Largely because, as I explained early on in this pandemic, it didn't have to. We the People and our national government have dealt with these sorts of huge national emergencies before. We know how to deal with them in ways that minimize the danger to the general public while still accomplishing the mission.
Instead, largely because the federal government in this timeline is run by fucking grifters, fools, and rabid Randite ideologues, we've managed to screw the COVID pooch like the smallest dog in the dog pound to the point where we're going to kill tens and probably hundreds of thousands of us, uselessly, while still destroying the national wealth and further detonating the political commons.
And the most infuriating part about this is that those of us who are doing "the right thing"; masking, staying apart, reducing our contacts and being prudent...are completely helpless in the face of the remainder of our people who are just completely fucking useless.
It's like, and excuse me if I drag Acting 1SG Lawes into this, you're the topkick and you have been savagely on your outfit, forcing the joes to dig in deep, to emplace the overhead cover, to pull security while doing all that, aggressively patrolling and wiring and mining your defense. And then you look to the companies to your left and right and they're just standing around with their collective thumbs up their collective ass and their brains in neutral, lolling around like queens, and basically just begging the enemy to pound the shit out of them with artillery and run through them like a dose of salts.
Was it Caligula that said something about wishing that the world had just one neck, so he could choke the life out of it?
Not that looney Romans are particularly great role-models, but that's how I feel as I watch helplessly as numbnuts all around me, ranging from the Chief Executive to rando wingnut whackjobs, prance around maskless in public meeching about freedom and liberty and not living in fear.
Fear, you stupid sonsofbitches? You're supposed to fear things like the enemy's artillery and getting overrun. They can fucking kill you.
That's why you dig in and interlock your fields of fire and lay out the wire. So you live through the next attack.
And any GI will tell you; it takes every GI doing all this stuff to make it work.
One company. One platoon dicking off, and the enemy is inside your perimeter grenading you in your holes and shooting you in the back.
And here we have entire states, and a huge portion of the entire nation, doing the equivalent of pouting because digging in deep is haaaaard and the wire cuts your fingers and, anyway, the enemy isn't really dangerous after all, right, so who needs to dig in and patrol and do all those nasty Army things, anyway? When we could be going to bars and beaches, amirite?
And there's not a damn thing I can do about that, and it's driving me up the fucking wall.
WASF.
2 comments:
One of my previous AIGs used to say (stolen from Rommel) that "Sweat saves blood, blood saves lives, but brains saves both." We are seeing a distinct lack of both sweat and brains. Alas.
That's the infuriating part. It's not that we don't know or can't see how to do this more safely. It's that it takes discipline and forethought and if we do it's going to cost some rich white people money, so of course we can't do any of that.
Christ, what a flaming disaster.
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