Geographical Corrections

Saturday evening we were at Point Molate on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay, watching the waves drift in from the Golden Gate. Sunday afternoon found us at an inland ranch where my granddaughter was having a horse-riding lesson. Her horse was named Gizmo.

It was 98 degrees at the ranch; back at the coast it was 74 degrees. Such is life in Northern California during fire season and when sheltering-in-place keeps most of us close to home.

***

Imagine it was your job to clean up the President's image. And one of your tasks was to censor the Access Hollywood tape of Donald Trump bragging about grabbing women because it was too graphic for his followers. So you decide to metaphorically transform his statement into a geographically correct version. So here's what he would have said, now you've corrected the record:

 "...when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. ... Grab them by the Mexicali. You can do anything."

You could have focused on Florida or Texas instead of California, but "grab them by the Keys" or "grab them by the Rio Grande" just doesn't have the ring of Mexicali. 

For Florida, this is shaping up to be a bummer of a summer. Over 15,000 people a day diagnosed with Covid-19. The GOP convention set for Jacksonville looms as a public health disaster in the making. The state's ICUs are already overwhelmed, with who knows how many patients to come.

I'm proud of my original home state, Michigan, which is run politically by three impressive women --  Gretchen Whitmer, Dana Nessel and Jocelyn Benson. Whitmer, the governor, is dismissed by Trump as "that woman" from Michigan. What he fears most is that they will help flip the state to Democrats in this year's election, and thereby end his Presidency.

Though his attacks on all three have been relentless and misogynistic, they remain unbowed. Whitmer said recently: "by the end of this, Donald Trump is going to know not to mess with these women from Michigan.”

But until then, having a would-be authoritarian in the White House has other terrible implications, including giving license to oppressive governments around the world to attack independent journalists. Please read in The Times: "While America Looks Away, Autocrats Crack Down on Digital News Sites."

***

It's difficult to envision how this pandemic is shaping the outlook for our youngest members of the human race. Situations and events come and go, but certain shared experiences shape the identity of a generation in ways that will persist all of their lives.

No child living through this pandemic will forget it. But the scary thing is they may well not remember life *before* Covid-19. The last role that interests me to play is a scare-monger, but what if what we thought was normal never returns? What, instead, if we are to suffer wave after wave of pandemics, until only the most cautious and fastidious people remain.

That would be a world where the young would have to curb their curiosity and propensity to experiment. For a couple to meet and break through the rules of social distancing, would be the biggest risk either of them ever took.

If they remained healthy and reproduced, they would have no incentive to relax standards for their children. Everyone would be raised to avoid risks at all costs. The germs would be all around, so wearing anti-bacterial and anti-viral suits would become the norm.

Many of the rituals of the good life would fade away. No one would go to bars, except for those who had given up all hope of a future. Come to think of it, that's a little like bars were back before the shutdown.

Mask technology would have to advance, so that the mask reflected your feelings, down to and including a fake smile when you feel like wearing a fake smile.

Drones and robots would provide all the labor humans used to do. Work would be regimented according to rigid categories of AI-oriented endeavors.

Everyone would have to receive a guaranteed salary, regardless of whether they worked or not. Your main "job" would be remaining healthy.Schooling would be done remotely, with no exceptions.

Airplane travel would end. People would be born, live and die within circumscribed territories, sharply reducing the gene pool options when it came to reproduction.

No one would ever actually meet a politician in person. Those best at reading teleprompter copy would rise to the top.

Sports would be limited to video games. There would be no live concerts or performances.

There are many other characteristics of that brave new future but this is enough for now.

You get the picture. 

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