The Buck Stops Where?

"The Buck Stops Here"

When someone claims to be the leader of a movement, he must accept responsibility for the actions of his followers. The captain of every ship that ever sailed knows that they are ultimately responsible for the actions of that vessel and everyone on it. Command comes at a price.

Everyone who has ever carried the mantle of leadership and authority or who has others in their care in any capacity understands that there is a cost to be borne for that privilege.

Power without accountability is tyranny. Power without consequence is criminal. Power without compassion is tragedy.

A man who accepts the trappings of power that go with an office of such import as the Presidency and who will not also accept the ultimate responsibility of command...is unworthy of the title.

He is responsible for what happened at the Capitol. Whataboutthats don't change it. Deflection and comparisons don't excuse it. He called his 'base' to action and they obeyed. He knew exactly what was going to happen. He led and others followed...the blame is his. That's the true cost of sitting behind the big desk.
Make no mistake...the man at the bully pulpit preached insurrection and revolt because he didn't get what he wanted. He used the awesome power of his office to corrupt and deceive.

True to form, he didn't even bother to head the march to the Capitol himself as did better men such as Dr. King when their belief and cause led them to risk all. He stood behind bulletproof glass and sent the believers on their way. He didn't link arms and stride proudly with them into history. His face isn't going to be in the photos of what he did because he wasn't there. He didn't risk anything. He calculated correctly that he could get others to do it for him. He let his faithful be on the point of the charge. As he so often has, he thought of them as useful but ultimately expendable. He let them do the dirty work while he watched it all on television from the house he doesn't even own. He led from behind.

Ultimately, the future will judge. Millions of words will tell thousands of stories of what happened. Hundreds of historians will defend their theses and pundits will analyze for a generation. How it all unfolds from here remains to be seen and I am probably the least qualified to even remotely predict what the next few years will bring. But what I do know is that one man abdicated his right to lead and undid any good he may have done. His inability to react with grace or dignity when it really, truly counted will be his legacy.

Year End and Down

Here we are again. 2020 is going into the history books almost universally described as the worst year in pretty much everyone's memory...mine included.

It's been a tough one. The pandemic is on top of the list of course. Navigating the crisis is exhausting. Masks, rules, statistics, misinformation and the seemingly inevitable conspiracy lunacy over the whole thing takes more energy than I seem to have most days. It seems like most people either don't believe it or are dying of it and it wears me out.

I miss people. I miss my Dad who I haven't seen since March for fear of bringing him a life-threatening illness that I've likely been exposed to. I'm sad that my son couldn't visit this year. I'm tired of not seeing either of my kids. I'm angry that people still don't care enough about anyone but themselves and their 'personal liberty' to even try to slow the virus down. Just call it fake and have a party.

Work has kept me off balance since the spring when they officially stopped being a railroad and embarked on a new mission to do nothing but generate money for hedge funds. People have left in droves or gotten fired or caught the virus and the few who have too much time in it to get out are miserable...that would include me. There's not enough people, locomotives or hours. Arbitrary deadlines abound and it feels like some overlord in Atlanta is watching every move waiting for you to make a mistake so they can fire you. This too is exhausting.

Even time home isn't really time. I can't sleep while my mind races with too much input and I wind up waking up early and just spinning. My Mom used to say I was like a duck...calm and collected on the surface but paddling like crazy underneath. I've been paddling a lot these days. I know some of it is the dark and the season but the pond seems especially choppy of late.

I miss so much. Skating. Skating is probably out until the vaccine trickles down from Washington and Hollywood and Wall Street to those of us 'essentials' who've been expendable through the whole thing. I need to skate and feel music again.

I miss biking. I saw so much of the world from a bike saddle but now there just never seems to be time or energy. I used to ride in the winter, in the dark, in the rain but somehow it just seems like I can't ever find the pedals. My old friend the blue Trek has hung in the garage for almost two years without turning a wheel. I feel a little empty every time I think about it. I've gained 20 pounds and lost my legs and I can't seem to do anything to fix it.

