Optimism during Covid-19

I am not sure we will ever return to the normal we once knew but if we do what will everyone do?
Will we once again clog up the freeways, see each other only from our cars or otherwise hurried existence?
It might be hard for some to see but in some ways we are more alive than ever before. We have slowed, we are seeing people instead of passing people. We are helping our neighbors, heck for some people just knowing who their neighbors are is a big step up.

Mother Nature is taking big gulps of clean air and rejuvenating herself. It took the Corona Virus for us to give her a much needed break from our pollution. How can humanity deny climate change now? The proof is in the pudding. Los Angeles pollution levels are way down, Venice Canals are clear, you can see the Himalayas from Delhi for the first time in 30 years.
Here is a wonderful story about the changes in air pollution since people have been forced to self quarantine.

We are very much alive and seeing the best of ourselves in spite of the biggest polluter of all, the narcissist in the white house whose polemics of self-aggrandization have saturated our souls. His lies, his callous cruelty permeate our souls even if we swear to ignore him. And yet we do not go under, we keep swimming toward the light, rising to the top, flailing but surfacing each time. You can see it in the young people who are out of work, yet delivering groceries to their elderly neighbors at no charge. You see it in our first responders and health care workers who are bent but not broken.
Our bloviator-in-chief talks about the economic impact, he talks in numbers that he does not understand past his own interest. And yet we the people talk in numbers of human sacrifices and loss.

We are a broken nation right now, we have been careening out of control in this direction since Trump took office. Many of us remember the feeling, I was numb for days and I knew something momentous had happened that was going to set us back or even destroy our nascent democracy and yet I could never have guessed this chilling event. I have been flooded with a free floating anxiety and terrible uneasiness ever since he was given the election by the antiquated mechanism of the electoral college. I watched in dismay, horror and great pain as our country became more and more divided, the ugliness became exposed and evil seemed to be winning. I know the racism and xenophobia has always been there but it absolutely gobsmacked me to find out it was almost half of our country. And there is no getting past it, we have been set back immensely with the conservative- to -the -point -of -kookiness, right wing judges whose appointments have been rammed through our courts and yet still we fight, we hang on, we persevere. WE RESIST!

I have never felt that more strongly than now with the slow time that has been forced upon us, time to reflect and see some way out. The virus does not discriminate yet our discriminatory practices are exposed everywhere from Detroit to New Orleans and most of the hapless south which has been hit the worst by Trump as well as the virus.
Many times in the past 3 years, some awful thing has been said or done by Trump and his callous cadre of Republican enablers and I have thought to myself that this event will finally be the one for people to see the light, expose his evil nature and yet it does not happen. He has two kind of supporters in my opinion, the ones who know exactly who he is but enable him for the judges and economic gains. Gains for themselves, already rich but obsessively wanting more wealth while bludgeoning the marginal and poorer Americans. Then there is the Cult and these people are sadly uneducated and ignorant to anything but schadenfreude, they enjoy watching him bullying the people they despise, the elites and libtards. They are fueled by an anger and resentment of feeling left behind. They are the most dangerous because they have the least to lose and they do not want to be educated. Hate and blaming others is their comfort level.

Yet still, this is another of those times where I feel optimistic that people will finally tire of him and start to look deeper and recognize his malignant narcissism even if they do not understand the diagnoses.
We are much more involved right now and I want that to be a wake-up call for ourselves and our precious Mother Earth, I do not want to see us go back on auto pilot.
No matter what we will fight on, RESIST and PERSEVERE.