Message to Spartacus (part 47)

 

Whatever Happened to Spartacus? (part 7)

(part1)
(part 2)
(part 3)
(part 4)
(part 5)
(part 6)

Clearly decades-long friend Spartacus was not in the least interested even in my direct answers to his coldly hostile questions... let alone the reasoning that undergirds my perspective.

He didn't want a dialog. He wanted only to attack, to beat his chest and bellow as king of the hill... while standing in a cesspit. His lifelong open-mindedness was gone; his patient manner had evaporated; his respect for others wrenched into a whip, a goad, a dagger in the back, a sickening fecal firehose on full power.

He responded the next morning to my long, sincere note, where I'd outlined areas I both in fact agreed with him on, and where his vaunted stance was weak, deficient, and unsustainable... and he would have none of it. The admirable open door of his heart and spirit was slammed and soldered shut; and there he stood, arms tightly folded, chin arrogantly thrust out, Mussolini... not the mature man of moderate mind.

From: "Spark" le Klaus
Sent: Monday, June 29, 2020 8:34 AM
To: Aging Child
Subject: Re: Tar Nation

So the short answer to my question is yes you would. Theoretical life trumps ALL other considerations. A perfect example of the utter stupidity of religion.

Hitler was against abortion too...

My previous reply had gotten nowhere; now, in replying yet again, I would have to repeat a number of things I'd already said clearly – and respectfully – as well as push back even harder... again without taking my gloves off or stepping away from being a patient and respectful gentleman. Something had clearly snapped inside my close friend Spartacus, and I would need to address that, too, and fairly directly. I would lighten things up and counterbalance it all by continuing to sincerely compliment him overall – and point out the terrible contrast between where he was now, and how he always had been. 

From: Aging Child
Sent: Monday, June 29, 2020 10:52 PM
To: Spartacus
Subject: RE: Tarbrushing Only

Spartacus, my friend, I don't know for certain where you've suddenly broken down inside, or how you've let it happen to you, but in more than twenty years of email, phone calls, visits together, music and laughs and hurts shared, and so much more, you have never attacked my faith, let alone called me a Nazi.

Your determined, relentless, righteous, superficial crusade directed against me is utterly out of keeping with the rare character of the man I've long admired. Your strengths and skills and knowledge I've appreciated and envied and grown from; your experience and perspective have counseled and helped direct many of my more-troubled steps.

Of late your maturity is seemingly out the window, your deep incisive intellect looks to be silted up to a tiny trickle through a flattened gully, and your gentlemanly acceptance that many people do not follow your roadmap… appears utterly snuffed out. Right now you're coming across as a righteous, arrogant, crybaby know-it-all, uninterested in anyone else's perspective than your own, certain of all the quick, easy, pat solutions to the world's array of immense problems, and are utterly disdainful of any other answers to be offered.

Maybe out of your justifiable anger, frustration, and outrage at the course this president has taken, you've grown genuinely frightened; are feeling yourself impotent in the face of a great unconquerable threat. And so, finding yourself in a tight corner, you have to lash out and attack. That's reptile-brain reaction and fear moving you, and guiding your keyboard into vitriol, where for so much of your life there has instead been patience, grown-up reason, and level-headedness. Your commendable restraint and acceptance are devolving badly and alarmingly into juvenile cowardice, arms folded, pout on lips, and choosing personalized tantrum where a deep breath and greater thought and self-reflection are so truly needed. That's il Duce's pose to threats and fear. It was never yours.

Here where you might wisely seize this time of crisis as an opportunity, say, for patient persuasion, you are persuading only a profoundly troubling perception that you are not the least interested in a dialog; that you are unconcerned with a comparison of viewpoints; that your sole focus is the sound of your breast-beating and righteous posturing. I must posit that you're not reading anything that I've written because it runs counter to the mantle you've now chosen to wrap yourself in, and from which you're moved only to take cheap, low-brow potshots. Right now you are choosing to read and see only what you want to see, and nothing else is of worth in your little red book. Come on.

I say that you're much, much better than that. That you're choosing such a low course tears at my heart, and claws deeply and bloodily at my lifelong respect for you. That type of closed-minded self-obsession belongs at the far-far right of the social spectrum, where one finds tea parties, and rifle-toters, and conspiracists, and unyielding hands clutching unacceptable tokens, such as dixie-flags and hooked crosses. The left-of-center, where you've always stood, is about open minds, healing, learning, growth, compassion, conciliation, consensus, common goals and vision — ideals that at the moment you look to have turned your back on; none of them are evident in the cold, unreasoned words and stabs you've been mercilessly taking at me from out of the blue.

This is not the Spartacus I've known and admired and warmly appreciated all these years. He was never shallow, never self-focused, never narrow of mind, never brutal, never vicious, never cruel, never demeaning, never sadistic, never arrogant, never unthinking. What has become of him?

So. Having once again laid out difficult, yet genuinely respectful, words to stake out my parcel of parkland, and certain it'll again be bombarded by further gas-laden shells and jets of flame devouring any waving white flag, let me try once more to address some things you've said. I know you won't read them because of who you unaccountably choose to be at this moment; yet respect for you (and for myself) requires what you've said not be ignored. I challenge you to try the same.

One.

Life in the womb is not "theoretical". It is alive now, today, growing. The child — zygote, embryo, fetus — is not a potential human, but a human with full potential; from day one, its DNA is fully human and is neither the mother's nor the father's. Tearing the child out, dismembering her, decapitating him, because the mother (or/and father) wants to continue living their shallow self-serving life, is every bit as much murder as choking a baby in its crib because it's crying in the wee hours; the difference is one of locale only.

