Grandma, What Did You Do During the Pandemic?

MAGA anti-masker making a point. Not sure what it is but she’s making one... pic.twitter.com/oQm8aBj93m

— Rex Chapman🏇🏼 (@RexChapman) September 21, 2020

There's an absurd unreality show going on out there. This is a contestant who wants to "Make a Deal" for Trump as Monty Hall's* future behind door number two. But you know what? It's going to be more COVID-19 and more dystopia. Also, she has balls on her face.

There's something weird about the mostly-female phenomenon of "Karens Gone Wild" that bothers me: they do get filmed, and they seem to rather like it. Like the ladies getting their turn on what should be a "Walk of Shame" are acting like they passed their "Star Search" auditions. They are happy to get stared at, and I don't get it. I guess it isn't just middle-aged biddies who are doing this foolishness. (Disclaimer: I am a white lady who just turned 48 myself, so I consider myself at least a young biddy.) But I have to assume they like it like that. Because until you go be legendary, who even are you?

And this is where I am going to be mean: worse, but with people watching! And while many people on Twitter will deride, there's a certain martyrdom available to people who are willing to fuck it up for ideology. (This woman violated the privacy of a customer and claimed victimhood and welp! she got it.) There will always be an audience for people who want to spectacularly represent, even if their point is a little weird or misguided.

This is why I cast a very dry eye (and dry everything else) on the idea that "trauma" motivates Qanon believers. They are largely white women and many of more or less comfortable means. They may have stressors in their lives, but this is straight-up white savior shit. They aren't using any critical thinking, but have signed onto a cause without a good idea of who the supposed victims even are, or why the supposed perpetrators should be considered culpable. The idea that someone out there is going to be saved by believing a thing very hard (that Trump, a moral reprobate out loud where the people could hear since the 1970s, is good, actually) is a right-wing kind of tote-baggery, no? Wear swag, be a revolution? Deny that Trump's negligence regarding COVID-19 is killing thousands and wear for some reason obviously pigmented balls on your face while doing so? Ignore that Trump is a lifelong sex sleaze accused of multiple kinds of fuckery, including pedophilia? It's only harmful because it's aiming a weapon filled with Trump's incompetence at everyone, and his infidelity to his job at everyone, and his etc.

Madam in the Twitter video: this is the unspoken poetry of Obama-era Teabaggery. All things regarding what you don't like are, like masks, not "rammed down your throat" but dangled on your face. You invent a counternarrative to the actual facts that matches your incomplete worldview instead of actually trying to know more, and then claim people are cancelling you because of what you say, instead of tuning you out because you are gibberish. It's only now that the bud of teabaggery has blossomed into the amorphophallus titanum it always could be.

And it stinks. Just like denying the plague that has killed countless men, women and children stinks. Just like Trump has tried to invalidate institutions entrusted with keeping us safe or at least keeping things normal, like the post office, to try and keep his power base safe, which stinks. But he tells you you are a hero with very good genes and a patriot, and you like it.

But if you hate American history, half of the population, and think for some reason, the conman is actually right, I don't know how you will cover over what was done during the pandemic. Some temporarily confused folks will have a record to reckon with, for the internet is forever.

As for me, I remain a humble blogger, and I have no grandkids.

(* Trump is not fit to carry Monty Hall's jock.)