Even the old SuperGlide sits mostly dusty and unused. I pulled it out a few times last summer but never got very far. I think I burned about 3 gallons of gas. 

I guess I'm like so many in the world these days...somehow lost, a little bitter, a lot worried, sometimes scared, often angry, always on edge. I'm on a circus wire with the wind blowing and the lions are loose in the ring below. There are times when it's paralyzing. I'm jumpy and short-tempered and I know it. A song came on when I was driving home last week and I found myself wiping away big tears for no apparent reason. The world just seems so broken. Sometimes I seem broken.

I know I should thank my lucky stars that I'm where I am. I have a wonderful woman to be my best friend, I have a home, I'm still working when so many are not, there's food in the fridge and so far at least...I haven't caught the virus. I'm wildly fortunate and I know that too but this time of year and particularly this year...I'm struggling.

Someday maybe this thing will leave me alone. Sunny days and a vaccination would probably help. I have some time off coming in May so there's that to at least look forward to. In the meantime...I'll do like I always have...dig in and do the best I can. Check a couple things off my to-do list and take a good day whenever I can get it.

If I can just make it through to spring...

The Black Revisits

The holidays are here again. I hate this time of year so much and I doubt that'll ever change. It's just the way I'm wired I guess. It's my old dark place. So dark I know it as The Black.

I've said it many times here on these pages that I just can't stand the expected and required happiness for a month over something that is basically a commercial enterprise. This year will be more of the same.

As a bonus, this time around we have a pandemic where everyone is either (hopefully) staying home and thinking about others or (for some) ignoring all warnings and having big family gatherings to share in the Covid-19. 

The railroad is keeping me exhausted and off balance which doesn't help. I'm working relentlessly as the virus and quarantines makes the rounds of the terminal 

It always manages to make me sad...sometimes more than others.

I struggle every year. I miss my sons. I miss sunny days. I don't laugh much and when I do, it feels like I'm faking. It catches me off guard...when I'm driving or almost asleep. Or a memory sets it off or a stray thought leads down the wrong road. I find myself listening to unhappy songs again...angry music or sad. Somehow it appeals to me when nights are so long and days are so dark.

I know that I will get over it and through it like I always do but someday...I hope it isn't so hard. 

And maybe when spring is somewhere near and 'the holidays' are behind once again, The Black will slink back into the places where it hides and leave me alone for a while so I can smile.

The Wizard (Part 3 - The Roller World Chronicles)

Roller World. It was going to be huge. Compared to our old place, it was slated to be a monster. Of course...it wasn't built yet.

It was to occupy a structure that was originally built as an indoor tennis club. 'Courtside' I believe was the name but I could be wrong. My first look in the door was a shock. The thing was gigantic. It was a clear-span steel building with room for 4 tennis courts. It had locker rooms, sauna, a lounge and pro shop in an addition on one end. I was suitably impressed. The outside shell is actually still there if anyone wants to see it but it's now a shopping/office building.

The ceiling was about 40 feet in the air at the peak and hung with noisy, glaring mercury-vapor lighting. Even though it had some kind of padding on the walls, it still echoed like a dry well. The acoustics would take on more significance later. 

There was a couple of other things as well that we didn't notice right away that became somewhat larger issues down the road...like the small fact that the steel roof and beams created their own weather. It actually rained indoors at times depending on the humidity. Not a big deal I guess if you're playing tennis but it matters a lot when you try to skate on a wet floor. It also didn't have air conditioning...at all. It was a screamer in there in the summertime and no amount of opening doors and running fans mattered one thin damn. Likewise, the heating system was built to take the chill off...not to actually heat the big barn. If you tried to warm it up enough to take the frost off the floor in winter, it pretty much ate up the fuel bill for the month in a couple of days. Turning on the heat was a very big deal to the owners and they only allowed it sparingly, hoping that enough warm bodies would come in the door so you at least couldn't see your breath.

