic might be impacting you, according to the Randroid<\/a>\/Texas vision, is to confess your moocher inability to climb from rags to riches by innovating through the sweat of your He-Man<\/a> brow, etc. It occurred to me that these increasingly infected Texans are sadly stuck in a small pond, and proudly don’t know it. Like fish in a fishbowl. And unaware of the rising temperatures \u2014 they of course think global warming is a hoax, just like Donald Trump calls<\/a> coronavirus a hoax (and calls<\/a> global warming a hoax) \u2014 and dismissive of any other possible impact from any other possible attribute of their surrounding environment, the Texans swim around their small pond telling each other they will succeed, they will innovate! Meanwhile, all the multinational<\/a> criminal<\/a> conspiracies<\/a> destroying the planet\/environment, are like a person the fish can’t or just won’t perceive, walking up to their fishbowl, grabbing it, and, while the fish continue to explain their rugged individualism (or so very hairsplitting neoliberalism<\/a>!) to each other, just throwing the bowl at the wall. The bowl is flying toward the wall, the water is sloshing out, and the medium-size fish is sucking up to the biggest fish (in hopes of paid employment in eating other fish) and insulting the smallest-size fish for protesting, but it doesn’t matter, they’re all about to hit the wall, victims of much<\/a> they once vaguely sensed and slammed the mental door on (“you shouldn’t think too hard”), or, well, victims of being goldfish I guess (metaphor strain!).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Publishing a couple of our dm responses re Clintons & Obama because we cannot get through all dm's and these questions keep repeating. Tl;dr we are not looking solely for child rapists but for criminal networks supporting them as well. #OpDeathEaters<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/vH0WCmt5kw<\/a><\/p>— Anonymous (@OpDeathEaters) June 28, 2020<\/a><\/blockquote>