#and the pandemic certainly hasn’t been helping to put me in good spirits

[blackoutballad]

sup everyone!

[enjoy-the-small-thingsxx]

Australian border check points!

What happened was governments installed FEAR in the people and turned a lot into selfish people and in the process gave up EVERYONE’s freedom shame on them now we have to fight to get it back.

(The Australian)

A year ago, Australia was burning. The ferocious, fatal bushfires that devastated large swathes of the country’s east coast felt relentless. They destroyed lives, livelihoods and so much more.

The fires that burned for months on end, and the subsequent, heaven-sent summer drenching that helped put an end to it all, were a reminder of this savage land of extremes we call home.

They also gave cause for another reminder. Of how we as Australians take care of each other. How no distance, no border on a map could quash or erode the innate desire we have to look out for our mates. The ones we know, and the ones we never will. We’ve always been like that, haven’t we?

t’s who we are as Australians. Or maybe it isn’t, not deep down and not really.

I ask that question because COVID has turned state against state in a way that I’ve never seen in my near-half century on the planet. One weary year down Pandemic Road, and I’m a little deflated to say that as much as we have seen good among us, perhaps even seen glimpses of our best, we’ve also seen some pretty average carry-on. I don’t say that to be deliberately provocative, it’s an honest observation.

Twelve short months ago, when NSW burned, nobody said Queensland water bombers were for Queensland fires only. When struggling farmers couldn’t feed their stock, nobody stopped the convoys from leaving Western Australia. No one said: Those greedy eastern staters only want to take WA feed and that’s for WA animals. Suggesting that now is the stuff of insanity, yet that’s been the spirit of the COVID-19 age.

What is it about the threat of COVID that changed us? Or is it a case that the ugliness was already there? I don’t know. Perhaps it’s as simple as the difference between a threat we watch from afar versus one that can strike with the simplicity of a sneeze. Heaven knows it’s easy to be magnanimous watching someone else’s house burn down on the telly, from the comfort of your own couch.

As the NSW government deftly continues to manage current clusters, notably without the need to imprison citizens or destroy the economy, pot shots were being lobbed from across state aka enemy lines. Criticism. A vocal and deliberate undermining. A thinly veiled disappointment that it hasn’t yet gone badly wrong. This isn’t who I thought we were.

Maybe it’s as simple and as distasteful as politics. COVID has shown us that voters won’t punish a leader for saying things that in any other circumstances would have triggered a reputational crisis. Queensland hospitals are for Queenslanders was apparently an OK position to take, even as a heavily pregnant woman was refused treatment. Voters rewarded the hardness, the fortress mentality and no doubt in two short months the same thing will happen in Western Australia.

COVID has shown us that voters will excuse an astronomical level of incompetence, excused by collective amnesia, and the subsequent human toll as long as they believe they’re being kept safe. Fear really is the opiate of the masses.

The Victorian and West Australian governments again slammed the doors shut as the New Year arrived. No policy, no planning and no clue. The worst of decision making that threw tens of thousands of lives into chaos, a revolving state of turmoil. With the notable exception of NSW, nobody wants a national standard, because I’m guessing there’s no votes, no leverage in consensus. At times, it felt like some weird, continuous version of State of Origin, Hunger Games Style. No Australia, just faux nation-states and their leaders, beating their chests.

It appears to be all about bread and circuses aka JobKeeper right now, but let me propose that it may be a different story come March when the bread runs out and the circus moves on.

The federal government must lead, but it’s fraught with electoral risk. It must solve a dilemma of its own making, namely, what to do with the national cabinet; how to repair our fractured nation, rather than serve the optics and agendas of the attending premiers.

I’m not interested in a so-called new normal that puts our national interest second.

