These are challenging times.
Grocery shelves are barren.
Fresh fruit is picked over and, on lucky days, eggs are cobbled together to make a dozen.
Toiletries are scarce and the few items in stock are rationed at a premium.
Even the high fructose and ultra processed foods have been scrounged.
Local meal options have been reduced to whatever can be served through a window.
Shopkeepers limit the number of patrons allowed in the store at one time.
Nervous cashiers behind plexiglass barriers summon the next weary customer in line.
It’s not safe to venture outdoors. If you do, you have to keep your distance and be sure not to congregate in too large a crowd or something deadly could break out.
To save us from the menace of ourselves, police are dispatched to disperse us.
Hospitals are overwhelmed.
Schools scramble to serve children.
Churches struggle.
Meanwhile, corporations cleverly update their ads with deals to ease our pain and, subsequently, theirs.
The truth is THESE challenging times aren’t much different than all the OTHER challenging times in the inner cities of Detroit, Baltimore, St. Louis, Miami, Dallas, Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, and [enter most any American city here].
The only thing novel about any of this is that now everyone can be a suspect and anyone can be a victim.
This isn’t new. And it shouldn’t be normal.
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