Tales From The Virus Panic #2: "Democracy Inaction"

Suzy believed in democracy, but she didn't believe in getting up early in the morning, so it took some work for her friend Wilma to convince her to work the polls for the election.  Nevertheless, Suzy signed up and dutifully attended her training session at the local public library where she learned the rules of the election and how to operate the machinery by which the election was conducted.

The day before the election she got a phone call from the board of elections that the evening setup was canceled.  Instead, they would go in even earlier the next morning and set up then.

Suzy swore then to never let Wilma talk her into doing anything she didn't want to do again.  The nasty little cold virus going around that the news was always talking about had already made her regret signing up to work the polls.

Meanwhile, the president's public health official, feeling her power swell, had really laid on the fire and brimstone in her conference call with the latest group of state governors.  Feeling pleased with herself, she went home and masturbated.

The elderly governor of one Midwestern state, however, was scared silly.  He was terrified of dying, especially before he could achieve his dream of one day being president.  He knew time was running out as it was; he didn't need this nasty Chinese virus slaughtering him before he even got to declare his candidacy.  He decided on a second opinion and called his department of health head.

She said it was bad, real bad.  Some folks in England had plunked some data into a computer model and it said unless people stayed away from one another then they would all die.

The governor, a know-nothing who still thought there were weapons of mass destruction hidden in Iraq, knew little about health and even less about computers.  He didn't know that public health officials were almost to a man or woman or nonbinary gender identifying creature hypochondriacs who loved telling people what to do.  He also didn't know that if you fed garbage into a computer you got garbage out.  He did know that if he died or he let everyone in his state die, then he would never be president.

The governor called the secretary of state who was in charge of administering the election and told him to cancel it.  They could always hold the election a couple of weeks later when this virus had passed over them.

The governor thought of the virus like the angel of death in the Passover story of the Bible, which his mommy had read to him when he was a wee lad in short pants and which he still sort of kind of believed in.

That afternoon, they closed the bowling alleys first and canceled the election second.

They knew the priorities of the state's citizens.

Suzy got another call from the board of elections telling her she didn't need to report to work the polls the next morning.  She was surprised but happy that she could now sleep in.

Then a candidate objected and filed a lawsuit, and the election was back on.

The board of elections called Suzy again and told her the election was back on and sorry for the misunderstanding and that the state was led by morons and all that, yadda yadda yadda.  Suzy went to bed right after the call since she had to get up in the middle of the night and she was already up much too late already because she didn't think she had to go to bed early based on the earlier call.

Meanwhile, the governor had his attorney general reading some dusty law books, and it looked like the state department of health could declare a health emergency and order the polling places closed.  What the heck the governor thought, even if it ended up being illegal it might do the job.  So he told the department of health director to do that, and she did just in time to make the 11 o'clock television news where the anchors chitchatted and read press releases from the government and large corporations between car commercials.

And the governor went to bed, where he waited until his wife was asleep and he masturbated to the power he had and also the head of the health department because she was kind of foxy.

Later, Suzy got up in the middle of the night, feeling groggy.  She turned on some electric lights and stumbled around getting washed and dressed.  She ate some breakfast hurriedly and made coffee for the short walk to the polling place.  It was drizzly, and as she walked under her umbrella, she startled a deer snoozing in a neighbor's yard.  Grumbling again that Wilma would never talk her into anything she wondered if she should have driven, but then she probably wouldn't have had the delight of the deer.  Still she hoped she wouldn't get raped or mugged walking in the dark all alone.  Of course, she lived in a very nice neighborhood which is why she chanced it in the first place.  She was mulling this all over when she arrived at her destination.  It was dark and no one was there.  She walked around the church to the door she was supposed to go to.  She knocked.  No one answered.  There was no sign on the door.  She wondered if she had gotten up too early.  She checked her phone.  No, she had the right time.  There was a voicemail there though that she hadn't noticed earlier in the rush to get to the polling place.  It was from the board of elections telling her the election was canceled.

On her walk home, the rain got heavier, the wind picked up, her umbrella blew away, and she got soaked.  When she got home, she finished her now cold coffee and masturbated to the image of smashing both Wilma's and the governor's heads in with a rock.

This is a work of fiction, but if you lived in Ohio in 2020, then you know it's based on a true incident. Our democracy is inviolate unless some rich folks panic about their health, then it's tossed away like a used tissue by all those who swore to defend the Constitution.   It could be worse though, we could live in Australia where the police will choke you "to protect your health" and bar you from the hospital and even the pub if you refuse to get vaccinated (meanwhile, their cases and deaths rise as they vaccinate more and more, hmm . . . something's not computing there, check out how the graphs for vaccinations, cases, and deaths follow basically the same rising curve from July to October--weird); my apologies, of course, if you do live in Oceania, I mean, Australia.  Maybe they can mask the kangaroos next because that would be about as effective as in not effective, not effective at all.  If you need some cheering up after this, then please read Edna's Employment Agency where the idiots are fictional and amusing and not in charge of governments and corporations like in real life.