Changing one word in our National Anthem is well intentioned cosmetic surgery. Right now, we are anything but one and we are certainly not free.\

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/inquirer/pandemic-reveals-ugly-aussie-is-not-an-isolated-case/news-story/cdeca513f6648a8fca27df75c734ff1a

[sophieellisbextorarchives]

Sequins, songs, kids... dance! This is what saved SOPHIE ELLIS-BEXTOR’s sanity during lockdown

‘I think I’m doing this for me.’ But for now, we need to head back to her house, where Sonny has appeared, and Mickey is delighted to see his mum. Plates are waiting to be spun, and as I let myself out, Jesse is putting on a show in the kitchen, with Sophie as the audience, sitting under the disco ball. ....and her wonderfully joyous discos filmed in the family kitchen helped lift the nation’s spirits too. She tells Hattie Crisell why Friday nights round at hers became so precious

ORIGINAL ARTICLE: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/you/article-8549299/Sequins-songs-kids-dance-saved-SOPHIE-ELLIS-BEXTORs-sanity-lockdown.html

Sophie Ellis-Bextor opens the door to me with a toddler in her arms – smiley 18-month-old Mickey – and her four-year-old son Jesse behind her, his hair a deep shade of copper. ‘You have the most beautiful hair I’ve ever seen,’ I tell him, genuinely quite dazzled, and he replies bashfully, ‘Well, I’ve just had it cut.’

Welcome to Sophie’s world: a large and glittering house in West London, packed to the rafters with kitsch, toys, cats and boys. I don’t know how many cats are around, but the boys number five: Mickey, Jesse, eight-year-old Ray, 11-year-old Kit and 16-year-old Sonny. Managing the lot are the singer, her husband Richard Jones (bass guitar player with The Feeling and the supergroup Loup GarouX), and a nanny, who joins them Monday to Friday during the working day. ‘I used to have a nanny who was with us all the time, and to be honest I felt like it was too much,’ says Sophie. ‘It’s fine if it’s my thing that I think about 24 hours a day, but I think it’s healthy for other people to have their own life away from it all. It’s five kids – it’s a lot.’

It certainly is, and it’s hard to imagine how demanding it must have been during lockdown, when the only one missing was the nanny. The public got a glimpse of this when Sophie performed a weekly series of ‘kitchen discos’, broadcasting them live via Instagram, her husband filming on his phone. They launched these shows during the bleakest part of the pandemic, and the good will that emanated from them was enormously cheering. She would appear in a sequined jumpsuit or rainbow-striped dress, a pair of platforms at the end of her mile-long legs, and would serenade the camera while children wandered casually in and out of view. Sometimes her teenage son would jump in to rescue the baby from a trailing wire, or one of the boys would need a cuddle, and their mother would pull them in close, keeping her other hand on the mic.

It was charming chaos. The music encompassed hits from Sophie’s back catalogue such as ‘Murder on the Dancefloor’ and ‘Take Me Home’ – or ‘Stay at Home’, as she rechristened it – but also crowd-pleasing covers and theatrical numbers from shows such as Grease. For the audience, it offered uplifting relief from the frightening reality of the time: climbing death rates and isolation. It was comfort music, I say. ‘Exactly,’ she agrees. ‘And disco’s always had that for me anyway. It’s so euphoric and joyful, and it’s complex. In disco you can have the most painful, heartbreaking scenarios, but they’re in among something that makes you want to put your hands in the air and sing along. I think music can allow you the space to feel joy and anxiety at once.’

I am delighted to find that one end of their large kitchen still looks very much as it did, with the disco ball and a half-deflated helium balloon in place over the sofa. She confirms that it’s more or less always like this, perhaps minus the tinsel curtain. Colour and fun are everywhere in the house, from the framed retro artworks filling every wall, to the pinball machine in pride of place. At the other end of the kitchen, a diner-style menu-board for the kids bears the words, ‘Be polite or no service.’

Leaving the children with the nanny, Sophie and I head out to chat on a bench in the park. She’s wearing an embroidered navy dress and a red fluffy cardigan, with red lipstick that has mostly worn off; at 41, she’s truly beautiful, with very pale green eyes. Despite what we’ve seen from her on Instagram, it hasn’t been an easy time. For one thing, there was the fall from her bike in June that left her in hospital with a gory head wound. When I mention it, though, she brushes it off with, ‘I cannot dine out on that any more.’ Then she adds, ‘I mean, I don’t recommend cycling off a towpath – it did hurt.’