It also came equipped with the green all-season carpet in the playing area. That carpet was to become my enemy in short order. Since the owners were basically broke and doing everything on the cheap, they never pulled up the old flooring. Too expensive and too much labor. Instead, they had us rink-rats cutting it out in strips wherever there was going to be a block partition that needed to anchor to the concrete pad underneath. And there were a lot of partitions. The wall around the floor was 600 feet long by itself. There would be more walls for the snack bar, skate concession, ticket counter, office space, restrooms, a workshop and oh yes...the whole perimeter of the building got a concrete block interior liner. There was miles of it.

The construction guys would lay out the cuts and we would start in with utility knives and scrapers. That soon turned into crowbars, chisels and electric jackhammers because the stuff was glued down for all eternity. We worked for weeks getting that crap peeled off. The masons were breathing down our neck all the time to stay ahead of them. Our knees wore out and my hands bled more than once before it was done. I thought I'd left that kind of work on the farm...nope.

The block and brick guys were relentless. Soon there were partition walls and doors all over the place. The snack bar area border was a low brick divider and was supposed to have Bluestone cap to finish it off. Trouble was, nobody could afford to ship the stuff from Pennsylvania. My boss allowed as how I might be able to haul it with my pickup and a trailer as a favor. Who knew what 2 inch stone blocks might weigh?

Being an idiot and young, the challenge was accepted and off I went with a U-Haul trailer behind a half-ton '74 Dodge. The rental place guys would probably have had apoplexy if they had known what I was planning to put on their trailer, to say nothing of the bumper mounted trailer ball that had to hold it all. The yard men at the quarry looked pretty skeptical at the prospect of actually moving the amount on the order with what I had but they loaded me up with all of it and I headed for home. I'll never know how many tons overweight I was but with squishy tires and a very, very hot 318, I made it back. My automatic transmission was never the same and died a slow, painful death after that little misadventure. They paid for my gas but the tranny was a loss I had to eat out of my skate guard money. 

Then one day, a new crew showed up with deep south accents and nail guns. Soon after them arrived flatbed trailers loaded with pallet after pallet after bundle of wood. A whole lumber yard parked in the driveway and started unloading. The floor had arrived. 20,000 square feet of Hardrock Maple over a double layer of interwoven 3/4 inch plywood for the main skating surface. Another few thousand for the smaller secondary floor that was supposed to be the dance club. (more on that later too)

At least on this, the owners didn't cheap out. The main floor was 100 X 200 feet of floating surface in a fan pattern that took about a week to put down. The installers walked and crawled and pounded and nailed all day and into the night under those awful merc-vapor lamps till it was done. Then another crew came in and sanded it for days. Finally, it all got a couple coats of urethane over the perfect red figure lines and circles. It was gorgeous.

I might have been the first one to roll on that floor. It was so smooth it didn't even feel like I was touching the ground. The hours spent getting ready seemed worth it.

Meanwhile, things got nearer to opening night. Snack bar equipment came in, the restroom plumbing finally worked, the wooden interior doors were all varnished and hung, carpet went up on the walls (significantly, not on the floor), rental skate shelves got built. A thousand things to get ready. It was interesting that the money ran out before there was any attempt to carpet the off-skate areas. From the first day to the last, we had green tennis court flooring complete with lines everywhere there wasn't wood. There was almost no special lighting so we opened under those same vapor lights that took 5 minutes to warm up after you hit the switch. I think the meter actually whined like a jet when you turned those things on. They only turned on enough of them to see by so the money didn't hemorrhage quite so fast to NYSEG. 

The new world was a weird combination of cheap and top shelf. The counters were just plywood with carpet stuck on them. Changing benches the same. The snack bar tables and seating was used stuff from a fast-food joint that replaced them with new. The sound system came from the old place when we shut down to make the move and was vastly, awfully insufficient for a room 3 times the size it was designed for. Even with added speakers, it was pathetic. Remember those acoustics? The skate wheels could drown out the music on a good night.

