Mission Impossible
When I was growing up, there were several shows that I especially liked because my mother liked them as well. There was that early courtroom show, The Defenders. I once asked mom why she didn’t like Perry Mason and she said she just couldn’t get into Raymond Burr for some reason. She liked Gunsmoke because she knew James Arness from her days in Pacific Palisades and she thought he was a handsome and nice guy, whereas she was not so keen on Have Gun Will Travel since Richard Boone wasn’t her cup of tea. But the show she never missed was Peter graves in Mission Impossible. To mom, Peter Graves was what Tom Cruise was to most women of my generation (Kim’s equivalent of Ed Harris….yeah, I don’t get it either). So, I grew up with that theme music in my ears and that sizzle of the tape burning from acid that always happened when it was clear that should any of the IM Force be caught or killed, the Secretary would disavow any knowledge of who they were (pretty standard operating procedure for anything in Washington DC, by my reckoning).
California is experiencing its worst COVID surge of the year. This is not a red state that has ignored all the recommended COVID protocols, this is blue, blue, blue California, and yet here we are being reminded that COVID strikes where COVID is allowed to strike. COVID is that honey badger that don’t care. It is color blind, religiously blind, educationally blind, age blind (some will especially debate that), gender blind and red/blue blind. There is no denying that it is surging strongly in California and since it knows no boundaries, every county is as vulnerable as any other county, making it matter what every county decides it wants or needs to do to keep the virus in check. This is the issue that defines 2020 all across the world. We are seeing enlightened countries like Sweden thinking they could outsmart the virus only to find that natural selection does not protect the fair Swedes all by itself. They have been forced to change it up accordingly. Yesterday Governor Newsom went on record saying that he might have to enact some restrictions that would not be popular and would have to cut across all county lines, something that would be universally unpopular since home-town rule is a God-given right in America that is not easily abandoned.
As Kim and I were driving back home down the 101 to the 405 to the 5, we spoke to her brother, Jeff, who had just been released from a week in the La Jolla hospital with a non-COVID respiratory problem. He asked with surprise if we were still panning our trip next week to Mendocino, where we would try to see the remaining Northern California Missions on the Camino Real (even though about half of them are officially closed due to COVID)? That simple question was rooted in Governor Newsom’s suggestion that he might be putting in a revised stay-at-home order and that Californians should not be traveling during this COVID surge. I am ashamed to say that Kim and I were caught somewhat flat-footed by this, not only not having heard the Newsom announcement during the day when we were traveling around the heart of the state’s COVID surge in Los Angeles, but also somehow subconsciously not thinking it applied to us. We immediately looked up the announcements and Kim read them to me while I drove south in the HOV lane. There is great symbolism in speeding along in the HOV lane and being oblivious to the very cause of the COVID surge in people doing some version of what we were doing (presumably less carefully than we were doing it, but who knows). By the time we reached home we were decided that it would be irresponsible to go on a totally optional trip next week just for the purpose of fulfilling our arbitrary Mission Mission.
In fact, the very spirit of the California Mission system of keeping Christians safe as they explored and colonized the state was exactly juxtaposed to what we were planning to do from South to North and back. There was no reason to justify this trip during the top holiday month, so we have cancelled with full concurrence by our friends from Sonoma. Nothing has happened to the Mission other than that it has been postponed. Those missions have been where they are for the better part of two hundred fifty years and it is unlikely that anyone will be the worse for us postponing the completion of our appointed rounds until COVID is more in hand and the risks to everyone are reduced.
I cannot really say that its a case of Mission Impossible, but it is Mission Inadvisable. I have to say that it is amazing to me that there is still a sense of denial that COVID is the cause of all the havoc and death that is engulfing us. Before the election, Trump liked to preach that Democrats would stop talking about COVID on November 4th, but surprise, surprise, Democrats are more worried than ever as the COVID numbers all across the country have surged to the highest numbers of the year with deaths today reaching almost 2,500. An earnest friend of mine has argued to me that these COVID deaths are not real and that there is a statistical argument that we have all gone crazy and reclassified normal death rates as COVID deaths. To what end? To scare ourselves? To give Biden something to defeat quickly to show Republicans how bad Trump was? If this is even remotely true it will mean that we are in the midst of the biggest and broadest global conspiracy that has overtaken politicians, scientists, business people, journalists and the vast majority of people all around the world. It is unfathomable to me that there is so much unwillingness to admit defeat of conservative Republican ideology that there is an ability to dismiss mainstream thinking in the blind hope that it ain’t all true and that their man (Trump) was not as irresponsible as he truly seems to have been and is being as we speak.
The real Mission Impossible here is how we are going to unbrainwash these poor souls who have drunk too much of the Trump Koolaid and now cannot help themselves in the face of the greatest pandemic mankind has ever faced. I do not believe that is hyperbole since the Black Death of the Middle Ages may have killed more, but that was in a time when scientific knowledge simply did not exist even about the most basic hygiene. With all our scientific knowledge and medical wherewithal it is amazing that it is proving so hard for us to get a grip on this pandemic. That alone should make everyone feel that we are truly in an Impossible Mission situation that cannot be disavowed by the Secretary or the President or my friends that are still upset that their fair-haired bigot didn’t win re-election. This fuse is like a sparkler and it is important that everyone recognize that we must all do whatever we can to combat this awful situation. Stay at home. Deal with it. Be careful, if not for yourself, at least for your loved ones.