Look up! If you don’t wanna get hit by coconuts
The only way to explain it is that we’ve gone crazy. Boulder-sized coconuts hitting our heads as we continue to walk under the tree dropping them. We see the guy in front of us bloodied by one of the falling bombs, and we insist on following him or her under the tree spitting coconuts like cannon balls.
We’re at a place whose path was created way before Trump. The big orange menace just ignited a fuse that sat dormant waiting for someone crazy enough, or dare we say evil enough, to light it. And in 2016, the country elected that person.
Now we live in a world where facts can be deemed ‘not true’ based on your feelings about that specific something. You then file them under “alternative facts.” Guns are afforded greater protection than one’s own children under a sublime 2nd Amendment to the Constitution. Police shoot drivers, pedestrians and even children (or squeeze the life out of them) for driving or walking while Black. Climate change is a “hoax” as we watch the planet fry and the oceans rise. Marauding hordes attack the U.S. Capitol, people die and are hurt, and some members of Congress look on the assailants as “patriots.”
The latest shenanigans coming from the U.S. congress is that some members of the Republican Party are now calling the Covid pandemic a big lie, a plan devised in 2015 to assure that Trump would lose in 2020. Those same Re[Trump]licans claim that President Joe Biden’s climate plan will soon ban meat, and that the Democratic Party is leading the country towards socialism and then communism.
And like the guy walking under the coconut tree, we believe the nonsense being spewed turning our thoughts to mush to the point we start complaining of tax increases proposed for the uber wealthy without understanding the fact (and not an alternative one) that taxes on the ‘little people’ have increased to satisfy the need of the greediest among us whose million dollar paydays and billion dollar lives are never enough.
Go figure.
Right here in Miami politicians get away with their corruption — and there’s plenty of it — by pointing a finger at persons they call pro-Castro sympathizers, steering our sights away from their malpractice. [I often wonder how many being fooled realize that Fidel is dead and that Raúl is out of power.] Our form of democracy entails buying a radio station in Miami where a radio personality was calling out the political crooks for what they are on a daily basis. Once purchased the truth teller is fired and we are told the station is changing direction. Of course, the new owners do not reveal that they are friendly with an ex Miami mayor known as Crazy Joe. Sure, crazy as a fox and whose craziness is part of a persona that hides his corruption. He’s also in cahoots with the station owners making money from the city that same ex mayor (now a commissioner) helps to lead…
Then there’s the news making the rounds the last two days here in South Florida. It deals with a private school I had never heard of, Centner Academy, who is telling its teachers and employees, if you are vaccinated or plan to be, you’re fired!
As reported by CNN, “The school’s CEO and co-founder Leila Centner sent a letter to faculty and staff at the Centner Academy citing unsupported assertions about Covid-19 vaccines that contradict a large body of evidence of the vaccines’ safety and efficacy from the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health and the World Health Organization.”
In the letter, Centner states:
Because this new information has introduced the possibility that vaccinated individuals may be inadvertently impacting the health of others, I am compelled to take action until further information is available. Even among our own population, we have at least three women with menstrual cycles impacted after having spent time with a vaccinated person.
Until we have more information, we ask that:
1. If you want to get the vaccine, please wait until the school year ends and you will not be able to return to school until clinical trials are complete (if a position is still available at that time).
2. If you want to get the vaccine before the school year ends, please let us know right away as we cannot allow recently vaccinated people to be near our students until more information is known.
3. If you have taken the vaccine prior to April 21, 2021, please report that to us and maintain physical distance from the students.
According to CNN, the school is ignoring the advice and guidance from the state and federal governments, as well as the Miami-Dade Health Department, which all urge everyone 16 and older to be vaccinated.
The school is attended by about 300 students; tuition is almost $30,000 a year (not including fees) and describes itself as the “first happiness school,” with an emphasis on mindfulness. Reminds me of the preachers on TV that promise you a better life with Christ (not Jesus, and there is a difference) if you send them money. Later that same so-called Christian preacher flies off in his helicopter to his multi-million dollar mansion. His benefactors go home (if they have one) to unpaid bills and worries for the future of their children.
And yet, we keep walking under the coconut trees.
I never considered leaving this country. I thought I’d grow old here and help my daughter get through her days at the university. Lately I keep looking around for where I may land that is not this crazy place I live in. But the rest of the world also seems upside down. I then shrug and worry, and look up for falling coconuts.