On the other hand, the floor was top notch. The walls were built to hold up till Armageddon and the restrooms could be cleaned with a fire hose if necessary. And it was BIG!

There was room for all the rentals, a separate shop to work on them, office space, a real ticket booth, two DJ booths, a snack bar that you could actually work in, lockers by the hundreds and so much skate floor you could get lost on it. We thought we were really big time because we had turnstiles at the entrances. 

We made the move over a few days. I hauled hundreds of pairs of rental skates in cardboard boxes on the flatbed of that same exhausted Dodge pickup. On one trip, I lost some off the back going down Judd Falls Road and for a few minutes, there was a chaos of runaway roller skates zooming down the road, a pack of kids in hot pursuit and confused drivers probably wondering just what the hell they were looking at. It took quite a while to round up all the strays and pair them up again.

But at last, Roller World opened. I don't actually have a clear memory of opening night. I know it was packed but there were so many nights to follow, they all kind of ran together. There was so much story ahead.

It was the end of Skate City though and I never saw the inside of it again before they finally tore it down years later to make room for a drug store. I was sad to see it go especially because by then, Roller World was gone too in an assortment of awful decisions, bad press, poor management and more shady financial and personal issues among the operators than I care to ever know about. 

But the adventure was still more ahead than behind when we opened up on Triphammer Road that first night. I hadn't yet met the hundreds of people who influenced how I skate even still. I hadn't seen the rinks I'd go to from Orlando to Ottawa. 

Roller World was another door and you know the Wizard was going through it.

The Wizard (Part 2)

Back to Skate City...

The '80's rolled along and skating and I went with it. Some strange new things came along with all the prosperity at our little rink...the need for an off-duty deputy to keep the peace was one. There was an armed, uniformed officer working every Friday and Saturday night to quell the parking lot fights, kick out or keep out the drunk teenagers and be a presence...just in case. They had their hands full some nights since we were open from 7 till 1 am and that's a lot of time for stuff to happen in the restrooms and behind the building. There was a cemetery right next to the parking lot that they had to keep an eye on too. A whole bunch of cheap beer got slugged down among the tombstones on a detour from the cars to the admission window. We had to go rescue one of our patrons one night when he had a couple too many, leaned on a headstone, knocked it over and pinned both arms under about a thousand pounds of marble. It kept the security guys busy and amused.

Something else new was a urethane floor coating that finally (sort of) got rid of the rosin dust. We put it down one summer and did it all wrong. Who knew anything? Everybody was giddy from the fumes and we ran out before we got it all coated. The owners tried to stretch it as much as possible so it went on thin and streaky. It peeled almost immediately and made for some treacherous corners but at least it wasn't bare wood.

At some point we also acquired a new DJ who wound up with the name Dangerous Dan. He was open to more kinds of music than Flash but had a tendency to play what he liked instead of what we could skate to. A couple of local AM radio jocks played there occasionally as well...Charlie, Joel...last names escape me but they brought their own stacks of 45's and we learned. Somebody heard that you could mix songs together and make new ones if you had two turntables (which we just happened to have) so suddenly we had twenty minute versions of 'Rappers Delight' stitched into 'Good Times' and 'Another One Bites The Dust'. It was probably awful but we were the rankest of amateurs working on a mixer board with rotary pots and a crossfader that nobody knew how to use. We loved it.

Private parties became a thing that we did on weeknights. They ran the gamut from church groups to frat parties.
The former were some of the biggest nights we had bar none. They could pack the place and at the very least tended not to destroy the bathrooms.
One of the latter comes to mind when a Cornell science department showed up with a cooler full of lab-made 200 proof alcohol. We didn't know about it until after the first broken wrist and the total redecoration of the restrooms. It was bad...very bad.

There were open session Christmas parties, Halloween parties, you name it. 

