Nowadays, you do not hear as many warnings as you used to when the pandemic started. Even as the south becomes a powder keg for the disease and the suffering is still great, there now is this silly undertone of, "well, it can't be that bad". I have heard people refer to this passive aggressive behavior as "pandemic fatigue" and perhaps it is, but that does not make such behavior acceptable. I cannot, in good conscience, allow people to "whatever" their way through life anymore. There are lot of different ways of saying "whatever" like "just get over it" or "you can't change things" or "you're just going to die anyway" or "it's beyond my control" or "that would never happen". Everyone always says "whatever" when they feel defeated, when they have lost hope. A hopeless person is a sad thing to witness, but such a person also presents a very real threat to society. This kind of reckless abandon is expected from teenagers and toddlers, not grown adults with a PHD, a new book deal, several speaking engagements, and a successful marketing strategy on social media. We have made profound intellects out of people with fantasy prone personalities. This, my dear listeners, is dangerous. Think of all the appeals to emotion that permeate anti-vaxx arguments, all the belief in various nonsensical arguments. That is no coincidence. Acceptance of people is fine, but radical acceptance of every idea that pops into a person's mind is not acceptance; it is stupidity and gullibility. Whoever gave Rand Paul or Tucker Carlson or Joseph Mercola or whatever dumb pastor who is filled with the power of the holy toast this week (preachers and congregants alike have told stories of the various times they see Jesus in their sandwich bread; seriously, I am not making that up) had a serious lapse in judgement. These cracker jacks should not have even been allowed out of middle school, let alone ascend the heights of national leadership! When you go to college you are supposed to study reason and rational thought. Rand Paul has never had one rational thought for crying out loud. The last person Tucker Carlson reasoned with was his stock broker. The whole right wing has lost its damn mind. Political scientists know this. Sure, the right wingers try not to talk about it so much because their fans will have them fired, the very same thing they rail against when it happens on liberal networks, but everyone in the political world knows that this radical acceptance of nonsensical political dialogue is absolutely insane. This disease is life or death. You have to fight to survive. Are we going to fight or are we going to lay on the ground and wait for the disease to come and kill us? Don't get lost in the poetry of the pandemic. Don't let these news hosts come on TV and tell you its not that bad. That's bullshit. It is that bad. Stop it with the "whatever" crap. You get one life, a little bit of time here to experience all those wonderful things we take for granted like the smell of freshly baked banana bread or a hug from a child or a lover's contented smile. And within those little things lies the key to the willingness to preserve life on this planet. It's your life. It's our life. It's not just "whatever". No one can convince you that you matter if you will not even recognize it yourself.