It's been almost eight months since the governor declared the pandemic a state of emergency, and since then the failed-state governmental response to the crisis and the antics of a culturally balkanized morass of plague-impassioned buffoons have inspired in me the urge to compile a nice little shit list:
Bike Farm & Bike Shops
Bike Farm is a volunteer run DIY bike menchaic shop, where those who didn't know could learn how to build or maintain and repair their bikes and those who did know could utilize a vast array of tools; five dollars gave you an hour of stand time and tool use, and often there was also cheap used replacement parts available. It was a pillar resource for low-income Portland cyclists, but I'm saying "was" because it closed shop in response to the pandemic. It's not completely closed: during summer they were letting Community Cycling Center volunteers do free repairs for essential workers one day a week, but summer is over and now all they're doing is selling stuff one day a week. I base my beef on this simple fact: Bike Farm is a warehouse! It's got to be the easiest possible indoor environment to keep people socially distanced; in fact, I don't think I ever stood within six feet of anyone whenever I used the place before the coronavirus struck us.
As a result of this major disappointment, the much more forgivable and understandable disappointments of other low-income cyclist resources closing down or reducing access, and bike stores becoming absurdly back-logged in mechanic availability, I've decided I'm going to be my own bicycle mechanic shop. It'll take a while, but I refuse to financially support traitorous cowards who abandon the poor.
Yuppie Jogger Plague Rats
I never liked joggers to begin with: there's just something contemptible about people who so proudly parade before the world their superficial vanity, unresolved insecurities, and craven age-denial and death-avoidance. (I'm reminded of Jesus' disdain for the sanctimonious Pharisees and their self-righteous exhibitionism — except at least those guys faked being godly and wise, rather than merely faking being eternally youthful and virile.) But, now these asymptomatic asswipes are huffing and puffing aerosolized moisture droplets all around as they breeze past you in their athletic pursuit of conspicuous self-obsession. Who are these people, anyway? None of them were around when I grew up out in Powelhurst in East Portland, because back then we only had a handful of Californians who moved up here — and those guys actually moved here to be here instead of moving here to terraform Portland into another chichi strip mall for yoga-mat elitist corporate drones. I suppose this complaint is just an extension of my objection to the invasion of what I consider to be a materialistic and elitist culture that's incompatible with the lack of pretension I always admired about the Pacific Northwest. But, it's worthy of mention because I and others can catch seriously ill (or dead) because some ex-pat Bay Area techyuppie's a vapid self-absorbed social-contract imbecile.
I'm starting to seriously want to blast these privileged punks in the face with pepper spray and then smash their ankles into pulp with my bike lock!
Multnomah County Library
Now this here is an ancient hate; only it was the coronavirus response of theirs that teetered me over into sufficient contempt to boycot the system and vote against it every time it comes up in a ballot measure. First off: it's gone all techyuppie, and has favored DRM digital media over hard copies of material — which I view as a class warfare sally against the poor (I've been wanting to copy tracks from CDs of bossa nova and bebop jazz, especially because I dislike enough songs on individual albums to balk at making any purchases). Secondly: the work culture and my interactions with staff there have always been heavily redolent of that left-fascist new-age social engineering ideology I'm vehemently oppsoed to on a fundamental, almost reptilan-brain basis. Thirdly: who are all these people making good money and garnering exceptional county employee perqs, who just putter around all day not even looking busy, and often aren't even that good at assisting patrons? And finally: they lay off a third of their workforce and require people to make appointments to pick up books placed on hold … that they waited months for, in response to the pandemic? I'm not some anti-literate redneck; in fact, by not checking out books I'm going to end up reading a lot of classics, something I've always whimsically meant to get around to. As for my criticisms pertaining to its cost and effectiveness; I've worked in a college library, so I'm not an ignorant outsider.
Fortunately for me, I got a chance to put my money where my mouth is this election; I voted against increasing their funding. (A pity the BLM rioters never got around to burning down the central library building downtown.)
Central City Concern Etc
Central City Concern is one of the three social services megacomplexes here in Portland, that helps damaged and distressed people with housing, mental health, and adictions issues. I never cared much for these guys because I always felt they were — as a former friend named Kif aptly put it — poverty pimps. Their housing buildings are some of the most unsafe and unsanitary living conditions you can find outside of landfills and the more squalid of freeway homeless camps, their addictions treatment is typically ineffectual and quasi-religious and pseudo-scientific, and their mental health treatment is less science and more cultural indoctrination. They talk up transparency and accountability, yet are themselves opaque and unbridled; and they love to medicate those they can and control whatever welfare money they receive. Nobody who works there has a real degree, or if they do engages in what could be considered a real practice — it's bottom-of-the-barrel psychology and therapy, that inculcates passive-aggressiveness and acquiescence to elite capitalism and corrupt jurisprudence, dependency on social welfare, and preaches mainstream New Age "spiritual" intellectual retardation.
Now they're all at home working from their phones, and are even less useful than they barely were before the pandemic. In fact, the only thing they're still faithfully doing is handing out meds and holding onto clients' social security checks!
Antifa, BLM, Patriot Prayer Etc
I never thought much of my fellow Americans or of the various mainstream cultures that make up of schismatic and bellicose republic, and in recent years I've grown increasingly alarmed at the emerging polarization and extremism I've seen. But, 2020 has got to be a new high-water mark in the sheer stupidity, goose-stepping groupthink, and explosive violence in our society. On the one side you have anti-intellectual throwback bigots who want turn the clock back on workers and renters rights, racial equality, women's rights, humane and rehabilitative jurisprudence, and tolerance of formerly fringe subcultures like the LGBT scene. On the other hand you have new age social engineers politicizing science and conducting sexual experiments on children, scorning Western culture and promoting anti-white racist shaming, pushing societally destructive permissiveness, and erecting a welfare dependency state. Fascists on the Left, fascists on the Right, as my trans friend so aptly put it.
I consider this mindless, violently angry, and unrelentingly other-seeking and -destroying state of American society to be symptomatic of the informal breakdown of our democracy. Again, I'm reminded of the brak-up of Yugolslavia. You can't have a functioning democracy when its citizenry is ignorant, self-centered, cowardly, and greedy — at least not without a strong government and an enemy or rival most people agree against.
Multnomah County Circuit Court
A perfect example of godawful timing, I was supposed to accept a plea bargain for a harassment charge just a week after the courthouse shut its doors to all jury trials and to courtroom appearances by offenders who aren't enmired in custody battles, aren't currently in the klink, or haven't been charged with serious property or violent crimes. Since March 30 I've been calling in periodically, only to have the judge tell me to call back next month; though thankfully from here on out I don't even have to make any more personal appearances. My attorney says misdemeanor cases like mine probably won't see the light of the courtroom until sometime next spring. That's ONE YEAR! I suppose I could make constructive use of this time to volunteer, so that when I finally go to court I won't have to worry about finding the time for that, especially since by then I'll either be looking for work or again gainfully employed.
All paltry and idiotic counted blessings aside, I'm incredulous: I never imagined I'd personally experience such a drastic formal breakdown in governmental function! I guess I always figured as crappy and absurd as it often gets the only time my local government would be interrupted would be during those occasional weak dustings of snow we Portlanders always freak out over; even those temporary federal shutdowns over congressional budget disputes haven't adversely affected me, though theoretically they can delay my rent assistance and SNAP benefits.
