Kurt R.A. Giambastiani

06Jan2022

One year ago today, my journal entry ended with: “Self-medication was required.”

This year, it’s still too early to know what the day will bring.

What today is supposed to bring is suffused in mundanity—an appointment with a chimney sweep, a couple of deliveries, an inch of rain—but if 2021 taught me anything, it’s that we can never really know what the world at large will toss into the mix.

Looking back on the year between, though, I’d have to say the auspices are not promising.

Monday, we both got our COVID booster shots. Our immune systems kicked into high gear, building the desired antibodies and so, by Tuesday, as expected, we were a bit under the weather. Some of our social media contacts chided us for putting such “poison” into our bodies; one even sent us a ten-minute video on how it magnetizes our bodies. (FYI: it doesn’t.)

In a friend’s most recent letter, she told me that some people in her circle—all functional adults capable of holding down a full-time job—upon reading a book that could be classified as “magic realism,” were of the belief that because “back then, people were closer to nature,” the magic described in the book was real. (FYI: it wasn’t.)

Recently, heavy snows—in winter—are being pointed to as clear evidence that climate change is a hoax, while tornadoes and wildfires in December are dismissed with the label “God’s will.” (FYI: it isn’t and they aren’t.)

And, to bring it back around, two in five Americans—two in five—believe that hundreds of individuals across the nation somehow conspired to flawlessly submit thousands of fraudulent ballots, all without leaving the slightest trace of their crimes, all to oust a sitting president whose approval rating on its best day couldn’t touch the 50% mark. (FYI: they didn’t.)

“I did my own research” has become the mantra of the age, with grand swathes of the American population opting to trust a few hours spent on Google, searching for what they want to hear, rather than give an iota of credence to the knowledge and experience of experts who’ve studied these topics for decades.

We are in a Desert of Reason, where logic and critical thought are as rare and precious as water in the Sahara. Common sense is not only uncommon, it is strenuously—and at times violently—eschewed.

Today will play itself out, ending as it will with a bang or a whimper, but either way, as it was last year, self-medication may be required.

k