It's not a religious matter. It's pure, raw, demonstrable science: read an embryonics textbook. Religion is simply recognition of the value of life. But it's science that tells us that this, the child in the womb, is alive, is life itself.

Having so easy an out as abortion in a challenging personal situation cheapens the value of life, and of responsibility, and encourages self-service, rather than devotion to and love of others. Being okay with still-warm baby body parts, being fine about a newborn drowned in a bucket in a Planned Parenthood procedure room, means that some essential part of an adult's heart is dead as well. That's inhuman, and inhumane. It poisons our entire culture and species. It is monstrous. It has to end. It brooks no compromise. The struggle against the abortion-minded is a human-rights struggle.

Two.

A common trope is that more wars have been caused, more people have died, because of religion than from any other cause. Simple, stark counterpoint: which religion was Hitler pushing? What spiritual faith was Stalin extolling? Which church did Pol Pot fight on behalf of? Which deity commanded those millions upon millions of deaths? Name the religion. Now name original great Western universities and hospital systems that were not founded by religious organizations.

"Utter stupidity" in fact lies demonstrably in the closed mind and unflexing agenda — and it sincerely troubles me to point out to you that this is the thickest vein coming through your most recent emails. I repeat, and will keep repeating: you are far better than that.

Three.

Your disgust and horror and outrage at the lousy leadership implicit in tens of thousands of American deaths this year is something I share with you. You're attacking me because you've personalized your disgust, and thus I myself must be fully to blame for all those dead countrymen/women, through my agonized choice behind a closed curtain one November. If mine had been the one tiebreaking vote that had kept the president's main opponent out of office, you'd have a case to come at me personally. Since mine wasn't, then you are honor-bound to track down every person who did not vote for that opponent, and berate them every bit as rudely and harshly and immaturely as you've been attacking me; anything less would make a fool and hypocrite out of you… something else my dear friend Sparks has never been.

Is it that the only thing you value in someone today is how much they think and act like you? Where is the mature adult mind in that? Where is the big heart that embraces the differences in all your fellow humans, inside and out? Since when were undifferentiated clones your lone company of choice?

If I am to follow your role model, then, and hold someone solely and unmeritedly, directly responsible for our present great ills — which is what your latest very rude and shallow words have been implying — then you must accept that there is a whole suite of things I am required to coldly and brutally hold you accountable for, or you are embracing a lousy double standard.

Total guilt by clear association:

• Other husbands have knocked their wives' teeth out; you're just as guilty as they, even though you've only been loving and nurturing to your wife, whom I also respect and regard highly; you're still guilty for those other women's batterings because you, too, are a husband, and some husbands see their wives as punching-bags.
• Every bit of woodworking machinery used to tear apart a fresh corpse has your fingerprints on it.
• As a man, you're complicit in the rape of every child.
• As a half-Sicilian, you're also responsible for every bloody machine-gunning by the Cosa Nostra; and as a half-German, the blood and ovens of Buchenwald are under your name.
• As a Caucasian, your knee also was on struggling George Floyd's dying neck.
• As a former-USAF man, you must answer for every American bomb and cruise missile that leveled a hospital and took out a school and apartment block.
• As a resident of a super-big metropolitan area, you're responsible as well for all polluted waters, for stench in the air, for the dead wilds.
• As a man with a beard, that's you sitting on a park bench, eying little girls with bad intent.

Please tell me that the total absurdity of this line of personalized unhelpful response to evil is coming through.

That I have to repeat myself about something so basic and obvious underscores, again, that you're not reading what I've been writing, nor care to. Yet out of love for you, and of unyielding appreciation for all our years, I'll say it again. I did not put this man into office so that he could kill tens of thousands of Americans. The virus that took them was all but nonexistent three and a half years ago; the lousy decisions and nondecisions that exacerbated the plague had not been made. A vote for any candidate is never carte blanche for them to run roughshod over their people.

You have set yourself on a crusade; stop battering your lance and sword on this weathered windmill that is me. What are you personally doing to actually solve this problem? How does shamefully kicking into pitiable ruins a long and deep friendship… redress all the flu-dead? How does that shallow, immature, cowardly betrayal put Trump and his cronies in their proper, deserved places?

I repeat as well: you've personalized your outrage and fear, and are taking repeated aim at an easy target. That's part of why I regretfully have to assert "cowardly" of you, even though till now you've never been a coward.

Get in your car and drive your roiling sense of injustice to Washington DC, to 1500 Pennsylvania Avenue, and raise a placard so big and bright that Agent Orange himself can see it, and don't stop until he's on a rail, in tar and feathers, being held down under the waters of the Tidal Basin. Engage your legislators and local electorate to tear them out of office, to sell off all his holdings in full recompense to the parents and children and brothers and sisters of all the dead. Put on some scrubs and volunteer in a hospital, a testing center, a funeral home, and stick with it until the virus and the president are dead and gone.

All those would be worthwhile and honorable, positive channels for you to leverage your great anger and justifiable sense of absolute mission, and sensibly put them toward righting what's badly awry. To instead take the easy, lazy, arrogant, cowardly path of visiting it all on an aging child here at his dilapidated desk, is immensely dishonorable, shameful, unmanly, immature, and disgusting. It is being a pompous, self-righteous playground bully. That's not Spartacus. Make a real difference, not the futile, fruitless, whining, bitter, baby's tantrum you're veering into.

You are far, far better than that… or used to be. I hold you to a much higher standard, one that long inspired and encouraged me. That's Spartacus: hope, not hatred; hand out, not fist drawn; peace, not petty pugilism.

Be your best. That is the man to admire and emulate.

Regards,

Agïng Child

This time, Sparks actually did not respond, and it was a little while before I heard from him again... attacking me from a new angle. (Why?) Before I lay out his next thudding steps, though, I want to dig deeper into how I responded to him here, and earlier, and contrast it with his own bullied tunnel-vision thrusts. Stay tuned.