The joint was jumping. I worked sometimes from 1pm till 3am. Skate guard a matinee, clean the place in between and then open back up for the night session. Clean it up as best we could after we closed at 1 and then, more often than not, go hit Sambo's Restaurant (how politically incorrect is that name now?) for all-you-could-eat fried shrimp and fries. It was a wonderful, awful time.

I kept learning new stuff on skates from wherever I could pick it up. Out-of-town skaters started showing up now and again with their own crazy moves and steps. Packs of kids from Pennsylvania showed what shuffling in a pack looked like. We had a few freestylers and artistic types and they were pretty amazing to watch but the formality of it never really caught my interest that much. 

I stole some of the jumps and turns but I was bound to be a true session skater even way back then. I tinkered with all kinds of weird wheels since I got them cheap on my employee discount. Gone were the impossibly hard 'All Americans' and 'Fomacs'. In their place there was a set of speed wheels, then a set of 'Roller Bones', even a short-lived set that actually looked like red softballs...interesting but pretty awful for edges. I've got boxes of old wheels in the garage still.

For all of it though, I really didn't know much about skating itself. I started seeing a couple of magazines about skaters instead of the trade rags from the RSROA and in them were pictures of huge rinks packed with people all over the country. Skating was big stuff and we didn't even realize it. Our horizons were getting a lot broader than the little place on Judd Falls Road.

I can't remember when we did it or where we went but at some point, a bunch of us loaded into some very iffy vehicles and went to another rink. Syracuse or Binghamton is likely because it wasn't that far but suddenly there was a lot more out there. Rinks were all over the place and we traveled whenever we could. 

Everywhere I went, I picked up a little more...another move or another song and kept on learning. 

By now, farming was pretty much gone and I worked almost full time at Skate City. I spent days rehabilitating wrecked rental skates that should have been retired years ago. There was endless, hopeless cleaning to do. The restrooms were a catastrophe almost every night. The rug soon got torn and the owners wouldn't replace it. There was a lot of buzzing about the same owners and very young girls after the sessions. A story went around about one of them looking down the barrel of a revolver held by a very irate father. The holes in in the endeavor were starting to show through in more places than the carpet.

But threadbare as it was becoming, I was still there. Wizard was my sort-of official name because well...everybody had to have one. Then one day, another rumor became a fact...we were moving. The same less-than-reputable operators had decided to quit leasing the building (or the owners threw them out...never knew for sure) and buy a place across town.

Now my time was divided between helping to get the new place ready and running the old one in the interim. The saga of Roller World was underway. That's the next chapter...

The Hope Tree

 Once upon a time, I planted an oak tree. I read somewhere that "He who plants a tree plants hope" and I desperately needed a little hope.

It was a tough time back then and dark. My marriage of over 20 years was slowly and painfully falling apart. My kids were growing up and moving on with college and lives of their own. But I read that line...I don't even remember where, and somehow it rang a bell.

Fairly often, I used to walk up on the hill behind my house to clear my head and calm my shaky self when I wasn't working. Home was a place full of turmoil so sometimes I'd just walk. I remember thinking at times that the house itself must have been evil because so much bad had happened there. So I'd walk.

I can't remember how or why but one day while I was trudging along, I spotted a tiny little oak twig with just two leaves on it poking out of the brush along the road. It looked so fragile and small but there it was...two green leaves on a six inch stick holding it's own against the thorns, goldenrod and burdocks. In some crazy part of my mind, I thought it looked defiant. In a leap that I still can't explain, it looked like hope.

So I went home, got a garden spade and carefully dug the little guy up. I didn't know what to do with it but after walking around the yard puzzling for a while, I picked a spot sort of in the middle of the vast, unused expanse of grass in the front and dug a tiny hole to plant it. It looked completely lost and alone out there, far from the spot where some squirrel had probably buried an acorn and its almost transparent leaves first caught the sunshine. But I pulled some of the crabgrass away from it, put a ribbon on a stick next to it so I wouldn't accidentally run over it with the lawn mower and crossed my fingers.

