Lowering the Flag, Yet Again

 IN MY LITTLE TOWN we seniors get our pandemic lunch in a white plastic sack through our car windows, as I suspect they do at many senior centers across freedom's land. The shuttered sheet metal senior center sits next to the sheet metal American legion bldg, whose flag is currently at half staff.My mentally challenged friend got out of his pick up truck in pajamas, and asked why. I knew why, so I told him; the Atlanta massacre. Surprisingly, he seemed to understand. A derelict woman in another truck was listening, so I kept talking. "considering the frequency of our American mass murders, old glory has been on the move a lot in recent years; lots of ups and downs." Clever comment, I thought. Her response was equally clever: "Hell, they might as well just leave it at half staff". She has a point, I thought. And sure enough, true to form, as if on cue, ten more people were blown away in a grocery store in Boulder, Colorado, my favorite town, within the next twenty four hours. Yet another of our patented made in America mass murders. Down stays the flag. if there's any consolation, which there isn't, its that things are beginning to return to normal in the United States of Amnesia. the vaccinations are rolling out and into arms, the pandemic is ebbing, or about to, or so we think and hope. Only the far right conspiracy crazies and the far left new age crazies, about a third of the American population, will not get vaccinated, assuring us that the national epidemic will continue indefinitely, but that it will be held down. to a dull roar. Covid 19 is here to stay. People are gathering together in large groups again, not that they ever stopped in the United States of Illusion. Once again its party time and money making time across the fruited plain. We are spiking the ball on the five, but why not? We know we're going to win. We always do, and if not, we claim to have won. One more surge after spring break, to send us past the six hundred thousand mark. With our renewed togetherness return the mass murderers, lock, stock, and barrel, fully loaded, weapons polished and dusted off. They are adorned as usual with hoods, swastika, MAGA caps, the works. there's a lot of pent up rage going  around, and we can expect an active killing season. Alienated young men galore. Boulder enacted a municipal ban on assault weapons. The state told them it can't do that; they're over stepping on state toes.During the pandemic mass murdering has decreased drastically, but gun sales have exploded, and so has one on one gun violence. Maybe things haven't changed that much after all.