I'm Not Interested

I told you before,
Stay away from my door . . .
Don't give me that brother-brother-brother, brother!

-- John Lennon

I got another solicitation for money and/or a petition signature in my e-mail last week.  It was to help save legal contraception from being overturned by the Supreme Court.

I unsubscribed from the mailing list and deleted it.  I'm not interested in joining a fight that I know I'd be on the losing end on. 

And I've been doing that for the past ten months, ever since I decided that I would quit as many things as I could because . . . well, I wasn't interested anymore.  Going through a pandemic - still in progress, which the World Health Organization made official yesterday - does wonders for making you see what a waste of time so many things are.  In the past ten months, I have unsubscribed from newsletters from the Montclair Film Festival, the Montclair Art Museum, the Democratic National Committee, Facebook "friends" that aren't really friends, never-going-anywhere loser candidates for public office, and numerous organizations asking me to fight climate change, save the bees, support tax hikes for the rich, save democracy, and just about every losing cause MoveOn.org supports.  And, as noted here, I quit MoveOn.org itself, not to mention the Society of Professional Journalists (nothing but an expensive magazine subscription), Ancestry.com (too expensive, and distant cousins I contacted couldn't care less about me!), and all plans for the immediate and distant future (didn't ya hear, there's a pandemic going on!).  I also unsubscribed from the Philadelphia Museum of Art's newsletters when I remembered that it's been over a decade since I was last in Philadelphia and it became apparent that I would not be going there on Amtrak any time soon.

And, of curse as noted, I quit campaigning for bullet trains for Amtrak.

I'm not quitting this blog, but don't be surprised if I start paring down the number of blog posts I type, because writing a blog post a day takes up a lot of time I could better spend listening to CDs, reading or watching TV (that includes movies on TV; why would I want to go the movie theater when there's a pandmeic still raging??), especially when I only get twenty or thirty views a post.   And whatever you do, do not confuse my commentary with concern.  I'm doing no more than commenting on things like the debt ceiling (which I don't care about) because there's nothing I can actually do about it (and I don't care).

Look, some guy in Memphis just got beaten to death by the cops, which happened on the heels of over three dozen mass shootings in January, and Congress - especially the Republican House - still won't do anything about any of that.  How do you expect me to have any hpe for police reform or anything else when those who can do something about what goes on and make America a not-so-unpleasant place to live don't want to do anything?

What am I supposed to do, write my congresswoman?

To respond to the inevitable complain that that's not funny, it wasn't meant to be.  None of this blog post was meant to be.  How can I enjoy life when I still have to worry about COVID hitting?  And how can I look forward to a better America when everything just keeps getting worse? 

And what do progressives do? They think that renaming public spaces for civil rights leaders and painting "BLACK LIVES MATTER" on streets is going to solve all of our racial problems. 

So when I get an e-mail or a door-to-door petition circulator telling me to change the world, my response is, "No.  You change the world.  Don't bother me . . ..  I'm not interested."

Perhaps I can make myself clearer with a song.