I guess it's time to politicize another public figure's death.
Colin Powell died today. He was 84, battling cancer, vaccinated against Covid-19, and died from complications stemming from Covid-19. That means it’s time to turn his death into a cesspool of political debate and agenda fluffing. Offering thoughts and prayers and maintaining a respectful distance and decorum so the family can mourn in peace without seeing the recently deceased’s name dragged through the mud? Please do your best to not be gross. It’s 2021.
Funny aside: From here on out, I’d wager it’ll be seen as valid argumentation to insert the year an event happened in a weak attempt to pontificate about how other people are still sinful, indecent, racist, and engaging in other forms of skullduggery that don’t align with one’s humanistic morals so as to feel better about oneself. One who wants to pontificate can hope, at least.
Not only do I not want to go to Twitter—I just bought new sneaks and don’t want to step in that particular minefield of crap until they’re broken in—I really don’t even need to. In my 41 years on this planet (It’s 2021 and I was born on the decade year of 1980 so it’s easy to do the math on my age, people!) I’ve gleaned from prolonged observation and mental cataloguing how people act.
Hard left partisan Democrats are going to bring up how he lied to Congress about WMD’s in Saddam’s boudoir. Hard right partisan Republicans are going to bring up how he traitored the GOP and helped get King Obama elected. Vaccine concubines are going to wail about how he wouldn’t have caught Covid-19 if the unvaccinated would just take the jab and get vaccinated. Anti-vaccine harpies are going to screech about how the vaccinated should be protected from the unvaccinated by very dint of the vaccination. It being easier to focus on the negatives of life and jettison the positives, people will naturally reduce Powell down to the one thing about him they didn’t like rather than assign themselves the arduous task of judging him by his body of work. I remember during George W. Bush’s presidencies Powell being call “coon” and “house slave” by Democrats who couldn’t stomach the idea of a black man being a Republican. I imagine that’ll be brought up with all expediency.
There’ll be loads of life-improvement suggestions like “wake up”, “don’t be a sheep”, “do your research”, emotional reactions akin to “literally shaking”, easily bandied criticisms like “do you realize how ________ you’re being?” many a mention of “libtard” and “snowflake”, toxic snark like “is it difficult going through life being so stupid?”, with more than a dash of “Sorry, not sorry” and “Retweet if you agree”. Not a one of them is going to remember that an image-bearer of God is now in eternity and those who knew and loved him should be able to mourn without a bunch of noise and distraction. The last thing his family needs is dredging up of the mistakes he made now that he’s in a place where his accounts have been settled.
I’m a satirist hoping to graduate one day to being a humorist. Finessed exaggeration is my game, and this Twitter nonsense is becoming so predictable it’s boring. WON’T SOMEBODY PLEASE THINK OF THE SATIRISTS!? (Ahem) And also maintain a dignified and austere silence during the grieving period. I almost forgot myself there, sorry.
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