Hell's Sirops

My friend has a pet name for the pandemic he thinks he lived through, but apart from covid creeping into our lexicon and some faded vaccine stickers clinging to the back of an iphone, the national forgetting seems almost complete. Although the pharmacist on the corner continues to make a quiet killing, and an occasional bin truck ambles past with a 20foot feelgood vaccine ad, in polite circles it’s a faux pas to mention the national asbo most surrendered to, or even to recall the coercive mystery meds campaign. On the comedy circuit the only jokes that survive are at the expense of Gary, Gary, who can’t wipe his own a*se, but chose a “global pandemic” to do some “research” in. Stupid Gary didn’t show enough deference. Gary, we can assume, looking at global data or even at our own relatives and neighbours, is in much better health than his subservient friends. And this will have to be reward enough because no apology is coming. I know this, but when I was derided, à propos of nothing, as an anti vaxxer (again) by my nearest and dearest this week I almost choked on my gin. I didn’t realise anyone still had the gall to be pro a drug that by its own criteria was an abject failure. But no, it turns out it’s not embarrassment or shame, taming what should be a natural lust for justice in our compatriots, or even a reluctance to let go of two minutes of serviceable material on a Saturday night, it’s arrogance. People cannot grasp that in a world where they’re exhorted to hold the handrail and told that water’s wet, they could be conned, or that anyone would be careless enough to openly, publicly and directly subject them and their children to an experiment (or, as seems evident, deliberately and knowingly make them sick), even when that experiment is conducted openly, publicly and directly. If death rates are up, and birth rates are down, this too must be an accident, because the only people who really know what is going on are the ones that listen to what the tv tells them. Thus, with cheers for Big Pharma, and jeers for the plebs, the coup rolls on. There’s a funny moment in Goethe’s Faust, when the good doctor bemoans the adulation of the people he’s been slaughtering, to his dear friend Wagner. We were worse than any plague, he whines, but still they banged their pots and pans and gave us standing ovations at Wimbledon (I paraphrase). “I myself poisoned thousands” he continues, “I saw how they wasted away and perished – now men praise that cynical mass homicide.” Plus ça change. Deference and arrogance, is the ill-assorted brew that got us into this mess; deference and arrogance is the hell sirop the majority still sustain their delusions with. The rest of us can either follow Wagner’s consoling counsel, “Sir, do not let that trouble you” or dare to resist the fate that remaining untroubled will make ours.