Yesterday, Bob took me out for a ride. We drove through a McDonalds for two fish sandwiches like two old people, then we came home where I could lay in an anti-gravity chair in the warm sun. You see, within 48 hours of arriving home from France and visiting a dentist to have my tooth replaced, I tested positive once again for Covid. Rebound Covid. Nearly 50% of people, taking Paxlovid or not, will experience rebound – in fact, Joe Biden got it again! Only this time, the second time around, one cannot take Paxlovid; you’re required to just suffer in silent isolation.
What to do, what to do? During the first few days I simply existed with a brown paper bag sitting next to me filling up with tissues. I was counting the hours between Tylenol and sleep, sweet, sweat-drenched sleep. On Air France I watched “The Regime” with Kate Winslet, where she plays a wild and disinhibited dictator of some fictional European country, but back in the States my appetite changed. Now I needed pablum – we’ve started watching “The Good Place” on Netflix and it’s exactly right. And once the fever broke, I started reading again.
This month’s Atlantic must have read my feebled mind, the cover story is titled “The Case Against Pessimism; the West has to Believe That Democracy will Prevail,” by Anne Applebaum.
“Since 2018, more than 116,000 Russians have faced criminal or administrative punishment for speaking their mind. Thousands of them have been punished specifically for objecting to the war in Ukraine. Their heroic battle is mostly carried out in silence. Because the regime has imposed total control on information in Russia, their voices cannot be heard.”
Applebaum makes the case for war, and I never thought I’d agree with such a premise, but fascism in the form of Putin today, is on the march. Fascism hides beneath many names: Sovietization, Russification and even a German word: Gleichschaltung. She posits that IF Germany had armed Ukraine in 2014 when Russia first invaded Crimea, if the West had not looked away, this current war might not have happened. And now, after the full-scale invasion of 2022 and initial call to help Ukraine, western democracies’ support is starting to wane. She warn us:
“Complacency, like a virus, moves quickly across borders,” she writes. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/10/russia-ukraine-democracy-applebaum/680318/
My virus flew across the ocean courtesy of Air France. But I refuse to be complacent about our election. Our twice-impeached ex-President, you know the Apprentice candidate who sent Putin Covid tests for his own personal use before we Americans could get our hands on them, wants another crack at autocracy. Remember back when our friend and neighbor who had been in construction gave us K95 masks for our daughter the ER doctor? Mr T admires tyrants, and Arnold Palmer is running around naked in his head. It’s been a week.
This morning I tested negative for Covid!! We voted early! Instead of going to the movies afterwards, Bob wheeled me around Lowes looking for mums. I didn’t wear white like I did when I voted for Hillary, I’m lucky I got dressed at all. I’ve been humbled, and not by children, by the fragility of our democracy. This is not a forkin joke. Please remember to vote like your life depends on it.
MountainMornings 