#i watched in real time as my country (us) totally bombed dealing with covid

[c-u-r-s-e-d-i-m-a-g-e-s]

okokok

So this isn't my usual kind of post, but I have GOT to get this off my chest and I want ppl to Know

Heads up for Project Zomboid story/gameplay spoilers. If you care about surprises and really experiencing it completely for yourself, play the game.

This isn't going to be some groundbreaking essay. Just me trying to pour out my feelings for this.

ok so. enough stalling. here goes nothing.

I love apocalypse games. They're a lot of fun. Fallout is great, Mad Max is fun, and I LOVE Metro.

But none of them really. Got To Me, y'know?

At least, not until I played Project Zomboid.

This is a game that opens up with the phrase "This Is How You Died" if that says anything.

You're just. Some Person. You're not some super soldier, you don't have any powers, you're not going to kick ass. You're just a person. A mechanic, or a fire fighter, or a cook at the fast food restaurant down the road. Hell, maybe you're even unemployed.

You're just a person. Thrown into this apocalyptic hellscape.

But that's not all.

When you start, it isn't quite the apocalypse. You've got power, you've got water. You can turn on your TV and watch a kids show.

My point is that it's not quite over. It's the beginning of the end. The starting point.

You can watch a talk show. The hosts will talk about what's happening in Knox County. How it's contained. How it's scary, but no one's dead, no one's hurt.

While you're standing on the corpses of what were once your neighbors.

So the whole media begins to fall to hell from there. It only gets worse. Take this transcript, for example:

You're on the NNR Network.

What matters to you. What matters to America.

Now we're here in the primary military camp south of Louisville.

NNR have exclusive access to General John McGrew's operations today.

Let me introduce you to Professor Jake Wilson.

Now Professor Wilson, I understand that you're a scientist working with the military?

I am, and I'm here to put a few fears to rest.

People in there: they're in a bad way, but they're still standing.

The symptoms are flu-like, then it's panic and confusion.

The situation remains volatile.

We think it's slowed, maybe transmission has... uh...

It remains volatile. We think it's slowed.

Will they recover?

At this point in time we have no reason to believe they won't recover.

Why can't we talk to them Jake?

We're actually talking to Knox Telecommunications about that right now.

There's a lot of confusion. It could distress.

At this point in time we have no reason to believe they won't recover.

You really think that's a good enough answer for America?

Uh. We have the very best people looking into the samples we've taken.

Jeff Galbraithe, former head scientist at the CDC, says America isn't ready for this.

That chronic underfunding has left us unprepared.

What's your take?

I'm sorry, but that kinda talk's not my place.

We've got a guy who handles this stuff, I'll introduce...

I've already spoken to him several times. Thank you.

And you.

NNR Network: What matters to you, matters to America.

They're still claiming it's fine at this point. Hell, from here, they even continue to insist that it IS contained, that NO ONE is dead. It's fine, it's all good.

It'll be over within the week.

But it's not. Everything continues to drop. As it goes on, a curfew message is added. No matter how terrible the broadcast was, the curfew message stays roughly the same.

The curfew will be enforced until further notice.

Your regional NNR station will have all the details.

So there's this guy, the Woodcraft guy. Can't remember if he has a name or not, but he's always super upbeat.

Several days in, however, his tone COMPLETELY changes. He makes no more jokes, he's tired, he's scared. Then? The show goes offline.

<bzzt>

No more Woodcraft.

The news channels broadcast through most of the first ten days. One in particular deals with interviewing people.

You get the sheer desperation of these people. These folks are at their worst, their weakest, their most scared. You have people spouting conspiracies, and people just wanting help. Wanting to be out.

Hi it's Carla.

You watching the news Carla?

I don't need to see the news, it's outside my front room.

Cars, people... everyone moving North.

How do they look?

Scared. Same as me.

Will you join them?

I've got three children under the age of six.

My husband's been gone a week.

No clue where he is.

I can't go. My kids... and he'll come back maybe.

We've got enough to eat.

We...

<bang> <bang>

Hey! We only want to use the bathroom!

I'm sorry I've got to keep quiet.

Mommy? What's that...

<bang> <bang>

LET US IN! WE CAN HEAR YOU IN THERE!

<crash!>

What are you...

<click> <bzzt> <fzzt>

And it ends. You don't know what happened, but you're left to assume the worst. You watch, all while completely stuck, as the world crumbles to ash outside.

You can keep listening, keep watching, keep fighting your undead family, friends, neighbors, strangers at your door. In the current version, you're the last one left.

There's nothing else out there, just terror and death.

Earlier today we received the following recording.

The voice - that of General John McGrew.

These are the end times.

This is addressed to those unaffected by the second wave of the Knox Infection.

You might know who you are by now.

If you don't, you will in coming days.

The disease will not spread to you as it has to others...

... but through fluid contact, by which I mean bites...

... it surely will.

There was no hope of survival.

The time has come to bear arms against this threat.

They may be your family, they may be your friends.

Do not hesitate to pull the trigger.

