I have been a slave to Facebook for a decade now, and have often thought I should pull back, but I never actually do.  I check it multiple times a day.  At first it was kittens and babies and reuniting with elementary school friends, but it didn’t take long for Facebook to become my repository for political news.  My like-minded friends would lead me to articles about whatever was in the news at the time—binders full of women, Bernie, Hillary, and now coronavirus.

I get nervous when I see pictures of famous people I admire on Facebook, especially if they’re older, because Facebook is where I seem to find out about deaths:  David Bowie, Prince, and now victims of SARS-CoV-2.  One particular friend captions the deaths he announces with “Damn it” or sometimes, “Damn it.  Just damn it.”

D is also for death.

I dearly hope that we are truly in late capitalism, and it is in its death throes.  I don’t know enough about political science to predict or even understand other people’s predictions, but has inequality ever been so obvious?  Can we ever really go back to a society that privileges business interests over human lives?  I mean, go back—we are still there, but more and more people are seeing that it just ain’t working.

I am very glad for Facebook now, despite its problems and culpability in getting us to this place.  I feel so fond of my network of friends.  I love when the posts of my bird-loving and -posting friends who have never met end up following each other in my feed.  (OK, it’s not all politics.)  I am so grateful to have this network in place.  And truth to tell, I like sitting around in my pajamas or pajama-like clothes all day.

It’s gonna get scary.  The deaths are going to get closer.  Someone we love is going to get sick.  Some will die.  I wonder how naïve I will feel at the end of April, when this blogging challenge ends.  Things will look very different, no matter what.

Damn it.

Resplendent quetzal (Pharomachrus mocinno) from Costa Rica.