Dispatches From the Fortress – Day 500

Wow. Day 500 of this thing. Remember just a few weeks ago when most of us felt the worst of it was behind us?

Like most of you, I have major concerns that (a) we'll be living in Coronavirus Mode for a long, long time and (b) Climate Change is passing some point-of-no-return and we'll be living with killer storms and killer heat and underwater coastal towns. Unlike some of you, I've been trying to not think a lot about these things and to discourage friends who want to spend long periods of time on the phone discussing how screwed we are on one or both counts.

I can't do anything about either one of them…but I can, I think, finish my assignments. If I don't spend too much time thinking about (a) and (b).

This may be just my wishful imagination but I think I'm seeing some of those loud voices who denied one or both trying to subtly shift positions without admitting they were wrong. Meanwhile, when Republicans like Marjorie Taylor Greene refuse to answer a simple question about whether they've been vaccinated, that suggests to me they have but they know the crowd they've been playing to will view that as a betrayal. And keeping your angry mob angry is more important than being right.

That's about as political as I want to get today. Please don't send me your views on this. When I finish this post, my mind goes back into the script I'm writing and I need it to stay there through the weekend. But before I go there, a few referrals…

If you didn't understand that yelling match between Dr. Rand Paul and Dr. Anthony Fauci — two men who work in very different areas with the former pretending he understands the latter's — this will explain it to you.

If you need to know more about The Delta Variant, this article seems to know what it's talking about.

If you don't understand what it means that Ben & Jerry's ice cream will no longer be sold in occupied Palestinian territories, this may clarify things. This is another one of those matters that matters…but I try to correlate the amount to time I spend thinking about it with the amount of power I have to solve this problem.

With the time you don't spend thinking about these issues, why not visit the new Groo website? And subscribe to the new Groo Twitter Feed and the new Groo Instagram Account? Now, there are some constructive things you can do.