Gimme Shelter

RIPOSTE

by RIP RENSE

riposte2.jpg (10253 bytes)

         It's lurking. It's salivating. It's breathless, waiting in the pandemic quiet. And at first opportunity, it will step out, roaring, spitting fire, devouring free will yet again as it commands you, you, you, and you to consume, consume, consume. All in the name of "returning to normal."
           Well, I loathe normal. I loathe what normal has become in this society: addiction to low-common denominator "popular" culture, from empty-headed wailing pop “icons” to corporate sports to the smarmy Kardashian beasts. Greed, gluttony, self-adoration, arrogance, rudeness, willful ignorance, idolatry, acrimony, lack of empathy, compulsive consumerism . .are "normal."
           But the corporate Grendel is waiting, snarling and slavering, and it is coming for your head again. Chomp. TeeVee will rise up as never before, commanding you to buy that new Mercedes SUV and iPhone enema app and nacho ice cream burgers in the name of "returning to normal." Will you do it? Or will the ongoing lockdown and deprivation of beloved stimuli prompt the birth of something approximating empathy? A saner perspective? Will it (cue pious celeb versions of “Imagine”) rearrange our priorities? Make us kinder, gentler?
           Oh, yes, and Trump will acquire humility.
           As far as I'm concerned, this "shelter-in-place" thing can go on for the rest of the year. Or longer. Gimme Shelter! I love seeing fabulously spoiled Amerryguns deprived of their fave entertainments, addictions, with their corporate masters in a blind panic. It's the pleasant dream in this nightmare. Cynical? No. Moral.
           Racism, greed, amorality, greed, hatred, xenophobia, narcissism, greed, truculence, tattoos, Jennifer Lopez’s gyrating hind, greed, NRA ensuring more mass-shootings, $100 admission to Disneyland, $250-$300 for a family of four to watch multi-millionaires play baseball at Dodger Stadium, $80-bags of groceries, Grammarly (formerly known as "cheating"), BMW’s juiced with flathead hot-rod sound effects, greed, I was like, millions of globally warming leaf-blowers, foodies, greed, Entertainment Tonight, The Bachelor, Flip or Flop, giddy newsmannequins, vocal fry, "influencers," homeless tent cities full of TB and MRSA, greed, gluttony, obesity, apathy, entropy, and pee in the streets. . .and greed.
           This is American normal.
           Re-start the economy? I would rather see fabulously spoiled millennial tekkie princelings standing ragged in soup and bread lines. I would roll on the floor in ecstasy to watch giant beardboy designers of “apps” and “start-ups” pitch pup tents outside trendy Venice buildings where they once made millions. I mean billions. I would tap-dance naked in the street to see developers and investors who have raped L.A. with thousands of hideous cool/awesome apartment/condo penitentiaries. . .lose their private equity asses! Economic death, where is thy sting?
          Der Trumpfuhrer is currently crying that he has to make the “most difficult decision of his life,” regarding “re-starting the economy.” Har! He makes decisions the way people involuntarily belch. In other words, as usual, everything is all about HIM. COVID, pro football, CNN, The Bachelor, Hillary, masks. . .even death. Difficult decision? He is losing allegedly billions of his personal fortune, and is in deep re-election doo-doo, and these are the only bugs up his giant white bottom.
          Re-opening? It's actually the easiest decision imaginable, kids. I give you: health over money. Boom. Chant it with me, now, health over money, health over money, health over money. How can there be any argument? Answer: this economy is predicated on hypertrophic luxury and titanic, flatulent avarice, and in recent decades has become a vulgar, stinking send-up of capitalism---what with countless new ticky-tack cement hives offering pinhole-sized apartments from $2500 to $5000 and higher---and the crummiest old 900-square-foot 1940’s hovels in Reseda and Compton going for nearly a million bucks. Want more? I give you: ten-story cruise ships that make the Queen Mary look like a tugboat. Crapbuckets from hell.
          Yes, the American economy is insane, tongue lolling and eyes rolling, and long has been only a stooge for "venture capitalists" (read: legalized criminals) to exploit for supernatural gain. Why should they care about: crazy-making density, air and noise pollution, destruction of green space (and attendant birds, squirrels, insects who enjoy it), housing prices driven to levels affordable only to tekkie royalty, millions living in plastic-sheet-and-plywood palaces?