Whatever Happened to Spartacus? (part 6)

(part 1) 
(part 2) 
(part 3) 
(part 4) 
(part 5) 

Another recap is in order: In a longer email to our friend Spartacus, in late June of 2020 (see previous parts here), I'd mentioned – just in passing, and only very briefly – my great worry that the most-recent gatherings of unmasked Americans, whether to celebrate life events or sports, or to protest deep social issues, would serve to spread the unstoppable virus even further, taking many, many more lives.

Overlooking everything I'd shared with him at length in my note, about personally and professionally meeting the virus; about seeing to my mother's (and fellow frail seniors') needs under that virus; and about a possible ray of hope amid it all – even the just-passed (and for now postponed)  Fathers' Day, let alone my family's grief at the recent untimely death of our cousin... overlooking all of this, Sparks had leapt onto a negligible, small piece of my brief afterword, rewritten and recast it, adding an incendiary layer on politics and racism. Where had that come from?

So I took a deep breath, and began the first of three further responses to him that would each be the product of many hours of hard thought, rewrites, and conscious effort to make sure I wasn't directly critical of him in any way – we'd been friends for quite a long time, and knew each other well... didn't we? Weren't we?

There must be no possibility of his mistaking my meaning again. So I took pains to lay out that viral-spreading worry of mine in far greater detail, stressing that I didn't – don't – "demonize" the most-recent protestors, and underscoring as well my full support for their cause. The timing of these protests was tragic, in that they were certain to lead to increased death. I explained that I did find the protests' swerve into violence greatly disturbing, unacceptable, and utterly at odds with protesting in peace for a just grievance – which the movement had. Had had.

Concluding my long note to him, I wrote – and I believe this with all my heart: "Black lives matter. All life is sacred and precious and must be protected and nurtured. The life of a helpless man of color whose neck is under the knee of a coldhearted bigot; the lives of each person in CoViD's relentless crosshairs; the lives of children in the womb; the lives of senior citizens warehoused and forgotten – these matter. And the loss of even one is indeed needless."

His terse reply came in the next afternoon. Once again, he ignored everything I'd worked hard to lay out and explain for him, instead shallowly seizing on a lone piece of one concluding sentence, twisted it utterly out of shape and context, and swung it hard across me like a steaming tarbrush:

From: "Spark" le Klaus

Sent: Sunday, June 28, 2020 1:37 PM
To: Aging Child
Subject: Re: "Not a Single Sparrow Falls to the Ground, Without..."

How ironic. So many "good, conscientious" people of faith helped elect 2 monsters in order to theoretically protect theoretical life, but instead of protecting life, their words and actions have resulted in the very real death and destruction of countless lives of actual people. After 3+ years of daily increasing horror and debacle, will you remain a "good Catholic" and help re-elect them if your bishop tells you to?

Okay. Now I had to push back – without losing my cool, and my decades of respect for him. This outright rudeness and hostility was completely out of keeping with how we'd always interacted, and with how he dealt with other people; again, he truly has a big and compassionate heart. It took me over five hours to write and hone an answer that addressed his bitter, near-irrational, veering screed.

Where had it come from?

I was hurt, and worried... and had an idea about the cause behind his bizarre, unfathomable twist. I have never known anything to frighten him or even bring him heavy anxiety, beyond what each man – especially husband and father and breadearner – must confront. Here though, even in his tightly secure home, he was vulnerable to a killer virus that could not be negotiated with or beaten back, could only be – hopefully – held at bay with mask and gloves and buckets of sanitizer and a couple injections and an abundance of social caution. He could only hope it wouldn't catch him and kill him, or his wife, or his children, or all of them. Beyond that, and his few basic safeguards, he was powerless and impotent.

Our Spartacus spent years in the military. If he couldn't stop this direct assault, he could still track down and eliminate its cause, and save this country greater harm. And that's a noble line of response. Could he have concluded, in some bizarre, twisted way, that I myself must be the cause of all the "increasing horror and debacle", because I hadn't voted against the current administration, whose response to the virus had been woefully inadequate?

I signed off with an apt quote from Chesterton – a writer he's read and respects:

From: Aging Child
Sent: Sunday, June 28, 2020 6:55 PM
To: Spartacus
Subject: RE: Tar Nation

Whoah, whoah; down boy!

Spark, please don't take your frustration and anger and justifiable rage at this administration out on me. My vote three and a half years ago was to keep a committed baby killer out of office; it wasn't a mandate for her opponent to kill some 125,000 Americans through arrogance and indifference.

The administration's bullheaded obliviousness to the virus, as threat and grim reaper, has been a heavy factor in all those deaths. So has our culture's, and individual people's, own stubbornness and wishful thinking in the face of the threat and its horrid toll. It is not okay yet to go back to the beach, the coffee shop, the crowded department store.

My daughters, my mother, my pastor, my bishop, my pope, even Jesus Christ Himself, does not pull my strings, let alone my election-booth levers. I vote by my conscience, which is informed by my faith, which holds all life as sacred and deserving of nurturing, protecting, and improving.

So: let's change the 2016 election, and put Trump's main opponent into office instead. Let's say she took heavy-handed steps against the virus early on, and kept the mortality rate closer to Germany's of some 5% – not bloody likely in our culture, so let's assume a 7% mortality rate, still, rather than the current almost-16% (as of 4:33 this afternoon). And let's assume half as many positive cases at this point – again, not likely; the lion's share of the vectors aren't under federal control, short of breaking out the brown shirts and goose-steps.

