Aflame

Temperatures will reach the 90s this week, and I’ve been without an AC in my office for weeks. Fortunately, a few of my co-workers installed a new AC unit and a window in my office yesterday, and I couldn’t be more grateful. I’ve worked in this office for almost six years without a window so working with one now will be fun. I’ll now be able to tell what time of day it is without looking at my watch. That’s important for a guy whose job is to stare at screens all day.

I saw the president wear a face mask the other day, but I continue to hear people in my county protest them, their yells about rights and freedoms fueling our increased case counts. My county now has the second highest active coronavirus cases in the state, behind Yellowstone County, home to Billings, the biggest city in the state. We don’t have big cities in my county, so these high numbers are concerning. On Tuesday, the U.S. reported over 1,000 coronavirus deaths for the first time since May 29th, but nearly one in three of us don’t believe the virus’ death toll is as high as the official count. More countries are denying American’s entry into their countries, but that’s okay because instead of traveling, we’re spending our time online spewing more than three times as much hate speech since before George Floyd’s death in May. I continue to hear people proclaim that “All Lives Matter,” and someone in a position of power recently asked me why black people can call each other the n-word but white people can’t. If that’s not enough, a couple hundred acres started burning on the reservation on Monday night and more land should burn in the coming weeks and months.

The world is aflame with literal fires, a pandemic, and an infodemic, but all we seem to care about is ourselves, our rights to not wear masks, our right to infect everyone around us with our bullshit because we’re Americans. That’s the American way, a populace no one else in the world wants, a populace that is okay with unmarked vans kidnapping innocent citizens to who knows where because “All Lives Matter,” as long as that life is white. Science has never moved this fast to create a vaccine but that won’t matter because so many of us won’t even take it. How many will have to die before we realize how stupid we’ve been? I’m afraid the answer won’t matter because we won’t believe the literal death happening around us until it’s too late.