These are dark days, but as a nation we can and will prevail.

You have not been forgotten.

We will come for you.

General John McGrew, out.

This is how you died.

<bzzt>

<fzzt>

<wzzt>

[popwasabi]

The monster of “Shin Gojira” is government incompetence

I know it doesn’t feel like it but we’re just three months away from March again.

It’s been almost a year now since the beginning of quarantine, when the world had to be shut down due to the escalating nature of COVID-19 and things have…largely only gotten worse.

In the US specifically.

On March 13th we had 2,204 cases of COVID in the United States and a total of 49 deaths.  Today we have 14 MILLION cases across the country and currently 274,000 plus deaths. To put that in perspective we have nearly as many cases of COVID in the US alone as there are people in the cities of Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, and Chicago combined and we’re experiencing a 9/11’s worth of new deaths every day.

This is not even to mention the economic strain the pandemic has put the country under. Lockdowns and quarantines, without supplemental income to bolster those losses have led to closures, massive unemployment, people running deeply behind on their rent, and crushing debt for many if not buried in medical costs from being infected. Common people are trying their best to navigate a year unlike any other and are largely floundering with little to no help in sight.

And all this can be chalked up to one culprit in particular: our government’s incompetence.

(Remember all that fuss made about “breadlines” in the global south back during grade school?)

From the beginning when this virus first reared its ugly head in 2020, not enough was done to prepare the country for what would come next. Call it hubris or American Exceptionalism, but our government just was not taking it seriously as the President boasted cases would just “disappear” after late February and our leaders largely pretended it either was a) not a big deal or b) would never be a big deal.

Nearly nine months later senate Republicans still think another massive bailout for the nation’s richest coporations is the way to go, all while giving us $1,200 band aid for our troubles.

And make no mistake, the Dems have hardly been guiltless during this crisis themselves.

(“It’s a biiiiiig club, and you ain’t in it...” ~ George Carlin.)

As we see other countries largely find ways to navigate around COVID and create a safe environment where some normalcy can be maintained it becomes increasingly clear to anyone who isn’t a psychopath that the US has grossly mishandled this threat from the beginning. It’s a slow moving disaster that could’ve largely been avoided if our leaders gave a damn and it feels increasingly like we’re all just going to get the virus at some point because there’s virtually no structural safeguard in place to protect us.

This lamenting of the futility of our government’s response to crises is the central theme of one of my favorite monster movies of all-time; “Shin Gojira” (or “Godzilla Resurgence” for American audiences). Directed by “Neon Genesis Evangelion’s” own Hideaki Anno, “Shin Gojira” tells a similar story of a literal slow-moving disaster in the form of titular atomic fire lizard rising from the Pacific Ocean to decimate Japan once again and how the government poorly responds to it.

For most Americans, Godzilla is something of a joke as a movie character.

He’s Japan’s version of King Kong, a great fire-breathing reptile for thousands of random Japanese to scream “AAAAHHH! GODZILLA!!!” at while a man in a rubber suit knocks down model buildings for two hours. For several decades, he was even a bit of a superhero for children; the good monster who fought bad monsters like King Ghidorah, Gigan, and Hedorah.

The newer American remakes by Legendary Studios have not done much to change this perception. In these films, Godzilla is again depicted as a “titan” for the people doing battle with the bad titans set with people in mo-cap suits duking it out in front of greenscreens that create elaborate cities for the monsters to stampede through.

It is just not that deep to most people and who could blame them? Godzilla is cheap popcorn escapism for most audiences and most of his films see him as such.

(“Wait you mean to tell me this isn’t serious theater??”)

But Godzilla has a much darker origin, however. 1954’s original “Gojira” isn’t some cheap monster flick; it’s an allegory for the atomic bomb and the terror it brought upon the people of Japan. At the time of its release the Japanese hadn’t really reckoned with what happened in WWII, it was a source of deep shame and horror and it broke the spirits of many back then. After an atomic bomb test accidentally radiated the crew of a Japanese fishing boat in 1954, director Ishiro Honda became inspired to create the King of the Monsters after Japan’s own government largely mishandled the fallout. The film was a huge hit and Japanese audiences were moved by the dark allegorical nature of the story.

With “Shin Gojira” Anno brings Godzilla back to this grimmer tone. He was inspired by the events of 2014’s Fukushima nuclear plant disaster and how the Japanese government once again failed to act in a major crisis. Through his 2016 film, Anno aimed to depict the slow moving nature of a developing disaster quite literally with the character of Godzilla and how a crisis can only get worse and worse if left largely unchecked by those tasked to protect us.

(Hardly Hideaki Anno’s first forray into movies about crises, of course, but that’ll be for another write-up. Stay tuned...)

Godzilla begins in “Shin Gojira” as a small, destructive, but ultimately killable lifeform as he appears in the waters off Tokyo Bay. His beady, soulless eyes, tadpole like form, oozing putrid toxic blood everywhere through his malformed gills are pretty gross and Anno directly references Fukushima as the beast creates a tidal wave as he makes his way toward land in the opening sequence.