That would yield about 400,000 domestic positives so far (versus the actual 805,000+), and some 20-30,000 Americans dead. Is that a number you could be happy with? You'd be content that 30,000 Americans would now be dead under her administration? Or is your contention that a different backside in the oval office would have kept the virus out of this country entirely, and there'd be zero deaths stateside, while the rest of the world is bulldozed into mass graves?

125,000 deaths is unacceptable. 20-30,000 is unacceptable. 104 dead Australians is unacceptable.

During the prior administration, this country averaged over 2,700 babies murdered in the womb daily: nearly 8,000,000 from 2013-2018 – these are Guttmacher numbers... and gut-wrenching numbers as well.

That's what I voted against: a world where it's okay to kill a baby, and okay to kill a senior citizen, an invalid; where life is cheap, and is measured only by its convenience to someone else who has the power to take it away mercilessly and without a second thought.

Out of faith, out of valuing the lives of the oldest and youngest and most vulnerable, I made the only sane and compassionate choice I could make, short of withholding my vote entirely (and thus failing of my civic duty), or selecting a less-distasteful candidate, who hadn't a chance of defeating the pro-abortion juggernaut.

And I'm as aggravated as you with nearly everything Trump and his yes-men and -women have done with their executive power in the maddening span since. He has also defunded abortion organizations domestic and international, and pushed back prior regulations requiring religious organizations to provide abortion and related services, a violation of the free-exercise clause of the First Amendment.

All this does not excuse or make acceptable his willful ignorance in the extent of the death and damage this pandemic has brought our country. It does not; nor am I a supporter of anything he or his people do that is not good for Americans collectively and individually. To assume otherwise of me is to blindly wield a tarbrush as wide and indiscriminate as any that's disgustingly used on the far right. You are better than that, and I've always liked that about you.

Spartacus, my friend, please take a deep breath, and step back. I'm not Donald Trump; I'm not anywhere in his corner of lowbrow kowtowers. Please hold fast to your very own commendable words and outlook, that "the most horrific thing about the pandemic has been the perversion of an existential threat against all of humanity into a partisan political issue".

Nobody said it was easy. It's not; I know.

Regards,
Mïchael
The world pays a compliment to the Catholic Church by not tolerating in her all the transgressions that the world willingly tolerates everywhere else. — G. K. Chesterton

[More follows; Spartacus would shallowly ignore every step of my reasoning that I'd laid out for him here, as well as little olive branches I'd scattered among my robust counterarguments to his rude characterizations. He was not interested in a rational, intelligent dialog; and his increasingly malicious posturing would only worsen. The stench of tar and feces from my many-decades' friend was thickening... and sickening.]

Whatever Happened to Spartacus? (part 5)

(part 1)
(part 2)
(part 3)
(part 4)

Partial recap: friend Spartacus hadn't heard from me in a few weeks, so he dutifully checked in to see that I and my family were okay... after all, a very, very deadly pandemic had seized the world – the nation – and many, many people were dying: family, friends, helpless strangers. Though there was no cure, there were still very sensible precautions we simply had to follow, and an antivirus vaccine that had made tremendous headway in protecting and saving lives. How had his friend, A. Gene Childe, and Gene's family made out? I reassured him that all were well, and laid out for him how our medical practice was facing down this great threat to our patients and staff.

And yet – counter to prudent, sensible precautions – people unmasked had been gathering en masse to loudly and very-visibly protest recent brutal killings of unarmed African-American citizens by Caucasian members of city police forces. These gatherings, and the anger and hurt and sense of betrayal behind them (besides added frustration at unending quarantine and self-isolation), were very understandable... yet foolish and downright dangerous, in that thousands of people were thereby exposed to frightening illness and death for themselves, and for loved ones they'd convey this unrelenting virus on to.

Worse, their to-the-streets justice-seeking movement had clearly been – can I say "infiltrated" without sounding conspiracist? No? – had clearly been alarmingly and unacceptably redirected by criminally-minded opportunists bent on looting and destruction... hardly a protest against race-based police brutality anymore. My heart being solidly with the original protests, and the families of the victims of those brutalities, the destructive turn of the protests sickened me.

Just for a moment in my reply to Spartacus, I shared my worried thought, first at the violent detour these protests had taken, in particular the threat they thus presented (regardless of intent, good or bad) in providing a rich and ripe means for the virus to spread even further and more quickly, and kill even more of us. And not just the protests themselves; too many fellow Americans – self-focused, and fed up with restriction – were casting aside their antiviral precautions and getting together for parties, vacation destinations, and so on. And the grim reaper would soon swing his sickle even more vigorously and viciously.

So in closing my note to him, I wrote to Sparks: "how much have the protests, and the merrily oblivious rush to beaches and parklands and bistros, caused the virus to spike once more, maybe even nurture a second wave? We'll see in another week or two. So stay masked and wary, kids!"

His reply came in a few days later... and took a disturbing shift:

From: "Spark" le Klaus
Sent: Saturday, June 27, 2020 4:34 PM
To: Aging Child
Subject: Re: Cheese pasta?

Glad to hear you and yours are doing well. I hope that continues.

Do we really need to further demonize the protesters? Please let’s not forget that if justice actually existed in Amerikkka there would be nI need for protests. Meanwhile, your boys in the Whitehouse, in addition to fanning the flames of racism, have only exacerbated the pandemic. In addition to the tragic, needless loss of life, the most horrific thing about the pandemic has been the perversion of an existential threat against all of humanity into a partisan political issue.

