Comfort Food or Tequila, We All Could Use A Little Something Right Now
– By Ed Kociela –
I normally don’t like bringing food to my desk when I write.
It’s a hassle because I have to move the clutter from one side of the desk to another and my stacks of stuff kind of get mixed together, causing panic when I go to retrieve some piece of paper with very important information that I have just got to find.
But, sometimes it’s necessary, which is why my desk is a little lopsided this morning with all of the important stuff on one side and a bowl of creamy mac and cheese with a rather large Coca-Cola chaser on the other.
A little comfort, if you will, and although it may be five o’clock somewhere, it is still before noon here, so the bottle of tequila will remain on the shelf, at least for a few hours.
But, man, do I feel the need for some comfort right now.
If you are paying attention to what is going on right now in our world, you probably should open a box of childhood memories, too. It might help you through a time fraught with sorrow and aimless meandering from one national crisis to another.
Like most everybody else, this COVID-19 fatigue has gotten to me. Although the news has good information going out and more and more people are getting needles in the arm with life-saving vaccine, we have lost more than a year to this pandemic. To those of us with more yesterdays than tomorrows, that is significant. We will never get that year back, of course, and whether we are social butterflies flitting about or more reclusive types, we had no choice other than to sit tight and give up most social interactions, be they family gatherings or an evening out with our partner.
Of course, staying in may be wise even after they flip the switch back to normal because the spree of mass shootings continues to run unchecked. Whether it is a workplace, a school, a church, a nightclub, a grocery store, or any other place we would normally visit, the whack jobs are still out there killing innocent people. Nothing is ever really done about it because of a Congress that is more enamored with campaign dollars from lobbyists and special interest groups than it is with the dignity of human life and steadfastly refuses to take action to remove the most dangerous guns from our streets. Go ahead and call it a liberal screed. I truly do not care. I am a liberal, I believe gun violence is at epidemic levels. And, I believe that if you think that by owning guns you are part of a militia to keep the government in check, you are so far over the edge there is no redemption. It makes you no better than the thugs who failed in the attempted coup at the Capitol on Jan. 6. You are delusional wannabes who think packing a sidearm and dressing in camo makes you some sort of patriot. It doesn’t, and I strongly recommend that you not choose to take on the United States military in any other coup attempt because I promise it will not end well for you.
And, if there is one thing we’ve seen more than our share of this past year it is death, and not only from COVID-19 and the other natural born killer diseases but from rogue cops who senselessly kill people of color. I’ve known a lot of cops over the years, whether family members, friends, or through my job in the newspaper business. Sadly, I have known very few who were colorblind, who treated all people fairly, who didn’t racially profile or elevate their forces disproportionally against people of color. It is a systemic failure of law enforcement and although our backs are not scarred, our collective soul is marked by the scourge of racism. A tin shield on your chest should not give you a pass in our courts or on the street. However, instead of true police reform, we have militarized our law enforcement organizations, outfitting them in G.I. Joe uniforms and equipping them with urban tanks and weaponry that could take down a small, Third World country. It wasn’t perfect years ago, and certainly open to abuse, but it was a much different story when cops actually walked the beat and got to know the people they swore to protect and defend. Today’s drive-by policing keeps it anonymous, makes it easier to beat somebody down. If a beat cop knew George Floyd, do you think he or she would have been as likely to put a knee to his neck and kill him? Of course not. He would have been humanized by the occasional contact and once humanized, much more difficult to kill. I cannot condone the violence that has occurred as a result of these killings, but I cannot condemn it, either. We all saw how differently the cops reacted to a bunch of white insurrectionists trying to overthrow the government were handled in comparison with how protesters of color have been treated. The mostly peaceful Black Lives Matter demonstrations in Washington, D.C. were met by cops and National Guard personnel decked out in full riot gear with helmets, shields, assault weapons, and heavy armor and equipment. The law enforcement team assigned to the Capitol on Jan. 6? Numerous photos of cops taking selfies with the white insurrectionists have surfaced. In some instances, camera crews captured footage of cops opening the gates for the domestic terrorists on barriers around the Capitol.
Rounding it all out, of course, is a hapless economy adopted by the administration with faux numbers that only reflect the success of about a handful of investment houses and not the misery index, which provides a true accounting of how well the dollar is floating. Yeah, the big dogs are still making beaucoup bucks. Most of us, however, are hand to mouth, trying to make ends meet. The economic gap is widening and while the latest jobs report has some nice numbers, they are misleading because they do not reflect the kind of money a family needs to make to survive.
So, yeah, I’m digging into that bowl of mac and cheese. I’ve already got a bit of a COVID-19 pooch belly going, so why not?
Besides, we can all use a little comfort, right?
And, it’s still too early for a tumbler of tequila.
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