For those of you indexing the verbal brilliance found on this site for future reference, you can file this one under Dime Retention.

Those of you who partake in the written word which emanates from this site’s very own Blogger Laureate know that the natural new year of said laureate happens on June 1st.

Fitty-Two.

I’m given to understand that at the time of my birth in 1968, we were in the grips of another pandemic known as the Hong Kong Flu.

Interestingly enough, I hadn’t heard of it until just recently.

As a result of the Hong Kong Flu, the economy shut down for months.  We were all subjected to stay-at-home orders.  We had to wear masks and gloves.  Big bells weren’t far behind.  Toilet paper and Everything bagels were hard to come by.  Our broadband speeds were severely rationed by the Johnson administration because the government needed to stockpile them in a strategic reserve in the event that Darth Vadar followed through with his threat of coming down from planet Vulcan and anachronistically melting our collective brains with a Van Halen guitar solo if we didn’t adequately pursue the object of our affection so as to maintain purity of the timeline.

I’ll admonish you right now that the only parts of this post which aren’t true are the ones that I’ve made up or appropriated from popular culture.

I’ll have you know that in the previous Saturday mornings of late, I sat here in the formerly blue-walled Bloggery composing posts which never made their way to the internet so that they could feed the zeitgeist. 

In those posts, I lamented over my prediction that this would be our finest hour. 

I made that prediction back then because I saw what I perceived as the whole world working together to achieve a goal.  As time has passed, a unified front with specific strategies has fractured.  Alliances have now formed where solutions are driven by red and blue ideologies.  Needless to say, varying levels of retarditude have limited our progress.

Now if you’ll excuse me, Faith is in here and wants her walk.

That dog is going to be so pissed if I ever return to working in the office.

Ladies and gentlemen, this has not been our finest hour. 

For the last several weeks, I’ve pondered whether the presence of our finest hour was even possible anymore.  Understand that my own confirmation bias may be at play.  My lock down has been quite smooth, if not bordering on beneficial.  I’d outline how and why, but that’s pretty darned boring for a post that purports the notion that Darth Vadar was menacing Hill Valley with Eruption in October of 1955.

None the less, I couldn’t help but to think on occasion that the lock down must have been as easy for others as it has been for me.

I know that’s not the case.

People have had some major issues, and any complaints I have are first world concerns.

The finest hour I perceived was the one where we would all come together and let teamwork make the dream work.

Feel free to finish your cringe from that phrase before proceeding.  I’ll give you a moment.

I got verification of the retarditude this morning when I read a post from the local little league broadcasting their plans for a summer season this year.

To read the new protocols they put in place for their delayed season, one would think that Patient Zero was a 10 year old kid chucking fast balls from the middle of a diamond with a 60 foot base path.

Whereas I could spend plenty of time weaving a verbal assault on just how much safer the league will be from a virus outbreak with closed dugouts, temperature checks, the umpires calling pitches from behind the pitching mound instead of the plate, and a ban on spitting sunflower seeds, I’m not going to do that. 

The minutia isn’t important here. 

Now if you pardon me a moment, I’m going to go do a cursory search on the internet for the statistics around the impacts of the coronavirus on kids under the age of 20, outdoors, where there’s plenty of ventilation and sunlight.

I’m grateful for your continued patience.  I’ve widened my search and have found no instances of breakouts on little league baseball diamonds.  The exception would be that those baseball diamonds were situated in the middle of a nursing home and the players had compromised immunity as a result of their age or various medical complications.  Interestingly enough, the nursing homes are using a 90 foot base path.

There are two reasons which come to mind to explain why such stringent rules are being placed on these baseball games this coming season.

The first reason is to keep the kids, the families, and others safe from the virus.  Fine.  If you want to light a candle with a flamethrower, so be it.  Kids are the least susceptible to the virus.  Playing outdoors where ventilation and sunlight are ubiquitous is another plus.

You know what the second reason is, don’t you?

Of course you do.

I suspect it’s one of the biggest reasons we’re seeing the same continued behavior at all levels of government, in the offices, in the school districts, the professional sports, the summer concert tours, the movie theaters, the restaurants, the beaches, the theme parks, the factories, and even the little league ballparks.

We’ve become a very litigious society, and no one wants to get sued.

I think it all boils down to that.

Things appear to be getting better as the curve flattens. I have a hard time believing that those in power who are employing fascist and totalitarian tactics are doing so not because they’re fascists and totalitarians, but because they’re shoring up their fiduciary immunity against the trial lawyers who have been on a forced sabbatical in recent months.

If that’s the case, our finest hour is a long ways off.