Suddenly the end of August is upon us! What another crazy month of 2020. Another resurgence of Covid was overtaken in the news by the Democratic National Convention and subsequently the Republican National Convention, only to both be replaced by the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement in response to the shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin. (Since March 2020, it seems that Covid-19 and BLM have switched off being in the national spotlight, and we as America are getting punched by the left-right-left-right combination of these 2 major problems in our country, which are only amplified because of the political nature of an election year). Baseball stopped and started, stopped and started for many teams, as this season must have the record for number of postponed games and the variety of reasons for those postponements, including normal inclement weather reasons, the novel coronavirus reasons, and now add to that the novel "political protest" postponement where players followed suit with the NBA and sat out a game in protest of the current situation in Kenosha, WI.
There are so many different frustrations in the world right now and so much to vent out, with what one chooses to vent about possibly revealing what political leanings one is on, so it's hard to be genuinely upset about something without having to consider the audience and
1.) Everything is politicized. Every opinion, idea, statement, person you befriend on Facebook, comment you make on social media, what food you order at a restaurant, what shows you watch on Netflix, EVERYTHING seems to be viewed in a political light.
2.) America has a lot of people making poor decisions. Not just financial decisions, which I've preached about before (pay the full balance of your credit card before paying for anything else! Invest extra money in the stock market!, etc., etc.) but as evidenced by the Kyle Rittenhouse case, terrible situations occur and tragic killings happen because of a lot of poor decisions, from the 17-year-old Rittenhouse deciding to grab a gun and defending property that wasn't his, to his Mom's decision to drop him off in Kenosha, a political hotspot, the police for not recognizing he was an underage kid with a gun, the protestors/rioters/group that Rittenhouse ran into who chased him down but was turned on by Rittenhouse who shot back, it was just a conglomeration of bad decision making and handling of the situation.
3.) It's easy to tear down, difficult to construct. Just like I did in the previous point, it's easy to criticize what did actually happen, or criticize the system and say we have to tear it down, than it is to actually build one that is subject to such criticism. No society is perfect; America seems to have an overtly abundant number of flaws, all the more reason to lay out solutions rather than just tear it down without plans for how a new plan would work.
4.) Social media is becoming more of a burden than it's worth. Just hours after a news event occurs, I'll log into social media just to see the general gist of what's going on, and there will already be so many posts that are criticizing me if I think a certain way, or lecturing "the other team" about why they are wrong. It's almost like because sports was down for so long this year, people have decided to make politics a sports contest where you have to join one team, root for them no matter what, and antagonize the other team as much as possible and try to embarrass them, shout them down, prove beyond a shadow of doubt that they are wrong in every single way.
Anyway, back to gist of Impossible Burger! Today MJ and I went on a road trip (difficult due to Covid and also because MJ doesn't like to use public restrooms as it is) without plans to go to a restaurant, because duh, so we stopped at somewhere we haven't ever went to together: Burger King. One of the more unlikely places to go to because most of its products are meat-based, it's fast food (sodium, grease, and cheap quality come to mind) and MJ is seemingly always on a diet. When she's on a diet, I also am on a semi-diet because kind of like marital guilt or partner guilt, I don't want to eat too much when she doesn't get to eat. But today we tried a relatively new item on the Burger King menu: The Impossible Burger! Totally vegan, totally meatless (according to them, although we have heard of cases where a fast food restaurant grilled an impossible burger on the same grill as one for meat patties- a big no-no) and totally tasted like meat! This may be a game-changer in our dietary selections when we are stuck on a pandemic road trip: When times are getting desperate and we can't go to a sit-in restaurant, we might be able to get by with a vegan burger.
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