At that moment, it became my Hope Tree.

I really didn't think it would make it I suppose. I didn't do much except mow around it and pull the weeds that tried to choke it out. A winter passed and to my surprise, that little stick put out four leaves. The rabbits or a deer ate a couple of them and I thought that was it but by summertime, there were a couple more.

Winters and summers came and went. I walked up on the hill less and rode bicycles more. The Tour became a thing and kept me occupied enough to keep moving through some bad times. I didn't think about hope much.

I'd mow the grass around my twig and water it once in a while when summers got dry. Sometimes I'd just walk out there and check on it...shoo the Japanese beetles off and see how it was doing. Four leaves became a dozen and I no longer needed the ribbon to see where it was when I cut the grass. To my delight every spring, what looked like a dead stick stuck in the ground would pop out some buds and turn green again. I never so much as put a fence around it to keep the bunnies and deer away from it but there it was...still defiant.

So now, all these years later, the little tree is almost what could be called a sapling. It put down roots and true to its kind, keeps growing slowly but steadily. It's holding it's own among a bunch of other trees we've planted since. Someday, there will be a grove of companions...maples, other oaks, hopefully a sycamore or two, some birch and a few black walnuts that the squirrels keep planting for me.

But that one feisty little oak in the middle will be my Hope Tree always. Without knowing why or how, it filled one small empty place in my life when the whole world was black.

My favorite twig has gotten to be a couple of feet tall now. I think the runt of the litter is here to stay for well and all and that makes me happy. I know I will never see it reach its fullest size but I hope someday to walk in its shade and look up at it instead of down. I can picture it in my mind, grown to a tower with a vast crown of leaves and branches, full of birds and giddy squirrels, spreading out huge and giving life to that empty useless lawn. 

Once upon a time I planted an oak tree. It became a symbol of so many things to me...hanging on when I thought I couldn't, watching for a new start every season when everything looked finished, seeing something green again when the black was everywhere. 

And I want my kids to know I did that and why. I began something that will live long after I've gone. It won't live forever anymore than I will but it'll be a memory of something I did for many, many years. From something so small, came something so big. 

Life, memories and a little bit of the future.

It is a Hope Tree after all. 

The Lengths That I'll Go To

This is a long one. The first part came across my newsfeed and immediately got  likes and more forwards. I started to respond but it got lengthy so it ended up here. I broke it down into it's various rants and then worked on it some more after that. 

It's actually been good for me to think about. People are worried, scared and unsure what to do. It's a confusing mess we're living through...and unfortunately some of us are dying through. It pays to look at some of the awful stuff out there, tear it up and keep moving ahead. 

So here's the post...

Italics in parenthesis are mine-

THIS!!! YESSSS!!! (NOOOO)

Anyone who thinks social distancing is a good idea for the next few years, or thinks that a 'benevolent' dictatorship is for the good of humanity, just unfriend me now because I won't be giving that point of view and (sic) energy. (I'm not your friend so yeah...)

I am a free Sovereign Human Being and if you want to stay home, stay home. That's your sovereign right to choose. (see definition of sovereign below)

If you want to wear a mask, wear a mask. That's your sovereign right to choose. (hey, thanks for letting me know it's ok to wear it)

If you want to avoid large crowds, avoid large crowds. That's your sovereign right to choose. (ditto...but yep, I'm on it)

I am not required to descend into poverty for you. (nobody even asked, much less required...focus) 

I am not required to abstain from human contact for you. (strange...I'm not abstaining...just being smarter about it. You need to work on that)

I am not required to shop alone, without my friends and family, for you. (nope not for me. But maybe for them)

I refuse to participate in "quarantine life" until there's an unsafe, untested vaccine released in eighteen months. (again, nobody said you have to quarantine unless you're tested positive...stop using snarl words)

I refuse to receive said vaccine to make others feel more safe. (that's just silly. It won't make me feel more safe, it'll keep you breathing)

That IS my sovereign right to choose!!! (all caps and 3 exclamation points prove it)

If you're convinced the vaccine is safe and effective, you can get it. (oh believe me, I will)

Some of you are allowing fear and policies devoid of scientifically accurate data to destroy our country and ruin your life. (pot, meet kettle)

I can't control your self-destructive behaviors, but we all have a say in the once great USA and the planet we live on. (well, I guess...but I thought we had 'sovereign' choice to do as many stupid things as we want? Now you want to control them? Help me here...)

