They are not well

Yesterday, I wrote about  Ohio Governor Mike DeWine who basically told a bunch of anti-quarantine yahoos to stop acting like thugs and bullies and to behave themselves. (Three cheers, Gov. DeWine!)

But you’ll recall that along with the story, I posted a video of a protesting woman who was basically abusing a local reporter. I looked at that video again, and I thought that we really all ought to give it a careful glance. Watch it now...or at least as much of it as you can before the cringe gets you.

Listen to her. Watch her eyes and her expression. This is not a person you would care to meet in a dark alley....or anywhere else, for that matter. This is someone who could be a real problem.

Think about her, then, when it comes time to vote. Remember, you may or may not vote...it’s your choice...but she most certainly will.

Do you really want people like her running the planet for four more years?

~~~

About me: I’m a writer and former journalist who has published material on everything from computers to the Jazz Age. (Among my small claims to fame is that I interviewed Steve Jobs just after that talented if complicated man got kicked out of Apple, and just before the company’s Board came begging him to come back.)

Please check out my new book, Padre: To The Island, a meditation on mortality, grief, and joy, based on the lives and deaths of two of the most amazing and unconventional people I ever met, my mother and father.

  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Are They Dangerous? Yes.

I am increasingly concerned by the people who are protesting the quarantine. They are, well, troubling...not because I disagree with their position (which I do) but because of the fury with which they state it.

Twice now, first in Kentucky and now Michigan, anti-quarantine protesters have entered their states’ capitols with their guns in tow. Once there, they were confrontational to the say the least.

Take a look at the images below, which come from Mr. Dan Zak’s Facebook page. Look at them closely, particularly the one of the man yelling at the policeman. Look at the hatred and rage in that face.

It has always been clear, of course, that there is a great deal more going on here than just objections to the shelter-in-place policy. The fact that the protests are being funded and organized at least partly by far right wing organizations, and that the protestors have somehow conflated their opposition to shelter-in-place policies with the Second Amendment (as though a virus cares about the Constitution, or anything, for that matter, beyond infecting cells), and that the demonstrations have taken on an anti-media and anti-foreigner tinge (“Go To China!”) show that a variety of dissatisfactions are being aired here.

But, that said, I can’t look at these faces and not think that at least some of these people seem to really, and truly want to kill somebody. And that’s all.  They just want to kill somebody. And they just want someone to give them a reason to do it.  


And that’s scary.

At the Michigan capitol building today in Lansing. Photos by Jeff Kowalsky (AFP via Getty) pic.twitter.com/Zf1QdypnNr

— Dan Zak (@MrDanZak) April 30, 2020