Tag Archives: Fear Fogging

Factoring in Fear

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Blogging for me began back in 2002. I occupied a cubicle in a soul-sucking job for a major disability insurer. Every minute I spent there was a minute I’d never recover. Fortunately, I didn’t invest  much energy into furthering Whitey’s corporate agenda and instead began planning my plan of exit.

A co-worker with topnotch design skills built a functional website at my behest. He never charged me a penny, either. The most important element of the site was that it including a blogging platform. As a writer looking to up my game and work on my craft, I was off to the races with a space to publish my own writing.

Since 2003, I’ve had several blogs including this one. My writing has been bylined in a host of print publications and online. I’ve hit the markers I set out for nearly 20 years ago.

Occasionally, I look back at something I wrote. The blog I maintained from 2004 until I launched this one in 2012, Words Matter, is still out there. Since I just completed rereading George Orwell’s dystopian classic, 1984, I was curious about what I might have picked up previously and perhaps noted somewhere.

Interestingly, these prior blog posts serve as a “trail of breadcrumbs” back to what I was thinking at the time. Just like in the present, I was concerned about the use of fear and hysteria (back in 2006) and also, the limbing of what is considered “proper” in what we are allowed to think and say. These are both central tenets to Orwell’s book that I’m amazed was written in 1949 and is still eerily relevant—just as if he’d written it last week.

In my blog post from 2006 at the Words Matter blog, I wrote this about fear:

Yesterday, while driving home from some appointments in Dover-Foxcroft, I was scanning the radio dial for something tolerable, or at least wouldn’t put me to sleep. For a five minute period, my better judgment took leave and I found myself listening to the demagoguery of Sean Hannity, during his afternoon exercise in right wing ideological indoctrination. This man is certifiably insane. His propaganda-laced tirades are lapped up eagerly by his brain-addled listeners, who subscribe to this kind of bigotry-infused and racist rhetoric. He was prattling on about the need for the U.S. to support their friends (in this case, Israel) in the battle against “Islamofascism,” a term invented by the haters on the right.

Fourteen years later, I could rewrite this, change a few names and terms and it would read this way to detail something that happened to me back in April. I haven’t looked back: Continue reading →

Locked up for now (but not, then)

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Do you remember the early days of coronavirus? It was only two months ago, but it seems like years. Maybe our perceptions of time change when we’re under house arrest.

If you are like me (and you’re probably not), you’ve been searching high and low for some variation on what’s been the equivalent of fear-mongering and propaganda by the mainstream media. I’ve used the term “fear-fogging” on this blog to connote the idea of fear being spread like the way fog rolls in off the ocean and envelopes everything in its path, reducing visibility to zero. The media’s kind of like that these days.

Unfortunately, despite my best intentions, I’ve internalized some of this propaganda and groupthink, too. As hard as I fight it, sometimes when I go out in public, I’m scared that the ‘krona might get me, too.

Speaking of internalization; how about the idea that the last time there was a major pandemic in the U.S. (and across the globe) was the great pandemic of 1918.  That’s actually wrong. The U.S. had pandemics in 1949 to 1952 (polio) and 1957. I got this from the website for the Centers for Disease Control (for you scientists lurking out there, fact-checking any alternative storytelling) re: the 1957-58 global pandemic::

In February 1957, a new influenza A (H2N2) virus emerged in East Asia, triggering a pandemic (“Asian Flu”). This H2N2 virus was comprised of three different genes from an H2N2 virus that originated from an avian influenza A virus, including the H2 hemagglutinin and the N2 neuraminidase genes. It was first reported in Singapore in February 1957, Hong Kong in April 1957, and in coastal cities in the United States in summer 1957. The estimated number of deaths was 1.1 million worldwide and 116,000 in the United States.

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Holding More Than One Idea (The Err of Caution)

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What week of lockdown is this? I’ve lost track.

I hope everyone’s holding up, well. I’m guessing many are not. Actually, I know many aren’t.

My daytime job involves taking calls in a healthcare setting. Since early March, I’ve listened to people cry, melt down, and I’ve experienced and uncomfortable level of fear being projected my way for the past weeks and now, months. This has got to stop!

