When you ask yourself ‘what’s the point,’ that IS the point

Some days you wake up, look around and ask yourself, “What’s the point?”

Just consider:

* There’s a deadly virus infecting the country and evidence suggests it’s gearing up for a third wave this fall. It has already killed more than 217,000 people and made 8 million of us sick, and yet one-third or more of our citizens refuse to wear a mask for 15 minutes while they shop in the petri dish we call Walmart. “Not wearing a mask is my god-given right,” they say, even though no god we know of in any religion ever handed down tablets with that message inscribed on them.

* Meanwhile, scientific recommendations to the contrary, schools, bars and restaurants are open, meaning that children, teachers, cooks, bus drivers, janitors, waiters, bus boys, bartenders and waitresses are exposed every day to dozens of students or customers who could be infected with the virus and don’t even know it.

* Every week, college and professional sports teams are engaged in competition – except when they aren’t because the other team is in quarantine because of the virus. One team, the University of Houston, had its first four games canceled because its opponents couldn’t play. One of those games was a replacement game and even that one fell through.

* In West Virginia, high school schedules are adjusted weekly as counties pass into and out of Governor Big Jim Hutt’s color-coded joke of a map. “Oh, your county passed from yellow to orange today? So sorry, but your teams can’t play this weekend. Maybe try again later?”

* In the NFL, your team may or may not have a game on Sunday. You’d better check the ESPN web site to see who’s sick this week.

Moving on, virus or no virus, Donald Trump is still president of the United States. Need I say more?

OK, I will. The most despicable man I have seen in my lifetime is in the final stages of a four-year campaign to get himself re-elected so he can avoid being indicted for a series of crimes so long I don’t have time to list them all here. His entire presidency has been one long campaign in which – when he wasn’t playing golf – he was too busy running for president to actually BE the president. That’s because he doesn’t really want the job. He just wants the title, the adoration, the power, the narcissistic ego massage and the money-making opportunities it presents.

Now he wants us to believe he caught the coronavirus, took some Pepcid, an aspirin and some experimental drugs, flew over to Walter Reed for a couple of hours and was cured…and now he’s Superman and he’s immune. Well I don’t believe it. I could be wrong, but I said from Day 1 that he didn’t really have Covid-19 and I’m sticking by my story. I think this was a political stunt to revive a failing campaign by garnering both sympathy for his “illness” and astonishment over his super-human recovery.

I’m not sure the ruse is working, but it doesn’t really matter. Trump knows he’s losing so he’s busy ginning up Plan B. That includes:

* Declaring in advance that the election is rigged.

* Claiming that absentee ballots are acceptable but that other mail-in ballots are fraudulent, even though there is no difference between the two.

* Manipulating the Postal Service to delay the delivery of ballots so he can dispute the results on election night if things aren’t going his way.

* Sending armed nut-bags posing as “poll watchers” into voting stations in key states to intimidate would-be voters. Never mind that this is against the law. That never stopped him before.

* Refusing to agree to a peaceful transition of power if he should lose.

* Suggesting that Republican state legislators disregard the popular vote in their states and appoint new electors to the Electoral College who will cast their states’ votes for Trump.

* And finally, the coup de grâce, rushing through a Supreme Court nominee who looks and acts like a character from the Handmaid’s Tale so he can use a 6-3 Conservative majority to hand him the election regardless of the will of the people.

If this isn’t enough for you, Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and the leaders of the Republican Party are working with Russian propagandists to smear Trump’s opponent Joe Biden and to influence the outcome of the election.

I took a walk around my neighborhood today, and I noticed that two new Trump/Pence yard signs and a large Trump 2020 flag have sprung up like dandelions in my neighbors’ yards. There were no Biden-Harris signs that I could see. So I came home wondering, “What’s the point?”

And then it came to me. That IS the point. The fact is, we’ve been so beaten down by an out-of-control virus, a White House that allowed it to spread, red state governors who are under the thumb of the president and the Republican campaign to suppress votes and steal an election that we are now asking ourselves why we should care.

And that’s exactly why we should, because if we don’t care, who will? It isn’t time to wring our hands or shake our heads or give in to the idea that everything is fixed and we can’t change it. It IS the time to keep fighting the good fight and do everything possible in the next three weeks to ensure that good will triumph against evil. Otherwise, it’s already over and our side has lost.