Red Hook, NY, April 20, 2020
More than anything else, more than the fear of the disease itself, more than the pressure of self-isolation and my yearning for the routine that disappeared a month ago, more than anything else, what's killing me from within is the lack of certainty, the feeling that all my efforts to understand what is really happening and anticipate the future are just in vain, a childish attempt to control an uncontrollable situation.
We sit in our apartments, which have become unusually crowded as of late, or in our old insect-infested country homes that we have fled to because of the pandemic, following the news closely, and our troubled heads just get nauseated from the conflicting messages that are sprinkled at us from all over.
No version of the new reality can be convincing or whole, and not one version can provide a sense of security or clarity. On the one hand, we are told that the curve is plateauing and that a graduated lifting of the lockdown will take place over the coming weeks, but on the other hand, we have been asked to mentally prepare for the possibility that this nightmare will continue into the summer and the next school year.
Wall St., whose fluctuations affect every New Yorker even if they don't have a penny to invest, is capricious and erratic, goes up and then down in a dizzying pace like a roller coaster whose engineer is intoxicated at work or just mad.
Over the past two weeks, we have seen the strongest rallies in years, despite the grim reality of our lives, making people question the sanity of our overall financial system. The global price of oil, on the other hand, has entered negative territory. "Theoretically, oil producers will have to pay customers to buy oil," financial reporters explained to the stunned readers. This absurd piece of information, which cannot be filed under any rational category in our conceptual mind, is yet another part of the chaotic mosaic of the new reality we are trapped in.
This confusion and absurdity are also brought to us from high up. President Trump, who apparently still has doubts as to whether the virus is real and sees it as some left wing-liberal conspiracy against him, has called this week to "liberate" the states that have been placed under lockdown, saying that the governors are supposedly imposing the restrictions and the social distancing measures.
He has also refused to wear a mask, saying so publicly in a press conference last week. But this is anecdotal because no politician would wear a mask when talking to the press, and no one could expect the president to wear a mask, but Trump made it a point to stress this matter and by doing so, to send a message to his die-hard supporters. In response, many of them have started protesting against the lockdown and are demanding a return to normalcy, and more than anything else – to reopen businesses.
The online magazine Slate published a picture of a young woman protesting with a sign that features a face mask, with a thick red line over it. Underneath it reads: "My body, my choice! Trump 2020." Her face, deliberately without a mask, is a statement in and of itself, as is the manipulative use of the feminist-progressive rhetoric over a woman's right to her own body in order to promote the president's hyper-conservative agenda.
It's not just the protesters who are taking Trump's combative and divisive rhetoric to the street. The ultra-conservative right-wing news channels, as well as YouTubers and Bloggers who are associated with the extreme Right, are exploiting Americans' sensitivities and mental anguish in order to promote bizarre conspiracy theories whose sole purpose is to undermine the public's trust in its government and press and to frame the lockdown as a destructive liberal conspiracy.
This unprecedented situation, in which the president in and of himself, is actively trying to undermine the trust of the public in the laws and the official narrative of the authorities and the media, brings yet another monstrous dimension to this malignant feeling of domestic chaos and uncertainty that has been destroying our miserable mind. Our minds are already on the verge of exploding because of anxiety and boredom and the other ills of living in isolation.
