It is 6:50 AM on Sunday May 24th, 2020. The sun is just coming up over Sweeney Ridge and the morning temperature is still a little cold. There is a thin layer of clouds to the north but the rest of the sky blue once past Daily City. The sun will gain strength and it should be a beautiful day with forecasts in the mid-sixties.
I’m in my reading nook and the house is still quiet except for my son playing Fortnite with my cousin Bridget’s son Mitchell. As I wrote the previous sentence I realized that Mitchell must have had to stop playing as my son has fallen silent. The only sounds now are the hum of the fish tank and a small bird chirping outside. Silence is good and absolutely needed to keep one’s sanity. In silence I can almost feel my mind healing itself. This silence will not last as the rest of the family will wake up and constant noise will ensue. A car has just passed and from its loud intrusive sound I realize there have not been many cars passing by yet this morning. Silence is a treasure that I haven’t had completely in a long time. The invention of motors means an unrelenting, worldwide assault on human sanity.
This is a holiday weekend although my birthday falls just after in the workweek it still makes this weekend a bit special. I never liked having my birthday fall around Memorial Day because due to the long weekend my classmates would all go out of town and nobody was around for a birthday party. I did enjoy however that my birthday also marked the start of better weather, blooming flowers, the end of school and the start of summer. This weekend was always one that inspired joy and excitement in my childhood. Now I am turning 43 and that joy is no longer present. The weather is the same everyday here in Pacifica, there is no summer break for me and I certainly am not thrilled about being another year older. There will be no birthday party, no cake, and it might as well be just any other day. The only excitement I’ll have to create myself which I plan on doing by having a cookout and drinking wine. The joy and good feeling which so easily appears in childhood must now be artificially produced through drinking wine.
But at 43, the joy of alcohol also has lessened considerably. I rarely drink these days but if I do I’ll go with a bottle of wine. Beer leaves me feeling bloated and with a cheap, inferior buzz. Wine makes me feel warm, fuzzy and my mind is able to open up to unique thoughts and ideas. So long as I have no more than one bottle, there is no hangover the next day. However, over the past year the sugars in wine will not allow me to sleep. This may be a part of getting older but also I’m actually in better shape having worked out quite a bit recently. Alcohol and its sugars do not go well with a more in shape body. I’ve also learned to never mix alcohols again. If I mix then I will have a terrible hangover the next day. Finally another negative impact that goes with wine is although I do not have a hangover my mind is not at rest the day after drinking. I’m always glad in the morning if I decided not to open wine and slightly sad if I did drink. The reason is I like to be extremely productive and alcohol makes me a bit lethargic which means more of the day will be wasted.
As for COVID-19 the days roll by. One of the major changes in my mindset through this is I’m starting to detest the Democrats. Mind you I am liberal and have been for over 20 years. During the Hillary fiasco and her not taking any of the blame for causing our current situation I decided to become an independent but would still vote almost entirely for Democrats. Well, through their failures on the national level, letting Trump and the Neanderthals run rampant, the fact that Biden is not drumming up much enthusiasm and has a very good chance of losing, as well as that their policies have made San Francisco a drug-infested, poop-stained dump, I was already starting to sour on the Democrats. But there is one thing that is making me decide to never vote for any Democrat again and that is their policy of wanting to keep the economy closed forever.
My mind now wants to put everything the Democrats and Republicans have ever done aside and focus on the single most important thing which is the ability to earn a living and provide for my family. The Republicans want to open things up and the Democrats want to keep them closed. This makes the Democrats a direct and severe threat to me. My political bent is no longer made by national policy, how many foreign wars the US wants to start, stances on societal issues of the day. No, it is on something that affects me right now and in a very severe way. The Democrats want to keep all of us in a home prison and destroy us all financially and the Republicans don’t. End of story.
So due to COVID-19 a major shift is happening in my thinking. I was a Republican in business college at OSU. I became enlightened while overseas and saw that being a liberal what what the smart people became. But now I’m solidly independent. The liberal San Francisco policies have failed. What you’ve got there is a mixture of naked perverts, drug addicted homeless which defecate on streets and threaten passers by, and politicians who think that giving everyone free drugs and money will make things better. Now it is easy to see how the mood of society can swing as the mood has shifted greatly within myself. I was all for opening up, decriminalizing drugs, letting people be. But now I realize that humans become a mess without some structure. Enough is enough, I’m going from laissez-faire to almost fascist! Clean it up, kick those bums out, tell the liberals to stop whining and so on. Liberals really are a bunch of sissies aren’t they? All of this is what a small but growing voice inside of me is saying. Biden is probably going to lose to Trump, the Democrats fail again and it is all their own fault.
It is time to open the economy and Trump has it right. The Democrats are falling right into the Republican trap in being able to portray them as the party that wants American and Americans to fail. What better way to do so than by keeping them trapped in their homes and not allowing them to make a living? This disaster is of their own making. Even me, a supporter of the police, a law abiding person who always uses his turn signals is contemplating whether or not to ignore the Shelter In Place order and have people over for drinks this weekend. Democrats do want to keep everything shut forever and it is very telling when I’m actually considering breaking the law because enough is enough! Well, if someone like me feels this way I imagine that this pot is not only going to boil over but about ready to completely explode. And guess what, the Democrat leadership is caught flat footed again. This is a shame. I think we were all ready to get Trump out of office but here he is, saying lets open things up and even liberals like me are nodding their head. The Democrats? I think they know they cannot just issue another blanket SIP order. That is why Gov. Newsom is opening the door here in California but only a crack. I don’t put it past the Democrats to make another huge mistake though and try and keep things closed longer.
You know what all of this is going to get? It is going to get four more years of Trump. And it means I will never vote for another Democrat for as long as I live.