We need to tell legislators that we demand options. (that's worked so well up till now...I demanded a tax cut and they gave it to Jeff Bezos)

We have a constitutional right to take risks. Life is full of bacteria and viruses--many of which spread before symptoms manifest and after they subside. (um...ok what? We went from Constitutional rights to biology and virology in two sentences. I wish I was that good...)

We have a Sovereign right to receive OR refuse vaccines. (That's the third mention of vaccines. Trend? But I've had mine that are available, you can sign up for your tetanus, measles, polio, rubella etc. here...)

The data was inaccurate at best; purposely overblown to justify government overreach at worst. (to which data are we referring? Vaccine data perhaps? All of it was wrong except the data you got from Twitter, late night AM radio and medical authorities like...the president?)

Stop allowing the government to destroy: (the laundry list of conspiracy talking points)
The Food Supply
Small Businesses
Medical Autonomy
Access to Healthcare
Religious Gatherings
Privacy Rights
Fellowship
Our Mental Health
Our Freedom (yep, show up at the capitol with confederate flags, MAGA hats, body armor and rifles...that's how you get things done around here)

When the "new normal" is filled with starvation, depression, suicide, child abuse, domestic violence, imprisonment, governmental spying, and pure DESPERATION, the virus is going to look preferable to the world you helped facilitate. (see response below)

I'm going to turn this around on people from now on. Those that say I'm (or anyone that supports the mission (Mission from who? Wait...let me guess...) to get us back open) putting money over lives wanting the country back open for business...
Hear this: (this oughta be good...)

-YOU don't care about the people that will kill themselves out of hopelessness (you don't get to lecture me about that Zippy)

-YOU don't care about small businesses that'll close their doors (THEIR LIVELYHOOD (sic))permanently (I'm doing everything I can to support them. Try it sometime.)

-YOU don't care about the children/women/men that'll be victims of domestic abuse (that will be or are? Where have you been all these years?)

-YOU don't care about people defaulting on their mortgages (mortgages are mostly deferred for now. Keep up)

-YOU don't care about bills going unpaid by families with ZERO income right now (yeah, the check isn't enough and unemployment is deadly slow...guess all you sovereigns are getting ready to pony up and help out though huh?) 

-YOU don't care about people wondering where their next meal will come from (I'll feed you if you need it)

-YOU don't care about the people that'll lose their sobriety and slip back into addiction (that's a whole different ballgame. You don't get to call that one either)

-YOU don't care about the people that will starve (see above)

-YOU support the inevitable looting that'll take place (you need to stop listening to InfoWars)

-YOU don't care about anyone that's murdered the longer this shut down goes on (and you cared before the pandemic or just now?)

-YOU don't care about people's mental health (not my field but I am worried about yours)

-YOU don't care about the children that DO need teachers and educators to guide & educate them (they do, they are, it's hard but everyone is doing the best they can)

YOU don't care about the economy crashing down around us (ahhh, the 'mission' again)

-YOU REALLY DON'T CARE. (see below)

-YOU love your shackles (funny...you say shackled, I say bound to others)

-YOU are pathetic, begging your leaders for MORE shut down and MORE regulations (now you're just being ridiculous...ridiculous-er...is that possible?)

I will NOT tolerate another person telling me that I don't care about lives. (pretty quick on the draw to tell me I don't care though aren't ya?)

I care about the situation in its entirety. (Awesome...I wish you'd be much more quietly heroic about it...but that's probably asking too much...sort of like actually doing something)

But YOU don't care about any of that so...(there you go, you've seen right through me...)

