Poetry, the Pandemic and Despair Among the Citizenry

13 May 2020

There are a couple of people with whom I conduct ongoing correspondence relationships.  I am not talking about texts but rather about e-mails that are in reality letters transmitted by e-mail. In these ongoing long-term conversations, we talk about a variety of things.  Obviously, we all address how we are handling the pandemic. 

Many of my friends are in the 60+ zone, as am I. Thus, because of our age demographic we are facing a greater risk to our well-being by Covid 19 than those 59 and under. Almost to a person my friends are people who are maintaining strict social distancing.  Some go grocery shopping during senior hours. Others like myself have the groceries delivered to the back of their car or to their front door step.

We talk about differences we have seen since the pandemic spread. We talk about the lack of traffic, the lack of noise, the abundance of songbirds, the abundance of wildlife and the return to simply ways of living, like baking our own bread. We talk about what it is like not to go to coffee shops and church.  And there are the comments that start, “Well, after twenty years of ignoring it I fixed the …” And we list the thing we would be doing if the pandemic was not raging. At our age a year is limbo is had at the cost of multiple percentage points of our remaining years of life. The earlier years of this time are obviously the better years.

A couple of friends send notes where we share what we have been writing and what we have been reading.  In the set I have run with there are a number of people who have a serious love of poetry. In years past we didn’t talk about poetry, I mean it is just one of those things that when you are constantly heading off to work and to kids’ events, only exists off to the side in your life.  If I am correct most people don’t seek out poetry save in listening to a popular song on the radio or streaming services. 

What we don’t talk about is our mental health. Just from the tenor of my conversations I think that the self-isolation we are enduring is causing a bit of depression, at this stage minor depression.  What I really sense more than anything is anger.  The anger among my friends is tied to what we see as an inept governmental response that has allowed the pandemic to be far worse and far more unmanageable than it should be. Yes, we focus the blame on two people in general, one in the Presidential mansion and the other in the upper chamber of Congress. How can you watch this foolishness and not rage?

Holy hell. This man who purportedly is the head of the greatest nation in the free world accuses his predecessor of a great crime. When asked to specifically detail what that crime is…nothing.  As I said, Holy Hell.

As the anger roils in our conversation another thread emerges.  You could possible call it frustration.  Or then again, perhaps helplessness hits the feeling more on the head in terms of a descriptor. How do I say it, we feel that the game is rigged against us and against the vast majority of Americans.  Whenever Congress does anything it seems the lobbyists have worked their magic and the wealthy, the banks, and the powerful always come away from the table with the prime cuts. By virtue of our electoral system a man who did not win the popular vote, and who seems lacking in real governmental leadership qualities was placed into office based on promises to drain the swamp.  The swamp is still there and it still festers and stinks.

What can we really do?  We can vote of course but there appears to have evolved a governmental class that really is disconnected from the general population of the country.  This class while heavily populated by lawyers and doctors seems to be distanced from even the normal classes of lawyers and doctors in this country.  When we vote these people are our only choices. We don’t have tribunes like the Gracchus brothers to intercede on our behalf. https://www.thoughtco.com/gracchi-brothers-tiberius-gaius-gracchus-112494

And what influence can we really have?  When can’t pay the exceedingly high fees needed to have lobbyists bend the ears of the governmental class on our behalf.  And while Citizen’s United stands we don’t have the unlimited deep pockets needed to really play the Washington game.

Pretty much we all feel that we are citizens living in a broken democracy.  We blame ourselves because we let it become this warped thing that it is today. The pandemic is bothersome and threatening to our physical health.  The state of affairs in government is something far darker.  We are at the precipice where republics end empires begin.  Watching the passion play in Washington there are more than a few candidates willing to step into the role of Caesar as he was crossing the Rubicon.