As a parent coping with the loss of a son, I’ve been struggling with the feeling of sliding back into that “deep dark hole” that’s taken me months to get to the lip of, and then, up into the light of living again. Why has this pandemic triggered these former emotions that were more painful than any human should be forced to endure? I’ve asked the question “why me?” so many times I can’t even come up with a reasonable guess.

I’m not sure why, but often following Mark’s death, I was so fucking angry. I simply wanted to hit someone or worse. Rather than acting out on this urge, I simply turned inward. I remember a former radio psychologist, Dr. Joy Brown, saying that depression was “anger turned inward.” I’d concur. I was so depressed that I contemplated suicide.

Picking up the guitar saved me nearly two years ago. I’ve played my old acoustic (or my newer electric) nearly every single day since August 2018. I’m amazed that two guitars (and a Vox amp) could have made such a difference, but they have. Still, the past 8 to 10 weeks have been difficult as hell, even playing and writing songs and performing via the interwebs. There’s only so much shit that even my guitars can deflect away.

When the Covid-19 outbreak ramped up, there were conflicting reports of its severity. Initially, some said that it wasn’t any worse than the common flu and that “people were overreacting.” Then, protocols were established as cases exploded, especially in the large, urban population centers like Boston, New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles.

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Data Set

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I keep hearing calls for data, data, data. Then, there are the data plotters on Facebook, keen to jockey and posit their own political agenda under the guise of scientific neutrality.

For the purposes of full disclosure: I am not a scientist–I am a writer with experience as a journalist. The kind of journalism I cut my teeth doing didn’t consist of culling stories from Twitter feeds, either.

With that said, how would you rectify my very primitive spreadsheet comparing previous flu season data from the CDC with the Covid-19 numbers?

Flu virus by the numbers

Then, read what I think is a reasonable thought piece from an actual doctor, on balancing the needs to keep people safe overall, with the hysteria that’s been whipped up by members of the media and many of you on Facebook. He certainly has more legitimacy than most of you projecting holier-than-thou screeds about masks, distancing and a host of other things. Like, why do you have such a need to virtue signal with your unproven call for everyone to don a mask?

Someone tossed their dirty Crona mask on our front lawn.

What sayeth all you Einsteins and fear-foggers out there?

Feelings Not Facts

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After a welcome break from tutoring, I was back at for the first time in two weeks. I’m not sure why—maybe it was just that I’d gotten used to having my evenings back and under my own control—but I was exhausted when I rolled up on the cove around 9:45 Wednesday night.

When I get home after 2 ½ hours of trying to get 25 high school-age students to put down their cell phones and do some homework, I’ll often sit-up for an hour or so with a beer (sometimes a snack) and more often than not, I’ll watch The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell on MSNBC. Because I tune-in just prior to the 10:00 p.m. segue between hosts and shows, I’ve come to enjoy being there for the “hand-off” that takes place between the brilliant Rachel Maddow and O’Donnell, a savvy political veteran of DC’s internecine combat.

Wednesday night, though, for some odd reason, I switched on CNN. When I am home at night, I rarely miss Ms. Maddow’s special blend of research, commentary, and the way she weaves each evening’s storyline, coaxing viewers along for something other than the usual soundbite journalism that’s all-too-common in this post-factual era.

It’s unfortunate that the only two left-of-center news networks force us to choose: pitting Maddow against Chris Cuomo (over on CNN), and then, O’Donnell goes head-to-head against worthy rival, Don Lemon. What I often end up doing is channel-surfing between networks during commercials, which works at times.

Cuomo, in addition to being a journalist is also a licensed attorney. He draws on that  legal background to “make his case” in whatever story he’s covering on a given night. Wednesday night, it was President Trump, and how the Orange Menace opts for feelings over facts, time-and-time-again. This is nothing new to anyone who doesn’t source their information solely from TrumpTV (better know as, Fox News). But for the Kool-Aid crowd of Trump toadies, this is an interesting flip-flop. Continue reading →