Spartacus

Please reread the last two or three sentences in my email to him, and feel free as well to look over my note's full text in Part 4 here. Where had I "demonized" the protestors at all? I was baffled, and reread that note, and just couldn't find that such a slant anywhere in it. I'd simply very briefly expressed my concern that unmasked gatherings like theirs, and others', could well have spread this nasty virus even further and wider. That's a reasonable, prudent worry; it's not a condemnation – let alone "demonization" – of their just cause. Nor had I made mention to him at all of the protests' alarming violent detour. (And besides with the viral-transmission risk to bunched-up marching people, was he in fact okay with the risk to people crowding into stadiums and bars and shopping centers? He hadn't shared a word on that.)

I definitely like his respelling of "America", and agree with his closing sentence, that "In addition to the tragic, needless loss of life, the most horrific thing about the pandemic has been the perversion of an existential threat against all of humanity into a partisan political issue."

Very troublingly, however, Spark himself had himself quite starkly climbed onto and proudly ridden out on that "perversion... into a partisan political issue", in firing away at the Trump administration. Yet I'd written nothing at all about politics, or politicization. Friend Spartacus is very intelligent and incisive (he has at least one more degree than I do!); how could he possibly have so poorly misread me? Especially two quick sentences in a much longer missive? He had skipped over almost everything else I'd had to tell him – in a polite and upbeat answer to his earlier questions to me – and had seized harshly onto something... I hadn't even written.

Out of respect and friendship, his words – his (mis)impression, and bizarre recasting, of what I'd written (and hadn't written) – of course required an answer from me... and not a brief one; this had somehow twisted into a very serious and sensitive matter. So:

From: Aging Child
Sent: Saturday, June 27, 2020 8:06 PM
To: Spartacus
Subject: RE: "Not a Single Sparrow Falls to the Ground, Without..."

Sparky, I apologize if anything in my wording even suggested an impression that I demonize our protestors. When I wrapped up my last note, I was wringing my fretful hands over the likelihood that the virus had been given fresh vulnerable victims, with so many short-sighted people rushing back to the pre-CoViD status-quo world of close physical association (especially unprotected). And: too many marching folks have been shoulder-to-shoulder without masks and with too little caution, even while pushing hard to resolve and redress a long-overdue injustice.

I strongly support this hard thrust against racism in our country and culture, and my heart is marching with our brothers and sisters out there in the street. I'm also apposed to disbanding police forces en masse, and to the use of a legitimate social demonstration as an opportunity to smash and grab. You and I know that this is utterly antithetical to the committed method of civil disobedience that Martin Luther King insisted on. Just by association, that violence dishonors both the movement itself, and specifically King's values and teachings.

Much of the violence has been instigated by a) arguably criminal opportunists; and b) anarchists seizing a spotlight and soapbox. Both groups, especially the latter, care far more for their own personal (and/or collective) gain than they do for generations of bloodied racial and social grievance long in need of resolution.

The timing – regardless of any commendable objective or execrable antisocial agenda – is absolutely lousy, with our being in the midst of an incurable plague/epidemic/pandemic. This morning's number of forty-some thousand new U.S. cases of CoViD was the highest single-day jump we've seen since the beginning of the health nightmare. And much of the cause of that huge spike lies in just what I was feeling very edgy over: protest-mobbing, and social-center reopening.

Most certainly a hefty chunk of the blame lies in Trump's pathetic response, in his arrogance and determined obliviousness; I'm with you there, and my blood truly heats up at the opportunities he and his administration have had to do great good and achieve profoundly wondrous results… and done nothing with those opportunities, or/and made the worst-possible response when those opportunities were clearly there (underscoring how he and his backbone-less boys aren't my boys). This morning, I saw a big fat pickup truck that was flying a huge Trump flag, and I was disgusted.

I'm totally with you, too, in how "the most horrific thing about the pandemic has been the perversion of an existential threat against all of humanity into a partisan political issue" – even where some of our words, mine and yours alike, themselves veer into the partisan political; we need to remain on guard against that. This virus and its great threat to every one of us on this globe most decidedly isn't political. It could unify all of us in goal and purpose and ultimate achievement. But we've grown too inflexible, divisive, and entitlement-focused. We have become a stupid people, sheeple and lemmings.

Black lives matter. All life is sacred and precious, and must be protected and nurtured. The life of a helpless man of color whose neck is under the knee of a coldhearted bigot; the lives of each person in CoViD's relentless crosshairs; the lives of children in the womb; the lives of senior citizens warehoused and forgotten – these matter. And the loss of even one is indeed needless. These lives I treasure and support and pray for and march for, and with… even when the current viral world requires us to march socially distant, march while sheltering in place.

Stay healthy and vigilant, my friend! LeRoux was right: nobody said it was easy.

Regards,

Gene

By the rivers of Babylon, we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion; and we hung up our harps on the aspens of that land. There our captors asked us for the lyrics of our songs, and our tormentors urged us for joy: "Sing for us a song of Zion!" But how could we sing a song of the Lord in a strange land? — Psalm 137:1-4

More soon; again, I did have to point out to him – very, very, gently, and just in passing – that his political comment had made the high standard of his last sentence profoundly hypocritical. His next reply would shock me with its direct and unprecedented hostility; we've never been at odds, all these years… although he had chewed me out over my vote in the previous election.

Whatever Happened to Spartacus? (part 4)

(part 1)
(part 2)
(part 3)

Another one of friend Spartacus's enviable and emulable traits throughout the long course of our friendship has been his patience, his curiosity over what the other person has to say, his open mind, his empathy, his compassion.

I remember how, during one of my visits to his family's secure compound, I was working to explain to him why it is that time travel isn't a simple matter of stepping into (and out of) a machine, or getting klonged in the head by a crowbar, or even of hypnotizing oneself into an earlier era. The issue is that time is part of the very structure of the universe; to free yourself of its confines in order to pass at random through it... which requires you to step entirely outside of the universe: you have to manipulate and restructure the universe in order to meet your objective.

