What A Difference Nine Days Make

MAY 23, 2020:


I began to write this piece and never finished.


Full disclosure: I work at home. My business has been affected by the illegal government shutdown of “non-essential” businesses, but I am still getting by. My wife is apparently an essential person, too. She is working from home as well. Our income has taken a pretty severe hit. We’re losing about sixty percent of our income.


Our daughter, who worked her tail off to graduate high school a year early, has been denied her prom and her senior class trip. She is lonely and distanced from her friends. This is harder for all of us because she will be leaving for college in the fall. 


Our government’s severe overreaction to the Coronavirus has resulted in a 26% unemployment rate. What is this doing for the mental health of the people who were struggling to get by? How many people will commit suicide when their economic situation becomes unbearable? How many already have? How many marriages will crack under the strain? Any statistics on how this has affected domestic violence numbers?


We have embraced buzzwords like Social Distancing. They are a permanent part of the vernacular. Our government, seeing the opportunity to steal more of our freedoms, which results in more power for them, have shut down parks and churches. Families have been arrested for spending time together outdoors. A man in California was arrested for windsurfing. He was socially distant from every person on the planet until the moment he was arrested. 



JUNE 1, 2020:


I picked up this piece again today, This is what I found rattling around in my head.


America is burning. It’s hard to look at the news. Businesses big and small being looted and burned. People are being assaulted. Any finger not on a trigger is being pointed at the other side.


I’m sitting in my office in my safe suburban home and all I can think about is how close it all is. Even as the image of it on a computer screen seems to come from a million miles away, it’s closer than we all want to admit. We are not responsible for the looting and the violence. Each person who picks up a brick or a 2x4 or a gun is making a choice. They should be held accountable for their choices and the consequences of their actions.


On social media, some are praising, others are criticizing, all are, whether they admit it or not, afraid. The opinions are falling predictably along party lines. The right is calling for law and order and the left is calling for justice. And here I am, stuck in the middle with you.

I understand the pain and frustration that is being felt by so many people in the community. As a hispanic kid, I experienced racism. I’ve also experienced it as an adult. I just never let myself be defined by other people. I do what I have to do. I will not be stopped, especially not by idiots.


The people on both sides of this issue are more alike than they think they are. They are both looking to the government to fix the problems the government created. The only difference between the two sides is in what they think the government should be doing. Both sides are wrong and I’m embarrassed for them. Shouldn’t they know better by now? The government will do something symbolic and useless and some time down the road we’ll be having this same conversation again. There will be moaning and crying and gnashing of teeth. There will be anger. There will be demands for change. Demands for justice. Big Brother will answer the call. We will feed at the trough. We’ll fall for it again. We’ll suffer. We deserve to suffer. Anyone who falls for the same lies as often as the American people have fallen for D.C.’s lies deserves to suffer. It’s like the wife who has been abused for years and keeps giving her husband another chance because he’s really going to change. He really means it this time.


We have had pandemics before. We never got locked down as a result. It’s convenient that the moment people are starting to feel emboldened and begin leaving their houses, a man who works for the government brutally murders a black man in plain view of a camera while two of his colleagues help hold the victim down while the fourth officer on the scene looks on. A couple of days prior to this incident, a woman in Central Park called the police and made a false report on a black man as he filmed her. She lost her job and, I am willing to bet, a lot of friends. Her life is over. She must have known this would destroy her life. She had to have known this would go viral and that her fifteen minutes of fame would be traded for a news cycle of infamy. The cop who knelt on a man’s neck for nine minutes and let him die must have known the same thing. I don’t even yell at my dogs if I think someone’s watching. And my dogs are horrible people. Nah, they’re good boys!


It’s hard to imagine such a perfect storm just happening. It’s also hard to imagine someone putting it all together. I’m not a conspiracist, but damn if this ain’t a tough one to get my head around. 


So, pardon me while I thread the needle.


All of these things, the virus, the racist remarks in Central Park, and the police brutality in Minnesota, were just things that happened. Awful, inconveniently timed things that happened. Inconvenient to those involved, particularly the victims as well as the victims of the resulting violence. I think it would say we all find violence and the death of innocent people inconvenient. Except, there is one breed of subhuman who sees a silver lining in this chaos: the politician.


Rahm Emmanuel famously said, never let a crisis go to waste. This seems to become the First Commandment of the Statists. Anything from a virus to a riot is cause to take away our civil rights and expand the reach of government. They understand better than the populace that fear sells regulation and government control better than any other emotion. They know the best way to control us is to divide us. Whether it’s along racial lines, or by income brackets, they find a way to drive wedges between us. They are certainly not about to let this crisis go to waste. I shudder to think what the next nine days will bring.




By Adolfo Jimenez




The views expressed by the author are his alone and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of anyone anywhere.






Adolfo Jimenez is an author, poet, and blogger. He lives in Hollywood, Florida. He has published eight books, which you can find here.







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