From Facebook to virus, nothing seems real

Nothing seems real these days. Take Facebook for example. Facebook is a social media site that specializes in mostly harmless banality, except when some right wing nut takes a joke or rumor and turns it into news as he shares it on his page, until, that is, someone declares it fake news, which of course it is.

Then our president repeats it as either real or fake news, whatever version of truth he is hosting at the time, and the item becomes real fake news. The press is blamed by the president, a person who thought you could take a household cleaner, inject it and be cured of the coronavirus, or be immune to it, whichever fits one’s fantasy.

I know the president’s Clorox moment is well known, but it is worth repeating to remind us all of just how insensitive he is.

Back to Facebook, which by some method I do not care to understand, told me I should on April 10 send a Happy Birthday note to Tom Schumacher, a dear friend.

The problem is that Tommy, as we knew him in high school, is dead; has been since last year when he succumbed to a series of strokes.

Birthday wishes sent his way comprise genuine fake news. Facebook doesn’t know how to detect a death. I wonder how many decades will pass before Facebook stops asking us to send Tommy a card.

Facebook has probably been sending out such nonsense since the first week it existed. But being holed up by the coronavirus, the glitch took on new importance for those of us who knew Tommy. It is just one more reminder of how very little makes sense any longer.

Face masks, isolation, social distancing and the like are called mandatory and are strictly enforced, or not. Who makes the decision: The president? His medical advisers, governors, mayors, county commissioners or the head of our neighborhood association? We get a single-spaced page-and-ahalf note every other day or so from said local leader, who is largely self appointed. It says nothing.

We don’t know who is making the decision that keeps us in isolation and on what basis we will be set free by whomever.

The feeling is the very definition of unreality. It is like being in a dark room with no sunshine, no options, nothing that puts us in charge of our own destiny, save for foolishness as demonstrated by those gun toters who gather outside governmental buildings. Our oxygen level and temperature level is tested each day by a visiting nurse, one for Janet, another for me. No explanation.

There is no plan, ergo no hope. I dearly hope the president will wake up and discover he is in the midst of the same paralyzing mishmash of truth and falsehoods as the rest of us.

Maybe he’ll act then.