You’re not the boss of me now
You’re not the boss of me now, and you’re not so big
Life is a test, and I confess
I like this mess I’ve made so far
Grade on a curve and you’ll observe
I’m right below the horizon
— They Might Be Giants
A sad funeral stained a wondrous spring day. Fate claimed, yet family and friends and co-workers overflowed a church to remember a funny and spirited young woman.
Hours after the funeral I got a text from my sister-in-law, who sat right next to me during the service: she just tested positive for Covid.
Despite a case of original Covid, three shots and a winter sprinkle of Omicron, that means I must stay away for several days until a Covid test can offer a reliable result. The chances are, of course, reasonable that I’ll again be infected.
As restrictions ease and masks get stuffed in drawers, Covid staged a comeback…
Covid June 2
7 Day Average
2022 2021
100,952 Cases 16,243
287 Deaths 546
— Drudge Report
Yet, the active, effective public response to Covid has passed. Indeed, Missouri’s Republican controlled legislature, as other Red State legislatures have done, passed new law to prevent strict measures from ever again being used in response to a public health emergency.
(By the way, 287 deaths a day means almost 105,000 a year. Or, about a Hiroshima.)
Meanwhile, the pundit class feels that despite mass death in Buffalo, Uvalde (and coming soon to other cities and towns) that Republican acquiescence to the demands of the National Rifle Association will prevent any meaningful new restrictions on assault rifles or other guns. For example, during a U. S. House of Representatives hearing on June 2nd…
Republican Representative Greg Steube…held up four guns one by one for the committee to see. “Here’s a gun I carry every single day to protect myself, my family, my wife, my home,” the second-term congressman said. “I’m at my house. I can do whatever I want with my guns.”
Remember that line from John F. Kennedy’s Inauguration: “Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country,”
Or, as Star Trek puts it, The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one.
So Twentieth Century (or 23rd), the obsolete notion that we as citizens and human beings remain obligated to act for the common good.
Never mind that no sane hunter uses an assault rifle on deer or other game. (Hit a squirrel with an AR round and you might find the tail.) God gave every American the right to have what they want, no matter how impractical or prone to misuse. You’re not the boss of me.
Yes, as a nation we can do better. Just not with the current crop of Republican office holders and hopefuls who worship narcissism and nativism. Change needs to come at the ballot box this November and in 2024. Ask questions, vote smart.
Don’t worry. Guns and Covid will still be around in two years. And, people will still be dying.
Glenn Koenen
Image Source: Ted Eytan from Washington, DC, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