          Chant with them, now: money over health, money over health. . .
          Yes, money over health---from Monsanto Round-Up poisoning of damn near everything to Trump's evisceration of environmental protections---has become “normal." As have allegedly adult humans on TeeVee whining about how the “shelter-in-place” order is “outrageous,” bleating, “I can’t even go out to a restaurant? That’s crazy!” Along with 30-40-50-year-old ten-year-olds moaning about having to miss the Hollywood Bowl season, and the Coachella Festival. Gee, that's tough. They must really envy Muslim Uyghurs thrown into China de-programming concentration camps, and girls raped and murdered by the Taliban for learning how to read.
           Some brain-trust I don't know wrote this to me on Facebook the other day:
           Continuing this sort radical isolation until the Fall of 2021, when we *may* have an effective vaccine, would destroy our economy. Millions would be out of work. In fact, hospitals would be unable to function, laying off staff, not purchasing supplies, and leaving many more people in danger of sickness and dying, and not just from C-19. We need to find some middle ground—as it seems that Sweden has been doing in their response to the crisis. I don't mind someone having a negative opinion about a sitting president. (I have a few myself.) But please don't let it color our thinking to the point where we become illogical.
            Oh, no! Not "illogical!" Spock save us! This society is nothing if not predicated on shining logic, led by the very Wazir of Logical Wonderment! What's more logical, after all, than ignoring warnings of impending pandemic, and when it materializes, calling it a Democratic hoax? If ending the lockdown is logic, give me the madhouse.
           As for "destroy our economy," uh. . .doesn't there have to be an economy to destroy in the first place? The so-called economy is a sleight-of-hand sham, and the shock of sudden market paralysis is casting a thousand-candlepower spotlight on the fraud. Millions would be out of work? Millions are out of work---never mind fake employment figures the government always cooks up. Driving for Uber is a career? The “gig economy is an economy? Menial tasks are a livelihood? Former professors, laid-off journalists, librarians, people earning honest livings as bookstore managers, etc. are putting things into boxes for Jeff Bezos! It's the United States of Errand Boys (and Girls.) Tipping is not a city in China, but it is much of American income today. Here's a tip: sell your silverware on eBay.
           And logical Facebook guy's scare tactic about hospitals is hooey. Given the horror that hospitals are enduring right now, you’d think they would have already collapsed. Emergency room doctors and all nurses are the most valiant people we have, period end of story, and their courage is largely holding the wreckage of the country together. If hospitals “collapse,” it would be because the federal and state governments allowed them to collapse.
          As for logical guy's limp centrism of "finding middle ground," I run screaming! Here we have a catastrophe. Catastrophes require drastic action. What kind of fool would call for “finding middle ground” to combat a. . .plague?
           Ah, but this is America the booty-full, the land of the fee and home of the crave, where Der Trumpfuhrer preaches Triumph of the Till and all the world's a wage. Besides, billionaires who pay no taxes while the rest of us count every penny are. . .donating to help the crisis, aren't they? Er. . .yes. . .
           Amazon.com’s Jeff “I want to smell you” Bezos (as he romantically wrote in an e-mail to then-married ex-TV newsmannequin Lauren Sanchez) has donated $100 million for food banks. Wow, you say? Of course, $100 million for Jeffy is, uh, a little more than one week’s income. Exclamation point. Gasp. Faint. And he still doesn’t provide sick leave for his slaves, I mean workers, unless they test positive for COVID-19, in which case they get a whopping two weeks. (They could die before time runs out, and save him more money.)
           Then there is the “charity” of the Waltons of Walmart, who hired about 100,000 more workers (gypsy delivery persons supplementing their food stamps) in the past three weeks but did not bother with social distancing for fourteen days after the CDC advocated it on March 16. Three callous-fingered Walmart employees died, and many more became sick. Gloves? Masks? Hand sanitizers? Not at Amazon, and not at Walmart (which also provides zero sick leave.) Yes, there was an attempted national strike at Amazon, which was filled by scabs faster than you can say "ventilator." It would make Scrooge blush.
