Do You Recognize America Right Now?
On Thursday night, Tucker Carlson pointed his dead eyes directly into a television camera and told his viewers that if Democrats win the White House and the Senate, “you will not recognize America one year from now.” And then, we must imagine, he went upstairs and poured himself a nice, big Fireball Cinnamon Whiskey (one rock, so as not to compromise the flavor profile of the Fireball) because he is in his own home, because the Fox News studios are closed, because pretty much everything is closed, because an unchecked pandemic has ravaged the rudderless, leaderless, gutted-and-being-sold-for-scrap-metal America of right this fucking second.
The Young Judge Smails Adventures over here does have a point, though I don’t think it’s the one he thinks he’s making. It’s a little bit like the Trump campaign ads we’re seeing, sounding an alarm about the burning of American cities in Biden’s America, using footage of burning American cities in Trump’s America.
No shit it’s going to look different one year from now.
It goddamn better look different one year from now, because look at it now now. Oh my God, will you look at it now now.
In the America of now now, we have passed 4 million positive Covid cases—just over 26 percent of the world’s total, while we count for just over four percent of the world’s population—as our President boasted at length about having passed a dementia evaluation. “Person, woman, man, camera, TV,” he crowed over and over, as one in five American workers attempted to access unemployment benefits.
(That the person who was interviewing him, then probably a woman producer, then a cameraman, then that cameraman’s camera, then a TV monitor, were the first five things in this guy’s actual field of vision, and he still struggled to get the goddamn words in the right order, are as worth pointing out as the fact that five words so closely related to one another would for sure not be assigned together on a test of this nature, and anyone who has thought about this for nine seconds knows it, and I hate that I’m one of those people. Oh my God, think about the stupid things we have to think about now.)
In the America of now now, while parts of the world hard-hit by the virus come back to life, we’re adding more than 60,000 new cases a day. If you’d like to get yourself tested to see whether you’re at risk for getting or making someone else sick, you better hope you live in a state whose governor has publicly thanked Donald Trump. And actually, if you’re in one of those states, you’re probably fucked, too; Jared Kushner made California governor Gavin Newsom grovel and scrape, and because I live in Los Angeles it’s presumably why last week I could get a test, but as of now now they are reserved for the symptomatic, because we’re out of swabs.
In the America of now now, we have done the thing your dumbest high school friend suggested and tried to run the country like a business, except we ran it like one of Donald Trump's businesses, and Donald Trump couldn't even keep a casino afloat, and the literal business model of a casino is people showing up and handing you their money. We ran America like a business, and as of this morning, close to 145,000 Americans have been, shall we say, laid off.
In the America of now now, we’re not allowed into Canada or Europe. They will not take us, because they do not trust us, and you cannot blame them.
In the America of now now, I know no fewer than a dozen sensible double-income households whose savings have run out. I’m in one of them.
In the America of now now, we tried the government so small you could drown it in a bathtub, and the president is trying to declare martial law.
In the America of now now, Ronald Reagan’s words have been proven right forty years later, and I have a handful of freshly tear-gassed Portland mothers who will agree: the nine most terrifying words in the English language finally, truly are “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”
In the America of now now, the leader of the free world tweets “LAW & ORDER” when he isn’t retweeting Q-Anon conspiracy people or praise from Kristy Swanson, while protestors are getting snatched up into rental vans by secret police forces for the crime of having been near graffiti’d walls.
In the America of now now, the president defends the Confederate fucking flag.
In the America of now now, we have cut regulations and are freer than ever before— incredible freedom, tremendous freedom, many people are saying it—and since my last visit to family in St. Louis was last Christmas, I have resigned myself to the fact that I will not have the opportunity to hug my mother in this calendar year.
In the America of now now, Thursday was baseball’s Opening Day, and the best news I heard about it was that the Los Angeles Dodgers have put a cardboard cutout of Brody Stevens in the stands. A picture of a dead comedian in an empty baseball stadium in a truncated baseball season where it is not safe for the players to touch one another or spit on the ground: that was the heartwarming news, the human interest story, in the America of now now.
In the America of now now, the question of whether you should sneeze out into the open air or into a Kleenex has become politicized. Okay, not really, it’s the question of whether you should go to the trouble of putting a mask on your face to reduce your chances of getting or spreading an airborne respiratory illness, and if you have some thoughts as to how the sneeze thing and the mask thing are different, do me a favor: write them down, fold that piece of paper in half, and put it on your fucking face so you don’t get or spread an airborne respiratory illness, Jesus Fucking Christ.
I don’t recognize the America of now now, and I couldn’t escape it if I wanted to, because the wall everyone but one person in this country has been rolling their eyes about since 2015 has finally been built and it’s keeping us in.
Yes, passionate progressives are fighting for a more just and peaceful America, and they should be, because in this one, someone you know is about one week away from checking into their work Zoom from a tent under a freeway overpass. Yes, we have an engaged left wing in our government for once, and a major reason for that is the engaged right wing in our government has reached its apotheosis in our current president, a guy who not only can't unite this country against sickness and death, but also reacts with a sweaty, prissy defensiveness to the idea that he should even be expected to. Yes, people are getting serious about fixing this country's problems, and thank God, because the president starts each day tippity-tapping on his Twitter app, dictating from his toilet what we'll spend the day talking about, and I swear to God the other day we were talking about fucking Goya beans.
Things are dark as hell right now, and when it's pitch black like this, you can really see the points of light. You can see people taking to the streets by the hundreds of thousands to protest police brutality. You can see people educating themselves about systemic racism, getting engaged in local government, paying attention to how we allocate our resources. You can see statues of traitors and racists coming down, team names changing, our culture evolving. Our country is in one hell of a state right now, and good people are fighting hard to make it better, fairer, stronger.
You can also see Tucker Carlson, standing over the smoldering ashes that used to be your house, sneering that if you don't do as he says, you won't recognize the place in a year.
No shit we won't. We're rebuilding it. Get out of the fucking way.
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