Roxanne Tellier – Beware of Darkness

It’s a long weekend, and here in my little corner of the city, it’s sunny and warm, with just a gentle breeze ruffling the ferns. My ‘regular customers’ – the little birds, Blue Jays, and squirrels – have already been by for their morning treats and have now gone off to hide from the local felines.

The local cats that I find myself hiding from are the hardcore cultists on social media. who – despite knowing that I have nothing but disdain for their claims – are still driven to send me memes and videos about conspiracy theories and their hero, trump. It’s like trump spawned an army of gaslighters to back up his prodigious stream of nonsense. I am besieged.

I am beset with anti vaxxers, anti Bill Gates-ers, the ‘plandemic’ true believers, the Mike Flynn apologists, and the swarms of cabin fevered, badly coiffed anti-COVID-ers, all of whom have chosen trump’s murderous and genocidal BizarroWorld over science, truth, or reality.

I am hammered nonstop by these fanatics, and it’s making me crazy. I don’t want to be the bespectacled school marm, doomed to constantly interject that, “actually – that’s not at all true.” I don’t want to be the stern, uncompromising maiden aunt ‘with no sense of ha ha’ that I’m accused of being when I don’t find mis/disinformation presented as truths, funny. And I don’t want to be the Chris Hedges of the conversation, whose every observation reeks of doom and gloom.

And I really don’t want to be the person that points out that someone that YOU may hold dear, has actually gone batshit crazy, and needs an intervention.  I don’t have your history with that person, so I don’t see them with loving eyes – I see them without the rose-coloured glasses … and your dear friend or loved one is behaving irrationally and irresponsibly.

Mostly, I don’t want to ever feel that I did anything to hurt another human’s health, by adding to the complete confusion that has come along with the concerted efforts of trump’s re-election efforts, fueled by the trolls and Russian based troll farms that are spreading these lies, meant to lure people out of lockdown and into danger.

Anyone who thinks that they are alone in despising the changes done to their everyday lives by this pandemic needs to check their narcissism; if there are two or three people somewhere unaffected and giggling, no one has time to dig down deep enough to find them. And anyone who believes that their ‘rights’ include the possibility of infecting others is abjectly and irredeemably selfish. As the saying goes, the right to swing my fist ends where the other man’s nose begins.

In crisis, our characters are revealed; we are not what we claim, but what we do. If you are portraying yourself as a people-loving, hippie type, but you use your hippie cred to disseminate a meme about how America was ‘in the middle of a pandemic in 1969’ but  “Instead of shutting everything down, and ruining people’s lives, they held Woodstock,” you are spreading the ‘fake news’ gospel. You are claiming that the current coronavirus pandemic is a product of the media spreading unnecessary fear and panic. But you’re being sneakier than trump or his gang, in that you’re wrapped in a peace flag, in an attempt to appeal to that gauzy nostalgia loved by baby boomers.

(In fact, Woodstock took place months after the first season of the Hong Kong flu had ended in the United States, when it was believed that the virus was gone. )

And even after the truth is exposed, and the premises of the memes are debunked, those people prone to spreading misinformation tend to really double down. They will not be denied. They’ll arm-wrestle you to the ground in defense of their beliefs.

In truth, we’re all confused. We’re all hating being locked in and away from our loved ones, and we’re all starved for contact, and for some real, unbiased information, something we can pin our hopes and our futures upon. We want a return to what we used to call normal, even though that normal recedes further into the distance with every passing day.

A call to arms, like the ‘plandemic’ video misinformation, or like the Woodstock meme, gives us the false hope that all we have to do is be brave in order to be able to take some acceptable societal measures, like reopening the cities.

Is it really necessary for anyone to remind those people how many of the previously ‘brave’ now lie in coffins in the ground? We have over 5700 Canadians dead to date. Based on the current numbers, we’ll have over 100,000 dead Americans by next week. Perhaps a little less ‘bravery’ is in order.

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On a lighter note, I can’t help but feel that President Obama’s wonderful speeches yesterday, delivered virus free to American graduates, were like opening a window and letting the clean, sweet May air flow into the house.

Words of optimism, of hope, of pride in oneself and in one’s nation, without a single whine or brag – ah, it’s been a long, long time since we heard such kindness. In all of 2020 so far, at least we had that hour.

In that spirit, let’s take a little ‘prance’ down the Memory Lane of lively, happy, bubble gum pop songs with no agenda beyond making us smile. Everybody dance!

1910 Fruitgum Company … Simon Says

Bobby Sherman Easy Come Easy Go

Friend and Lover  Reach out of the Darkness

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The Archies  Sugar Sugar

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Tommy Roe  Dizzy

The Ohio Express  Yummy Yummy Yummy

The Partridge Family – I think I Love You

Enjoy the rest of the long weekend!

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Roxanne’s column appears here every Sunday 

Roxanne Tellier has been singing since she was 10 months old … no, really. Not like she’s telling anyone else how to live their lives, because she’s not judgmental, and most 10 month olds need a little more time to figure out how to hold a microphone. She has also been a vocalist with many acts, including Tangents, Lady, Performer, Mambo Jimi, and Delta Tango. In 2013 she co-hosted Bob Segarini’s podcast, The Bobcast, and, along with Bobert, will continue to seek out and destroy the people who cancelled ‘Bunheads’.