That makes stories of time travel, nearly every last one, tales of fantasy, and not of science fiction, unless you're using a craft or gizmo that that works through demonstrated scientific principles, and follows the laws of physics... as with, say, a vehicle that can travel at supraluminal speed, and why it can.

This is something I've given much thought (and some informal study) to, over the last few years, since I'm writing a novel that uses time travel... with the characters themselves debating these very points – and from the further perspective that at least one of them has very likely seen (and engaged in) a couple jaunts to the past... and doesn't understand it either. Spartacus had read a draft of two sections of that thick novel-in-the-works, and liked it, and made some keen suggestions I liked in turn, and which helped parts of the narrative.

So while I discussed this with him in his refectory, a few years ago, he sat across the table from me, smiling gently and politely, listening respectfully to every last word and illustration I offered up – and, I noticed, not getting a single bit of it, even while clearly willing to hear me out silently for a few more hours, with no objection or interruption. That was his patience... and his indulgent nature as well, which I've seen him use as well with his children (and wife) and mastiffs.

When not during those rare instances under each other's roof, we'd been in steady, very-regular touch via email, sharing (as I wrote earlier) each our latest adventures and experiences, photos artistic and of latest craft accomplishment, bits of verse and fiction and bawdy tale, rant and rave on politics (Repugnicants, Democraps, and their meek sheeple – throw 'em all out!), and so on. Typically, if several weeks had gone past without an e-missive, one of us would metaphorically peek into the other's window, and make sure all was well. In that way, his wife and I had seen him through a very bad (and rare) depressive trough; I'd walked him and his family through some grief over the passing of particularly dear and beloved animal companion... and he'd done the same as well, when I'd run into my own parallels of these personal moments of life-challenge.

So against the backdrop of pandemic and riot and social sickness, I received an email from him late in June of 2020; his kindly heart and nature came through readily (as well as a soupçon of Sicilian), as always:

From: "Spark" le Klaus [mailto:SpartaCuss@Yabbadoo.com]

Sent: Tuesday, June 23, 2020 6:51 PM

To: Aging Child [mailto:AGeneChilde@YouWho.com]

Subject: Che pasa?

Hey guy, it’s been a while. Checking in to see if you’re alright.

Has your workplace instituted protective measures that instill some level of confidence in your safety?

Things are going well here.

We hope you and your family are well

Take care buddy!

It was good to hear from him, of course, and so I naturally had a response back to him just a bit later that evening... though (as usual) at length:

From: Gene

Sent: Tuesday, June 23, 2020 10:09 PM

To: Sparks

Subject: RE: Cheese pasta?

Sparkly, thanks for the tap at the door, and face at the window! All's okay here, overall. And your woodworking emails are impatiently drumming their fingers in my inbox, waiting for me to send an overdue and very interested reply.
 
The medical practice where I work shut down completely for the second half of March, then reopened in early April to severely curtailed hours and services, and just a handful of staffers (yours truly included). After a few weeks, as the number of new viral cases and deaths continued to drop, we went back to almost-normal hours, nearly-full staff, and resumption of most non-urgent services.
 
The past couple weeks have seen local restaurants partly opening their in-house (as opposed to outhouse?) dining... and I'm still not comfortable having a sit-down meal anywhere but home, let alone any other kind of gathering. Daughter One and I mutually punted our annual Fathers' Day dinner to July-plus for that very reason – she feels the same, and until just yesterday had been working entirely from her home since mid-March.
 
My older brother and I have been visiting our mother every weekend since that same point... through her bedroom window, or one of the emergency-exit doors/windows. She's been eating and drinking well, doesn't seem worried, depressed, or anxious (as I'd feared), and still asks some keen questions. Since last week, I've been able to drop off sealed, pre-wrapped brownies and milk shakes that can be wiped down with sanitizer before being served up to her, and help fatten her up further, which she still needs.
 
Her assisted-care facility has held daily Zoom teleconferences to keep their patients' family members up to date on all that's being done. The staff – from kitchen crew up to the director herself – has literally put its heart and soul into the cause of patient safety and health (and their own); twice in one teleconference, the director was in tears as she reported one of three virus-related deaths.
 
We still can't go into Mother's nursing home any further than the reception desk, and that's fine by me... and I'm not in a rush to see the doors thrown open and all kinds of virus vectors traipse in there. Out of a hundred-minus patients, nineteen contracted CoViD-19 – and staff clamped down immediately and extremely hard with closed doors to visitors, and with quarantines, strict and stringent sanitizing and PPEs and quarantines and isolation and repeated testings of all patients and staff... and lost no more than just those three patients to the pandemic. Meanwhile, the nursing home right around the corner here had at least 66 cases and some twenty deaths; another center down the road had over a hundred cases, and I don't know how many deaths... maybe several dozen.
 
All this has been stressful on the family. And some of the weight is beginning to lift; Mother's facility has just been designated covid-negative; the sixteen patients who'd had the virus (and not succumbed) have all recovered. Visits in person may start again within the next couple weeks, and under very strong limitations: outdoors only; staff-monitored social-distance, and limited to half an hour or less. I don't want us to rush into that, either... but it's one clear light of hope and of recovery in its much greater sense.
 
And the virus is still out there, so extreme patience and continued commitment to protecting lives are absolutely still called for. And I may be an asymptomatic carrier, for all I know; I do not want to be of danger to anyone.
 
One profoundly sad note for the family came in just a couple weeks ago. We got word stateside on the death of one of our German cousins on Mothers' Day (same holiday and date in Germany); she was in her still-young forties. This was not to the virus – as far as I can tell, the entire sprawling family has thus far not been directly affected/afflicted – but to diabetes; she passed away in her sleep.
 
