Often Wrong, Never in Doubt

Reflecting on pandemic hypocrisy.

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We forget things too easily nowadays. We’re all adrift in a sea of stimuli and digital content specifically engineered to consume as much of our time as possible, all of it tailored to our individual tastes and preferences by algorithms in pursuit of dollar signs. The past decade has witnessed the evolution of an epidemic of distraction, the logical extreme of our society’s intensifying digital climate, which is now host to an ecosystem predicated upon the harvesting of human attention.

One of the most significant consequences of this rapid transformation has been the shortening of memories. We can’t keep up; the round-the-clock clip of modernity is disorienting, even overwhelming at times. Important things often slip away into that vague liminal space society shares for the recycling of mistakes and stupidity.

I don’t want that to happen to the past few years. Certain things should be remembered. Specifically, the way many of our nominal “leaders” — politicians, public health officials, media luminaries, social media influencers, etc. — acted like self-serving, hypocritical thespians and needlessly strained our already fractured body politic. Hordes of profiteers, neurotics, and hyperventilating moralizers incessantly used covid as an excuse to flaunt their pathologies, micromanage everyone else’s life, and engage in pious sadism. The least we can do is remember this.

I’ve collected some examples to give you a better idea of what I’m talking about. They might tickle your amygdala.