            Ahem. Sing along with John Lennon, now: "I-I-I. . .soLAAAAAAAA. . .shun!" Or, to paraphrase the Stones in "Gimme Shelter," Big Macs! Big Gulps! They're just a shot away! They're just a shot away!
            You want "normal?" The lockdown has brought it back. The old normal.
            I mean, all the fine citizens who revel in me me and also me are now forced to do so in the privacy of their sumptuous domiciles. I don’t have to drive a gauntlet to the market---of darting scooters, oblivious skateboarders with earbuds, pedestrians on cell phones walking slowly down the middle of the streets (honk and you get the finger), cars blasting through stop signs, SUV’s lurching out of every alley and driveway without looking, tailgating me, waving arms at me for doing the speed limit, bicyclists cutting in front of me from nowhere (honk and you get the finger, or, as happened to me, a bicycle thrown at your car.)
            I no longer have to sit outside my favorite coffee joint, having a moment of repose destroyed by narcissist millennials hollering conversation as if they are on opposite sides of the Grand Canyon, literally two feet away. Dude! Alimony is killin' me, dude! I no longer have to fail to control my temper, snapping, “Hold it down, please,” and getting threatened with violence in return. This is a public space! F--- off! I no longer have to listen to every entitled latte-sipping bro and influencer yelling “awesome!” every third word. And. . .no selfies! Bliss!
           This is how things used to be.
           Want more? The 405 is a sleeping kitten. I can travel anywhere in in L.A. in fifteen minutes, like it used to be in 1975. Never mind there is nowhere to go---it's a thrill to go nowhere fast, gridlock-free. And my ears are no longer a circus of whoosh from nearby boulevards, a sustained explosion from freeways three full miles away, not to mention: no jackhammers, idling trucks, backhoes, leaf-blowers, buses, mowers, trimmers, beep-beep of trucks in reverse, sirens, thundering car stereos pummeling the air with rap/hiphop rage, cries of “f--- you, a-----e” inspired by inability to comprehend four-way stop signs.
           I no longer have to play chicken with every millennial punk and punkette approaching on sidewalks, refusing to move to one side in order to allow passage. My wife no longer has to elbow them aside, prompting, “F--- you, b---h!” and other such cherished American niceties. In fact, they steer a paranoid socially distanced berth of six feet or more. Heaven!
           The air? Clearer than an Einstein equation.
           And there are surprising new advantages. Think of it: no more insipid small talk about sports with the plumber! No more reflexive, empty "how's it goin'" every time you see a neighbor who has no interest in you, and vice-versa. No more standing in line at the market, watching ladies carefully organize and count their stacks of coupons, then argue about them with the clerks. No more fighting over dinner checks you can't afford to pay anyhow. No more drunk/stoned people at concerts screaming "woooooooo!" in your ear. Every ten seconds. No more guys next to you at baseball games spitting tobacco juice into puddles that edge ever closer to your feet.
           And, my God, I hear. . .birdies! There aren’t many left, thanks to global warming (really---their statewide numbers are down 96 percent)---but I hear the blessed little things. Peeping hummingbirds, cheeping finches, chirping sparrows, burbling mourning doves, the inevitable crow caw, every pastoral morning! The Elysian Fields? A Megadeath concert by contrast.
           The only people I see are mostly---gasp, sputter, cough---peaceable! Really! There they are, walking their happy little doggies, politely nodding to one another’s masks. No conversation. You'd think this place is civilized or something.
          End the lockdown? Bring back normal? Hell, no. Cue the operatic aria, “O paradiso!” from “L’Africaine,” by Giacomo Meyerbeer. In it, Vasco De Gama views the New World, and he speaks---er, sings---for me:
           My heart throbs, wondrous scene!
           At last I embrace you, land that I’ve dreamed of!
           O Paradise, emerging from the sea,
           Flowering earth, brilliant sun,
           You entrance me.
           You belong to me.
           Oh new world,
           I can offer you to my homeland.
           This fertile earth is ours,
           Which can enrich all!
           Wondrous scene,
           You ravish me!
           Oh world,
           You belong to me.
           To me!

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