Something to Say

Apologies to Teej. I will need to revisit that comedic, simpler time in a minute, but I have something to say.  Just to dampen the mood.

This story is just horrible:

Customers Who Refused Masks Assault Trader Joe’s Workers, Send One to the Hospital

Read if you can stomach it. Jesus.  

My significant other is part of the general counsel team for a multibillion-dollar American chain of discount variety stores that sell items for $1 or less. Their company is now firmly wedged between the wretched rock and hard place of not protecting their employees from COVID (by enforcing mask wearing) versus not protecting their employees from violence. I guess you have to save your people from violence first, which makes you seem like an employer who doesn't care about the pandemic. It's acknowledged fully that there simply exist citizens of our country who, when told that they must wear a satisfactory facial covering to protect themselves and others from a virus that has recently claimed 670,000 human lives, will become enraged resort to physical harm, in some cases extreme.

This is a given.  I just can't process that very well.

Because this is Gheorghe: The Blog, I will try.

That's the best I can muster to lighten the mood. But no. It doesn't work.

One of the understated gross elements of a really gross story was this quote:

A Trader Joe’s crew member at the Murray Hill location who witnessed the events told Motherboard that upon entering the store, the men told an employee that masks would not be necessary after the upcoming election—seeming to suggest that Donald Trump would be reelected in November.

And here's what I have to say.

The cerebrally stunted, emotionally ruined boy posing as a man that was put into office has unleashed the least civilized, most dishonorable parts of many American citizens and has granted utter refuge and pedestal for the true sociopaths and unhinged, well-past-redeemable detriments to society that now run hideously amok among the general population.  The bravest, boldest, and strongest of the voting contingent that elected Donald Trump will be those that concede -- without any accompanying attempts at justification whatsoever -- that it was a grave, egregious mistake that has not garnered anything close to their intended result, and that the next four years must be a universally dedicated and concerted effort among all of upstanding society to undo the ills of 2016-2020 and restore civility and dignity and decency to a country that desperately needs it. And while aberrations from those principles happen everywhere, their orchestrated abandon cannot. Daily terror as status quo must be loudly and forcefully excoriated in unison, and those who propagate it should find and eventually fear starkly punitive consequential retribution for enacting any form of it.  

The likelihood of people mustering the courage to admit that they were very wrong but are now fully committed to rectifying the state of things not merely by casting a ballot but by demanding decency of some threshold . . . well, those chances may be up there with aeronautic swine, but I'd be satisfied with even one voice making such a proclamation.  Just one.  That would be a start.

That's all.