Greed, Covid, and Other Thoughts
I’m lathering.
Are we living in the greediest country or world that’s ever existed in the history of time, or what? I mean, are our lives a simulated reality series called Kafka World, or am I losing it? Has everyone, including me, lost their fucking minds?
OK, deep breath.
An article headlined “Twitter Reports Tepid Growth, A Warning of Challenges,” reported that “…the company’s total revenue in 2021 was $5.08 billion, a 37 percent increase from the previous year.” This is considered tepid?
In that same day’s Business section, an article titled “Softbank’s Troubles Mount as Big Bets Fail to Pay Off” explained that the Japanese conglomerate’s “…quarterly earnings fell 97 percent from a year earlier, although it managed to eke out a profit of $251 million…” by the end of 2021. Um, excuse me, but did you notice the word eke? Aww, poor little Softbank, which managed to eke out a quarter billion dollars in profit. In the meantime, one of Softbank’s highest-level executives received an exit package of approximately $30 million and $40 million in severance when he left the company after a pay dispute. He was seeking $2 billion.
And then Kroeger, the retail company, which owns a bunch of department stores and supermarket chains, including Ralphs here in Southern California, was in the news for the salaries they pay their employees — who must work several jobs, move in with relatives, donate their plasma, sign up for food stamps, become homeless, and other assorted activities in order to make ends meet — while its chief executive earned $22.4 million in 2020.
Hello?? Am I wrong, or is this runaway capitalism the equivalent of what would happen if those Canadian long-haul truckers were to drive all their 80,000 pound trucks in unison off Ambassador Bridge in Ottawa, creating the most massive mess in the world?
Something is wrong with people making that much money, while a majority of the population experiences hunger in Haiti, immigrant refugee tent camps with no escape exist in Paris, and homeless encampments in Los Angeles become the norm. Are you feeling me? Call me naïve, or a socialist or a communist or a dickhead or whatever you want. If anybody reading this is thinking that people should be able to make as much money as they please (this is the land of the free! and all that drivel) you need to ask yourself whether those mega-wealthy, one-percenter bourgeois pigs shouldn’t have to forego that climate-killing, private jet ride and get on goddamn Delta Airlines, instead.
And while I’m ranting, are those blockhead Canadian truckers protesting covid restrictions and blocking the flow of traffic from Canada to the U.S. giving you a giant headache too? I mean, with all the stress, and death, and crap we’ve all had to put up with in the last two years, I’m saying it here and now: Why would thinking people not want to be immunized against a deadly and disastrous virus? I haven’t heard a sensible answer to that question yet. This is a pandemic of the unvaccinated. The majority of hospitalized and dying people are unvaccinated, and most of them were infected by the unvaccinated. Thanks for keeping us mired in this shit, folks! Honestly. I know unvaccinated people. I love them and I pray for their safety. I pray they won’t die. But, I’m bloody aggravated.
Last I heard, as 70,000 + people headed into Inglewood for the Superbowl on Sunday, there was reporting that some Canadian-trucker-like protests are planned there too. Let’s go screw up the fun! Jesus Christ.
And then the comments of that whitehole Joe Rogan (who is raking in $100 million from his podcast with Spotify!) came to light about how a movie theater full of Black people reminded him of “Planet of the Apes.” The fury churning inside me at the enduring racism in this country threatened to explode into an enduring bad mood.
I feel sorry for my husband.
I’m in the middle of reading The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson, in which the daily inhumanities directed at Blacks after “the end of slavery” in the South are recounted in the searing personal stories of real people speaking in the first person. It is devastating. In it, she quotes one of the main characters, Ida Mae Brandon Gladney, who remarks that “The ant see a crumb, he can’t carry it himself. Don’t you know another ant will come and help him? They better than people.”
Indeed.
Can you tell I’ve had a bad week? Lather, lather, lather. So, what should I do with all this foam? Stop bathing in the news? I did just that in January, took a long, luxurious break from all media, and it did me so much good. But making believe people don’t suck doesn’t mean it’s true. If I am not in the forest to witness the tree falling, that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. The Butterfly Effect kicks into gear, creating all kinds of repercussions from that fallen tree.
I haven’t been sleeping well for a long time and a couple of friends suggested I do some space-clearing in my bedroom, using some ancient Feng Shui practices from Bali. You think this stuff is bullshit? No problem, go ahead and laugh. I was totally game! I completely forgot I had the book, Creating Sacred Space with Feng Shui by Karen Kingston. I flipped through it and picked out a few of the simple actions you can take to get rid of negative or stressful energy that may have accumulated in your space. Here’s my report: my bedroom, which I thought was a lovely room before, now feels sparkly and soothing and light and airy. Call it wishful thinking, or just plain delusion (again, I don’t care), but for the past four nights, I’ve been sleeping very well. One night I didn’t even wake up to use the bathroom and slept straight through to 6:30 in the morning! That’s a miracle in my world.
So, what I want to know now is how can we clear the space in which we all live? Can somebody please Feng Shui this world, this universe, all of us, so we can go back to a sacred place, where our humanity takes center stage?