She'd been fun company during my three visits to Germany, the first when she was a perky, merry little toddler of just two years. Her mother's heart – the biggest, deepest, and sweetest in all the family – must still be broken. For the last many days, I've been trying to pull together adequate words of consolation... and will have to let that struggle go, and just write what I can and send her sweet mother what my own lesser heart dictates, and then follow with photos from my and my dad's albums, and some more words and memories.

[Note: I later called my aunt, and heard her out in her grief and recovery, switching between German and English, and wishing I could be with her and my uncle's and their surviving daughters' reach.]

Times are still tough on all fronts, and in all areas... and also slowly improving. It's looking maybe-okay to peek above the trenches now – with helmets and masks on. I'm just not about to leap into no-man's-land with a soccer ball and an ammo-case full of wishful thinking, and am encouraging the same of everybody else right now.

 

Next worry: how much have the protests, and the merrily oblivious rush to beaches and parklands and bistros, caused the virus to spike once more, maybe even nurture a second wave? We'll see in another week or two. So stay masked and wary, kids!

Regards,

A. Gene

Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road broad that leads to destruction, and those who enter through it are many. How narrow the gate and constricted the road that leads to life; and those who find it are few. — Matthew 7:13-14

More shortly: Spartacus' reply would take a very unexpected, alarming tone, bordering on a stunningly cold rudeness.

Whatever Happened to Spartacus? (part 3)

(part 1)

(part 2)

By early summer of 2020, deaths in the United States from the still-unstopped coronavirus were already exceeding 125,000, barely a scant half-year since its first domestic toehold, with heavy prospects of deaths rising far, far higher. Most public gathering-places were just beginning to open again, although still to restricted numbers of patrons – e.g., restaurants and grocery stores and so on – and limited to drive-through and pick-up, etc., business.

I think the two biggest factors in the lack of control over the spread of the virus in the U.S. were two: 1) At-times too-timid response from the federal government, and most state governments, to more forcefully prohibit gatherings of people early on in order to bring down the transmission rate. (Note, though, that at the same time that ministers were being arrested for holding religious services, casinos were allowed to remain open – arguably bespeaking a clear governmental bias against spiritual expression, despite the First Amendment's free-exercise clause.)

As counterpoint, though: Americans have a poor history of following governmental mandates; one clear-and-simple case in point is the difficulty in emplacing universal requirements to just wear a motorcycle helmet... an obvious, sensible practice that shouldn't even be an issue. And so, very strong mandates to wear masks, and to (selectively) not congregate, wouldn't be followed to the degree they must be followed. Too many folks – particularly on the right – see such practical restrictions as curtailments of enshrined natural liberty... but it wasn't a matter of suppressing proud, individual citizens' freedom and independence; it was to ensure cooperation in protecting and saving the lives of many, many others.

This doesn't mean that laws and mandates should not have been emplaced – they most-definitely were needed, and should have been even stronger (and more consistent). They simply were spurned and not followed by people who were sure they knew better, and who were measuring clear common sense by how inconvenient common sense's dictates were to them. Many, many of these stubbornly unmasked people soon became cold statistics, underscoring the absolute necessity of such difficult mandates. The more sensible stayed at home, sanitized, wore masks... and waited for their next stimulus check.

2) Building on that, another obvious big vector of the virus's spreading even further was the series of protests over the cold murder of George Floyd by a police officer, as well as the shooting-death of Breonna Taylor by police, both these victims unarmed African-Americans. The two deaths clearly pointed out the entrenched racism in too many Caucasian-heavy metropolitan police forces. I supported the protestors, and the Black Lives Matter movement – so long as we include unborn black lives; anything less fosters racism, given that three times as many Black babies as Whites are killed in American abortions. With African-Americans comprising less than 13% of the American populace to White America's nearly 58%, some 39% of all American abortions are to Black mothers. These are Planned Parenthood's own statistics, via their Guttmacher Institute; it is immediately demonstrable that Planned Parenthood specifically targets the Black and Brown communities. And:

These protests and their movement lost my support once they turned to violence – especially in vandalism and looting of local businesses, and in murder (over two dozen lives were lost). The protest movement was hijacked by criminal opportunists, besmirching and supplanting the needful call for addressing and fighting against racism. You don't redress choking an innocent and helpless man... by torching a car dealership, by plundering and burning down dozens of businesses. We saw that same criminal idiocy three decades ago after the 1992 acquittal of a trio of Los Angeles police officers who had been witnessed and filmed brutally beating unarmed Rodney King. At least 63 people were killed over six days, nearly twice as many as were lost during the Watts anti-racism riots twenty-seven years earlier yet. We have learned nothing since then. And I say that from my firm personal stance against racism, against police brutality. We are capable of far, far better.

The initial 2020 protests, again, were understandable – yet also a) gathering hundreds of unmasked people together was stupid and unacceptable, regardless of the objective and cause; and b) months of seething tempers over being cooped up at home, over normal activities and businesses shut down, fed even more heat into the movement, contorting it into what became a disgraceful show of cathartic madness that did nothing to address what had been originally protested against: race-based murder and abuse by professionals trained and sworn to protect those very same people. I'd be interested to see reliable statistics on how many coronavirus deaths resulted specifically from those mass gatherings.

Oh, and the associated movement of Defund the Police was also stupid and short-sighted. Criminal police officers must be held fully accountable for their actions; likewise, their superiors who protect them. Suspend them and try them; if convicted, fire and jail them. Period. But shut down and remove the police entirely, and you've pulled the pin out of the live hand grenade that a lot of American inner cities and schools have become. Interestingly, and sensibly, in the two years since, communities have lately been quietly bringing police officers back into schools. They shouldn't be needed there in the first place. But the shamefully easy access of firearms to practically any young American, combined with ever-growing individual self-focus, means that our children are unsafe in what should be a very safe environment. That shouldn't surprise; babies aren't safe in their mother's wombs anymore, either – why wouldn't their older brothers and sisters (and grandparents, for that matter) be any less vulnerable to murder in this toxic, violent, arrogant, selfish culture?

