As the Air Mattress Spins Around You Can See Lots of Things

Introduction

The time has come, I muse to myself, about the need to jot down some thoughts in a stream of consciousness fashion, as one floating on a air mattress, the kind with arm rests, and a little umbrella drink at my right hand and a good book in my left, perhaps a Brad Thor potboiler or perhaps Augustine’s Confessions, I am not sure. Some people have complained in the past, not too cogently but recognizably, that they find it hard to follow my reasoning at places, and they even suspect the presence of a non sequitur betimes. To them I say, you think that was a non sequitur — ho! — I’ll show you what a non sequitur looks like. They won’t actually be non sequiturs because I just find myself making sense, I can’t help it, but I certainly can arrange to have them look like non sequiturs. But thus far, as we continue to float down the river that we have been pleased to call 2020, I notice a massive log approaching, but it could be an alligator, which distracts me from my reading for just a moment, but then I realize that it is just a log, the kind that is noted for its good deeds. It is a happy log.

Still with me?

A Body of Observations

We should learn to look for the sunny side of these things. The weather is good, and the river is slow. If you have not had time to reflect, not spending enough time on an air mattress of your own, and shunning the whole idea of umbrella drinks as too worldly, this whole COVID business can seem like an unmitigated disaster, stem to stern. But do not think of us at the bottom of a mountainous avalanche, groaning under these indiscriminate boulders. This was no avalanche, carrying all before it. This was the hand of providence, with a billiard table that had hundreds of thousands of balls on it, and the hand of providence just accomplished a trick shot for the ages, with thousands of balls streaming toward their respective pockets, like soldiers marching in a precision drill team.

The stars fought from their courses against Sisera, as we all know, but they also fought against Disney. This last fall, Netflix was trash talking Disney for some inscrutable reason, and Disney, that juggernaut, arose and moved to respond. Disney the invincible had an Avengers-sized portfolio — their massive wealth was ensconced, if ensconced is the word I am looking for, oh, in things like docked cruise lines. And empty theme parks. And ESPN, reduced to showing curling competitions between Laplanders. And empty movie sets, and no open theaters to show movies in anyhow. Man, whatever did Disney do? It must have been awful, kind of like whatever it was that Joe Biden did.

Biden! Remember Biden? He is the champion who arose from the ashes and slew the Bernie. And not content with that, he immediately turned around and slew the #MeToo movement. Talk about an effective politician! An allegation of sexual assault was levied against him, and presto, all the #MeToo advocates sold out faster than toilet paper in a New Jersey CostCo. And he accomplished these great feats while at the same time proving himself incapable of completing a coherent, you know, the thing.

And then there is California and New York. These two states, electoral powerhouses for the left, decided in a previous era to be governed by men who would not only drink the Kool-Aid, but who would drink the whole pitcher. In a game of true brinkmanship, they are vying with each other over who can come the closest to putting their states in play for the Republicans in this fall’s presidential election. Neither will succeed, of course, but it is ennobling to see them try. One appreciates the effort. But completely independent of whether they succeed in that, what they will have succeeded in doing is sidelining their state’s overall influence. They are going to need some time to recover, and that is not going to go well for them because their idea of recovery is going to include staying shut down as long as possible as a matter of progressive principle. And in the meantime, not all states can be South Dakota, but even the spooked red states are emerging from their bomb shelters far more rapidly than the blue states are. The blue states do not want to become the bloodbath that Georgia experienced when they opened up. If they did open up like Georgia did then they would have to admit that they were, you know, WRONG ABOUT EVERYTHING. That is kind of a bitter pill to swallow, and also kind of big — as in, three feet long — and therefore we may deem it unlikely.

Oh, right. Colleges and universities. You know, the lymph nodes of our body politic, riddled with the cancer of cultural Marxism, and exuberantly pumping it out into the rest of our society? They are all, almost down to each institution, about to be admitted into the ICU. A bunch of them were about to be admitted even before all this, but with this? Stand by for all the creative lawsuits! It couldn’t happen to a group of more over-extended recipients. “How could this happen to us? Our lazy river/rock climbing center came in close to budget.”

Conclusion

Having said so much, I must hasten to add that gloating is a sin, actually, and so as these (and other) events unfold, those who have kept their wits about them need to prepare themselves for such outcomes spiritually. Schadenfreude is a moral failing, and so conservatives need to start rejecting an ethos of “owning the libs,” or “drinking liberal tears,” and so on.

But it is no sin to observe what is happening, and to rejoice (in a right spirit) over it. After all, in the verse just cited, the reason for not gloating is so that you don’t provoke the Lord into not finishing the job. And there are a lot of jobs that need finishing out there, I can tell you that.