Our Shitty, Asinine Behaviour.
And what I intend to do about it.
“Right now, there’s no rehab for stupidity.” Christ Rock
I wish I could say this doesn’t concern everyone, but there’s no point making exceptions. We’ve crossed the line here. We’ve let a tiny outside influence turn us into shitty, asinine people. Some of us are worse than others, but it’s clear we’re no paragons of virtue. You could stick a fork in our virtue.
The outside influence, of course, is the coronavirus. It forced us into isolation, divided us along philosophical lines, and made us say and do unbelievably stupid things. We should all be spanked.
So, when someone says, “I’m not getting jabbed with something that hasn’t been tested,” the actual research has been going on for over ten years.
First to be spanked: Republican Senator Rand Paul. He continues to attack Chief Medical Advisor, Dr. Fauci, for collaborating with scientists in Wuhan. Truth is, we’ve been there since 2002, helping to find the source and cause of SARS. So, when someone says, “I’m not getting jabbed with something that hasn’t been tested,” the actual research has been going on for over twenty years.
Then there’s the news commentator who declared President Biden incompetent, claiming he was bringing back rejected bills to Congress “bit by bit.” This is actually common practice. “He doesn’t know what he’s doing,” she went on, making it clear to millions, neither does she.
But that’s politics, and we’re not politicians or news commentators, so our own bad behaviour is more homegrown. Like the woman who went online, thanking a man on Facebook for buying her coffee at a Starbuck’s take-out window. “That was so-o-o nice,” she said, not mentioning if she did the same thing for the car behind her. She just felt, well, “special,” which resulted in a chorus of responses saying, “There’s good in all of us.”
Somehow we mistake good deeds as a gateway to entitlement. We figure anyone nice enough to be generous might as well start with us.
Actually, there’s not, but it’s nice to say there is, just it’s nice to take advantage of someone’s good-hearted gesture. One man posted during a snowstorm that he would come and shovel snow for free. “Let me know, and I’ll fit you in,” he posted on Facebook. A woman responded, saying: “Can you do my driveway between 2 and 3 o’clock today? I’ll be out then. I’d like it done when I get back.”
Somehow we mistake good deeds as a gateway to entitlement. We figure anyone nice enough to be generous might as well start with us.
In these strange times, even thieves feel entitled. Like the guy who walked into a music shop and stuffed an $8000 guitar down his pants. It was a Gibson Custom Shop 60th Anniversary Les Paul Standard. He left the shop, got into a waiting car, and drove off with his accomplice.
They could be in concert tonight.
Behaviourists tell us this is to be expected. During the Black Plague, citizens often looted the houses of plague victims before the body was even removed. One man reportedly took his clothes off, replacing them with the clothes of the deceased. Little did he know he was also putting on hundreds of plague-ridden ticks.
As Kurt Vonnegut would say, “So it goes.”
As one owner explained, “Everyone’s touchy. You can’t report them all. Either I stop having sales, or I get a bouncer.”
There’s a term now called “pandemic jerks,” which describes the actions of…well…assholes. This includes fighting in grocery stores over sale items, then going home and reporting it on Instagram. “I wasn’t letting those cans of sardines go without a fight,” one woman wrote. Stores are reluctant to press charges. As one owner explained, “Everyone’s touchy. You can’t report them all. Either I stop having sales, or I get a bouncer.”
Well, of course, he’s right. We can’t report all the shitty, asinine individuals out there. Eventually we’d all end up behind bars. We obviously can’t fill our prisons with pandemic jerks. Yet we have no problem filling our hospitals.
Right now, ICUs are filled beyond capacity. The majority are the unvaccinated people. The rest are immunocompromised and the elderly.
According to attending nurses, the last thing unvaccinated people say before they die is, “I can’t believe this is happening.” The elderly, on the other hand, say, “What a dumb, dumb.”
I’m with the elderly on this one. The unvaccinated sound like the old commercial for Alka-Selzer, where the guy keeps saying, “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing.” We can believe he ate the whole thing. We saw him eat the whole thing.
This irony certainly wasn’t long on evangelists Marcus Lamb and Jimmy DeYoung. They told whole congregations to ignore Covid-19. Then they both died of the disease.
It’s an interesting dual universe, of sorts. They can’t believe ignoring the virus didn’t protect them against the virus. This irony certainly wasn’t lost on evangelists Marcus Lamb and Jimmy DeYoung. They told whole congregations to ignore Covid-19. They both died of the disease.
So did members of their congregations.
I wish I could say this shitty, asinine behaviour of ours is a passing trend. I doubt it, though. Long after this pandemic is over, we’ll still be jerks. Two years of acting out, getting frustrated, taking it out on others — this won’t suddenly stop because the coronavirus became endemic.
We’ll probably have to be weened off this behaviour, possibly with public service messages, telling us to “Calm Down, The Fucker’s Left.”
In the meantime, I intend to start the weening process, first by ignoring the newscasts promoting this behaviour, second, by replacing my own bad attitude with a more abiding one.
I’m no longer going to give the finger to the unvaccinated. I’m going to give the finger to the rest of us.
It’s made us “right,” and, God, that gets old after awhile.
Sure, we did the right thing — getting vaccinated and all — but it’s made us arrogant. It’s made us “right,” and, God, that gets old after awhile.
I know I’ve been a sanctimonious prick, too. That’s all done. I’ll continue pointing out our shitty, asinine behaviour. But now it’ll be both sides, equal opportunity, the vaccinated assholes and the unvaccinated ones.
The finger goes both ways, in other words.
Eeeny, meeny, miny, moe.
Robert Cormack is a journalist, novelist and blogger. His first novel “You Can Lead a Horse to Water (But You Can’t Make It Scuba Dive)” is available online or at most major bookstores (now in paperback). Check out Robert’s other articles and stories at robertcormack.net or by joining https://robertcormack.medium.com/membership