YOU stay home. (check...but I thought it was my 'sovereign' right, not a sign of fear. I'm confused...)

YOU wear a mask. (check...so only you get to be 'sovereign' in making choices again? What?)

YOU live in fear. (no...not today)

Authored by a group, those of us WHO GENUINELY CARE about HUMANITY. (who care so much they're afraid to sign it too...)

Please - Copy and paste if you agree! (not an ice cube's chance in hell)

_______________________________________________

I'm so over this stuff...

Let's just start here:

'Sovereign citizen/human being'

"This category of litigant shares one other critical characteristic: they will only honour state, regulatory, contract, family, fiduciary, equitable, and criminal obligations if they feel like it. And typically, they don’t."

—Assoc. Chief Justice J.D. Rooke, Alberta, Canada, in the case Meads v. Meads

By definition, 'Sovereign' indicates belief in a position superior to others which instantly disqualifies the anonymous author(s) from meaningful discussion with the rest of us...proven effectively by this rant and dog whistle showpiece. 

Speaking of..."allowing fear and policies devoid of scientifically accurate data to destroy our country and ruin your life."...sheesh! The anti-vax is strong in this one. 

(Side note: I'm not sure which Amendment gives us the right to take risks with viruses but again...facts are a little thin here..)

I submit that this 'new normal' they're afraid of is pretty much like the old normal if you care to look outside the bunker..."filled with starvation, depression, suicide, child abuse, domestic violence, imprisonment, governmental spying, and pure DESPERATION" Where have they been? 

Hell, that was a goodly chunk of the world for most of the last...oh century or so and it seemed like nobody noticed until they couldn't get toilet paper and a haircut. I guess the pandemic didn't really change much after all...

The point is, despite the assertions above...I'm not afraid. I'm aware and that's a different thing from afraid. That means I don't do whatever-the-hell I feel like because I don't know the answers. It means I don't pay heed or make decisions based on overblown passive-aggressive nonsense from the internet. It means staying cautious but also staying in the world. It means not saying screw the rest of you because we don't agree. Yes, our leaders are failing us on an epic scale and that truly worries me but I'm not afraid that tomorrow will be 'Fury Road' because of it.

The only thing I do fear is ignorance. Ignorance by a willful disregard for science, medicine, any type of verifiable facts, law and history. I damn sure don't know everything but I know what makes logical sense. This doesn't.

And I also do happen to care...a lot...in spite of being the all-caps YOU the post is so determined to denigrate. Otherwise I wouldn't bother to waste one second on this...much less the time I've spent writing a response.

Only someone completely out of touch with reality would rattle off that list of 'YOU don't cares' unless you have a wildly different variety of friends than I do. That crap is just idiotic if you're talking about damn near everyone I've ever met in 60 years. Maybe you should get out more...meet some new people...someone who doesn't always agree with you...just a thought.

Here's a surprise...none of us is in this alone no matter how much you blow smoke in your own face. In my view, we're supposed to be E Pluribus Unum...not unaccountable 'sovereigns', not every man for himself. You wail of overreach but if the horror of wearing a mask in public to possibly protect others is my 'shackles' then so be it. 

I'm also weary of being referred to as 'pathetic' by those behind keyboards. I won't hide under the bed waiting for the apocalypse to validate your fear. I don't need your sympathy but thanks for offering.

So I guess if caring about others and doing what I can to help them excludes me from the sovereign club, I'd rather that than be a self-centered, mean-spirited ego maniac with delusions of relevance.

To the 'Sovereign Human Being'...whoever you are...don't do us any favors. We'll get along ok. Spare us your righteous indignation. It's just weird. You are angry and ugly when the world needs no more of either. 

While you're at it, kindly quit presuming to tell me how I think or how I feel or what I know. It only makes you look foolish. Go forth...believe what you want, choose to do what you want because you can but please, please leave the rest of us alone.

We've got this...