Meanwhile as Godzilla causes horrific damage to the city in this small (comparatively to earlier films) but powerful form, the Japanese Government tries to put an end to it. But as they try to address the escalating nature of the problem, bureaucracy gets in the way at every turn. Through the use of fast cuts and dark humor, Anno creates his own “Dr. Strangelove” set of scenes as Japanese politicians scramble from one board room to another to weigh options in cold math against the very real people who are fleeing for their lives as they debate with one another. Anno, doesn’t go out of his way to depict anyone as explicitly the villain here, but he does make it very apparent that when government officials refuse to accept the reality of a crisis people die. In a scene that is played partially for laughs, that feels all too relevant and frankly on the nose now, the Prime Minister addresses Japan on TV by assuring the people that there is “no way” Godzilla can make landfall and everyone will be safe. Moments later he is interrupted on live TV as Godzilla has in fact made landfall.

(Yea and he’s one ugly motherfucker in this movie too...)

Early in the film though, as Godzilla has done already immense damage in his adolescent form, Japan’s government has a chance to kill the monster once and for all by mobilizing the Japanese Self-Defense Force (JSDF) a move, that if you are not familiar with Japanese politics, is rife with concerning optics. The moment comes where Japan’s government can pull the trigger and kill the threat once and for all but in another, darkly humorous, turn of events decide not to as some nearby citizens who could be caught in the crossfire become a hazard for the JSDF. Godzilla goes back into the sea from there and Japan is left to pick up the pieces.

In the early months of the COVID lockdown, things appeared to slowdown. From about April to June, those states that took the virus seriously at the start saw some plateauing of the daily cases. While hardly a victory, things at least appeared to be going in the right direction. Then inexplicably in July a bunch of states declared premature victory and began reopening back up in certain areas such as gyms, salons, and some restaurants. I wouldn’t say we had the virus on the ropes but we were trending generally in the right direction (though nothing was really being done about loss of employment and cancelling rent and evictions, of course…). So, in a moment when the government could’ve kept trying, mostly at least, to do the right thing they failed to keep going and pull the trigger.

And just like in the movie, COVID (ie: Godzilla) came back stronger and even worse than before.

(Again, just the ugliest motherfucker...)

After the JSDF failed to kill Godzilla in the opening act, the big guy returns later on in the movie having evolved into his more indestructible final form. Where the JSDF’s weapons may have had an effect before they find their tanks, helicopters, and other military hardware have no effect on Godzilla now. It is too late to stop what is now inevitable. Godzilla walks literally through it all, causing waves of destruction with each step and Japan’s government watches in horror as they lament their failure to stop him when they had the chance.

This failure comes to its ultimate head in the final moment of this sequence when Godzilla revs up his dorsal fins and unleashes his horrifying atomic breath. It’s more powerful than anything he has done previously and absolutely wastes Tokyo in a brilliant display of raw destruction that is honestly one of the best most terrifying sequences in Kaiju filmmaking ever.

Godzilla is best used in cinema when he is a titan-sized walking metaphor for the destruction that happens when governments fail their people. Where the recent American Godzilla depicts him as a force of nature, like a walking hurricane, Ishiro Honda and Hideaki Anno see him more as a vengeful God coming to punish the wicked for their sins or, in the case of the government, their incompetence.

If COVID is a metaphor for anything this year, it is a microcosm for a wide range of problems that go unaddressed for too long by our leaders and only given notice when it’s far too late. Climate Change continues to get worse and worse each year as I am quite literally choking on ash as I type this due to yet another wildfire in the California area. The riots that erupted over the summer and continue to go on in response to the gross militaristic, overfunded, and racist structure of law enforcement in this country are the result of decades of not doing the right thing to curb the problem. The reason we are by far the worst equipped first world country to handle this crisis right now is quite literally due to years of gutting our social safety net, slashing our wages, and privatizing our health insurance.

Though there is a wide range of Japanese specific politics in the film, “Shin Gojira” is an unfortunately timeless film for people who have suffered from leaders who fail to act in moments like these. It shows what happens when our government drags its feet on transformative legislation and actual measures that can save lives. It criticizes our leaders for choosing to save themselves in the moment, with performative optics, over helping their own people. It argues that the results of bureaucratic red tape and bad politics will always end in disaster for its citizens. And most relevantly it states that governments have a duty to stop a crisis in its infancy before it’s too late.

“Shin Gojira” is a perfect monster film for the year of COVID and distressingly accurate to the way the US has mishandled this crisis from the beginning. Everyday, more and more people suffer and die because our leaders have failed to act in an unprecedented time, whether it’s the usual suspects who think any government social service is “cOmMuNiSm” or the feckless cowards who twiddle their thumbs and shrug each time a conservative tells them “no.”

We are far past the stage where this can be solved the easy way anymore and though there are still many proven ways to help the common people right now, it unfortunately feels like 2020’s Godzilla cannot be stopped…

Yea, things will totally get better in 2021, guys...