Strange Days in the Land of $147 Plane Tickets and Two-Dollar Gas
By: Glen Hines
Tags: Perspective, Society, Psychology, History, Current Events

We’re living in strange days. But unlike The Doors’ sentiment in the song, there aren’t any new towns to find. There are no places that offer an escape.

We can’t go eat in a restaurant, but we can go into grocery stores packed to the rafters with customers, unable to maintain the randomly arrived-at six feet of “social distance” between ourselves and others. We cannot go into a bar or craft beer brewery and sit, stay, or linger, but we can all walk into a tiny liquor store, shoulder to shoulder, and buy whatever we want.

Masks? The vast majority of people aren’t wearing one. Beyond being told by an unrestricted, unmasked media to wear one, the people who do wear masks might not be aware of the operative facts. Doctors tell us that protecting the wearer is difficult: It requires medical-grade respirator masks, a proper fit, and proper care putting on the mask and removing it. But we are also told that masks can be worn to prevent transmission to others.

None other than the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tell us when and why we should wear a mask. “If you are sick,” the CDC says, “you should wear a mask when you are around other people and before you enter a healthcare provider’s office.” But “if you are NOT sick,” it adds, “you do not need to wear a mask unless you are caring for someone who is sick.”

So if the folks wearing a mask are doing it for the benefit of others because they think they are or might be infected, then why are they outside or close to others in the first place? Not so altruistic if you think about it. But more on that strange, self-contradictory behavior to follow.

We were told for weeks that air travel might be shut down domestically, but it has not been. Whether this is a good thing or not, it raises some bizarre situations. The airports resemble ghost towns, with the aforementioned restaurants and bars shut down, but the Starbucks and Dunkin kiosks open. Every departure/arrival gate is manned with multiple airline agents, smiling and chipper at the relative paucity of customers, and there are planes rolling in and out of every gate. TSA is at full-strength. I’ve had to fly a few times, and there have never been more than seven passengers on each flight. And the airlines are not cancelling the flights, when in the past, they would have cancelled without giving it a second thought.

A one-way ticket from DFW to Washington, DC, is currently about $150 dollars. These are 1992 prices. How are the airlines able to fly seven people without going bankrupt? Have they been told from the inception that a massive bailout is on the horizon?

A gallon of gas is about two bucks right now. Actually, the average price nationally is about $1.80. Interstate traffic is light. It’s actually a great time to travel on the road, at least along a route where you won’t get accosted regarding where you came from and where you’re headed. (Do your research beforehand.).

On the other hand, you can’t go to a church, or mosque, or synagogue, or temple. You’re told it’s for your own good. It would be a gathering of too many people. But the same number of people in a Wal-Mart, Target, Pilot, or liquor store, for example, is not a gathering of too many people. Consider this for a moment. Putting aside the jokes, why are liquor stores “essential?” Essential to whom?

We keep hearing about “reopening the economy;” indeed it’s a time of new buzz words and catch phrases we’ve hardly — if ever — used before. “Social distancing.” “Flattening the curve.” “Stay home.” “Essential activities.” “Shelter in place.” “Reopening the economy.” And so on.

But the Wal-Marts, Targets, and liquor stores don’t need the economy reopened; they — and the governments that tax their sales — are making a killing right now. These responsible-sounding little phrases are constantly wielded to subtly coercive effect in an attempt to keep everyone in line with the current groupthink. It’s an interesting experiment in mass psychology. Who follows and obeys, and who resists? One wonders if someone, somewhere is keeping track.

After all, most people want to be altruistic, or at least appear to be, especially on social media these days. (Except when they cleaned out the shelves at the aforementioned Wal-Marts of all remaining hand sanitizer and toilet paper in those early days.) This last point raises some ironic questions regarding which “rules” and admonitions people choose to obey and ignore when it’s about them personally as opposed to others. But that’s a subject for another day.

And so, some people continue to sit inside like the good citizens out of 1984, never questioning, so quick to accept it and install themselves as self-appointed enforcers of it all. And yet others continue to live their lives. It’s the grand social experiment of our times. And ironically, leave to a commercial based on 1984 to capture the essence of these times:

“Today, we celebrate the first glorious anniversary of the Information Purification Directives. We have created, for the first time in all history, a garden of pure ideology — where each worker may bloom, secure from the pests purveying contradictory truths. Our Unification of Thoughts is more powerful a weapon than any fleet or army on earth. We are one people, with one will, one resolve, one cause. Our enemies shall talk themselves to death, and we will bury them with their own confusion. We shall prevail!”

A push for “Information Purification” and “Unification of Thoughts,” and demonizing anyone “purveying contradictory truths” as “pests.” Sound familiar?

Strange days indeed.