It’s been a long time since I’ve written about COVID, but I thought about it every day, of course. Going to Disney World, you’re reminded constantly on property to wear a mask and social distance. By staying pretty much in that “bubble” we seem to have escaped it. We’re now taking a couple of days to relax from that vacation at one of the condos I manage in Destin. It’s a great view to have, even if it’s a bit too chilly and rough to go swimming. The Gulf of Mexico is normally much more placid, but yesterday afternoon and this morning it’s rolling pretty good out there, likely due to the wind. I’ll probably walk on the beach later, though.

I didn’t pay much attention to any news or information from anywhere the last few weeks. I had to watch some of it, but I tried not to. I didn’t want my anxiety to kick off. Information about COVID at home was mostly through my daughter. I just looked now and we’ve had a total of 1,168 confirmed cases in my county with just 4 deaths. We still seem to be doing fairly well. The interactive map on the New Hampshire website tells me we’re going home to 165 active cases, which is more than the total cases we had at the end of the summer.

Florida is insane. We restricted it as much as we could, especially for my son. We didn’t take him in any supermarkets. I shopped for supplies twice in Kissimmee and once here in Destin. When we did eat out I tried to pick places that were outside or had outdoor seating and for the most part we stuck to that. The exception was my birthday night when we went to a Teppanyaki place with a group of friends. There was enough of us to have a private table with no one else sitting with us, though.

After the insurrection at the Capitol on January 6th, I was happier than ever to be at Disney and distracted. I try not to watch the news that much as it is, but when we came home that day I had to see what was happening. I think if I was home with everything going on, I’d be sitting by my window with a loaded shotgun right now. I was worried before and tried to reason with myself that I was over-reacting and people were all talk and no action. Now I’m not so sure. We drive home Monday and we’ll go through the mountains to avoid Washington DC.

There’s a part of me that is still shocked over those events, even though I half expected it. I don’t understand people who are so enamored of Trump that they would follow him off a cliff (which is pretty much what happened). The man is nothing special – he is a snake oil salesman. I’m especially disappointed that so many people I know from New York like him. We saw his con and his bullshit first-hand over the years.

It all boils down to white supremacy. Trump reinforces the belief among white people that they are somehow superior just by being white and are deserving of certain things in life that others aren’t. You don’t need to look much further than last week to see it. The same people who vilified peaceful protests over the summer (and the Occupy protests of a number of years ago) seemed to think they could invade the Capitol Building without impunity. They didn’t think there would be consequences of jail, their jobs, anything.

We’re also finding out that a lot of what BLM and other protestors were saying is true: there is a huge white-supremacy problem in police across the nation. I believe hearings will reveal there were DC Police Officers complicit with what went on as well as members of Congress. The country they wanted to bring back was the Jim Crow era when white people could beat on blacks, gays, Hispanics, their wives, and other minorities without consequences. And Trump was leading the way.

Can we really change it now? I don’t know. We didn’t get through the Civil Rights Era almost 60 years ago without bloodshed.