Yes, this is still about our friend Spartacus, whose own outlook, I believe, has closely paralleled my own on matters of racial justice, and corruption in politics and the police. Here I've been laying out background and context, key elements of which a decades-long friendship has plenty. More shortly.

Whatever Happened to Spartacus? (part 2)

(part 1 here)

I don't recall how much I discussed my forced 2016 electoral choice with friend Spartacus... and at the moment am not supremely inclined to search for that among our 24 years' worth of email. I'm sure we took up the subject, though in brief, and I explained that my moral and ethical commitment (not merely religious commitment) to the sanctity of human life had brought me to where I could no longer support any political person or effort that ran counter to protecting human life at all its stages, regardless of how much my heart still lay with the Democratic party overall.

Our friendship continued; we were bigger than any differences and outlooks. That's friends from the heart... and increasingly too rare in our world.

Some three years after the election, I got a call from my sister Alicia, even more state lines away from me than Spartacus. Cammie, a dear friend of my sister and her immediate family, had recently passed away from cancer. As executors of her will, Alicia and her husband Levi now found themselves with an extra car... would I like it?

I certainly would! My Honda PoC was shedding oil and parts faster than I could cram scant $$ back into it to keep it moving. The car they offered was a near-pristine 2009 model that had seen very little use during Cammie's exclusive ownership, only a scant 9,000 miles over ten-plus years. Per Cammie's estate, her car wouldn't be free – but the purchase amount my sister named put it in my astonished reach. (I learned later that other family members chipped in further... which was all the more touching.) I would just have to find my way over some 450-ish miles to pick it up.

The car wasn't ready just then for me to get it, fortunately granting me time to stack up more shekels, and make plans for its retrieval. And then, come Spring 2020, Alicia let me know I could now drive up for the car.

At that point, though, thanks to (supposedly) some Chinese lab or farmers' market, the entire country was completely locking down, to the point where interstate travel was nearly illegal. After shutting down for two weeks, the medical practice where I work had come open again (with many restrictions and limitations to keep patients and staff safe), and I was issued papers showing I could travel on behalf of the practice.

Yet travel was still too dangerous to one's health – the death rate was climbing exponentially, and no one was out of danger's reach. I received both doses of the Moderna vaccine, and worked more on the travel plans. And no matter how I mapped it, the only practical one-day route to Alicia and Levi's home was right through the center of one of the nation's two biggest viral-hotspot metropolitan regions (e.g., there'd been word of mass graves, in the news).

It also would take me within rental-car honking-distance of Spartacus's tight-locked compound. He and I discussed this via email, but concluded, first, that the trip wasn't worth the risk to health; and, second, that it would not be safe for me to stop by, either – not for me, nor for his wife and kids. In fact, he very understandably and very strongly advised me against making the trip at all; I agreed – he has a good sense for practical and realistic matters. I'm more prone to wishful thinking, and more than once he's been the perfect litmus strip.

Over the next few months, things slowly began to lighten up, in terms of transportation and socially-distant interactions. Early on, my mother's nursing home had suspended all visits with family members – wisely; among its 100 or so patients, nineteen had caught and died from the virus. Administration there been very strict, and that had kept their patients' losses low... whereas another facility just a block from my and my mother's home had lost nearly seventy patients.

Mother's nursing home had limited the family interactions to virtual visits via Zoom, and visiting/chatting from outdoors, through the patients' windows, for a few minutes. We did both, mostly through Mother's window: brother Sarge and our other sister Mew, and some of the grandchildren, made avail of the opportunity, really lifting (Grand)Mother's spirit... and probably also that of the hard-working, PPE-laden staff assisting and sometimes translating.

Mother and I were both born just outside a colonial-era city... and Alicia and her family live just a few miles away from there. So in mid-July, a week after Mother's birthday, I let her know (through the window) that I would be driving up there the following weekend, to the city she (and I) had always loved, and wanted to return to. I saw her eyes grow really wide as she lay there in her bed: clearly she was pleased with the news, and agreed when I told her I wished she could come along with me. But I'd show her the car as soon as I'd get back, and we could drive right up there once it was completely safe.

Resting there in bed after her lunch, Mother's mood and focus on us were very good; the nurse/aide assisting us through Mother's window showed Sarge and me the book Mother had been reading the last couple days: Motherhood Is Murder, something right up the alley of her crime-story-loving maternal heart! So I'd be out of town that next weekend, not able to make my usual visit, though Sarge (and likely some other family members) would happily fill in and keep her entertained... and vice-versa.

I scheduled that next Friday and Monday off from work; I'd planned out ever step of my itinerary, including a one-night layover with Alicia and her family, before about-facing behind the wheel of new(er) car, with rental vehicle contractually dropped off. Interstate transport restrictions had been largely lifted, and I deemed I could make the trip safely with masks, prudence, inflexible social distance, thanatophobic caution, and a thick supply of sanitizing lotion and wipes... all of which I had in abundance.

I wouldn't detour en route and visit Spartacus's fortress, much though I'd like to see and BS with him again, and his family. So I didn't let him know I'd nonetheless be in their neighborhood, just en passant – what would be the point? I had a feel as well that he would regard the long drive as unwise, bordering on foolishly (even suicidally) stupid. He may well have been right... though, for the record, let me state that I did survive, returned with the car (RIP, Cammie; and thanks, Alicia), never contracting so much as a sniffle twixt Alicia's home and mine.

More later...