‘I knew that this was something that was happening in millions of households. I do worry about all my parents – I say “all” because I’ve got step-parents as well – but I think really it was focused on John, because he’s so vulnerable. It’s such a weird, torturous thing isn’t it for human beings, if you say that hanging out with someone you love is the one thing that might actually endanger them? How can you wrap your head around that?’

She hasn’t been thrilled with the government messaging around the virus. ‘“Stay at home” is clear and concise and all ages get it. “Stay alert”? I hardly ever feel alert. I don’t feel alert now.

And we’ve all shown we’re good at following guidelines that make sense, but you can’t keep bending it for people. Look at the effect when the rules were made flexible.’ She seems to be referring obliquely to the Dominic Cummings/Barnard Castle debacle. ‘We all thought, “Oh well, if we could have been going off and having day trips all this time, why was I staying at home and not seeing my mum, who lives ten minutes away?” I found that really tough.’

The kitchen discos were as much for her and the family as they were for the audience. ‘It was Richard’s idea. One day we were making plans and doing stuff, and the next day it was like, boomph, everything shut down. Suddenly we were just home all the time, all work cancelled, all the festivals… I was supposed to be going to Australia, New Zealand, I had gigs all round Europe. And Richard was, like, “Well, why don’t we do a gig here, and it gives us something to do and a bit of fun?” I think we missed everybody.’

Performing during that time, even via Instagram, gave her a huge sense of connection, she says. ‘I honestly don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t had that, and I don’t know how it would have been for our family, because it became really precious.’ She’s now planning a Kitchen Disco Tour next May (there will also be an album, out this October), and hopes it will offer audiences a cathartic experience. ‘I want to provide a place where people can get lost in the moment. I want them to walk out of there and go, “Oh my goodness, I didn’t know how much I needed that.”’

It was no surprise to her boys to see her dressed up and performing; Mickey sleeps in the room where she keeps her fantastic stage wardrobe, and they’ve all been with her to festivals, gigs and recording studios. It was clear from their low-key presence in the kitchen discos (she left it up to them whether they wanted to be there or not) that they’re not fazed by it. ‘The older I’ve got, the more the me at home and the me on stage is the same person anyway,’ she says. Her first solo album came out almost 20 years ago; this one will be her eighth.

She’s also just celebrated her 15th wedding anniversary with Richard. Theirs was a whirlwind romance that stuck: ‘I found out I was having a baby after only about six weeks,’ she says with a smile. ‘We’d known each other for a while – he’d been in my band – but we’d literally just started dating and I hadn’t even really told anybody.’ Sonny was born two months prematurely, thus arriving only eight months after they’d got together.

And they’ve now got him almost to adulthood, I say. ‘Yeah, and he’s lovely; he’s his own person. You know, parenthood is so much more reactive than I ever thought,’ she says. ‘I thought it was all about what you put in. It’s not. I realised it the day I had him: I looked at this tiny baby and I thought, “Oh my goodness, you’re Sonny, and now I’ve got to help you show me who you are and what you need from me.”’

To raise five children while continually working is no mean feat, and she mentions that there were tense moments during lockdown. But she and Richard clearly make a good team. ‘I guess the thing that’s often not celebrated as much in long-term relationships – and I think this goes for family members, friends, all sorts of relationships where there’s love – is that we actually really like each other,’ she says. ‘I really like who Richard is, and I respect him and I like spending time with him.’

She took an extended break after Sonny came along, following a difficult birth. ‘But to be honest, the more babies I’ve had and the older I’ve got, the more confident I’ve become about what I can do around being pregnant and having kids,’ she says. ‘I’ve been better with the last couple at just keeping going with the work either side of it. I have a job where I can basically call the shots a bit. I’m very lucky with that and I totally exploit it. Also I like it if I do a big gig and I’m six months pregnant – I feel quite clever,’ she laughs.

The challenges of this complicated life have inspired Sophie’s new project – the podcast Spinning Plates, on which she chats to other working mums, including Caitlin Moran, Fearne Cotton, the mummy blogger Candice Brathwaite, and her own mother Janet. ‘I’ve got such a brilliant array of women, and honestly it feels like a privilege to sit there for an hour and ask them loads of nosy stuff,’ she says. ‘Obviously the springboard is the idea of the working mother, but actually what really unites us is we’re all women, and there are so many things about being a modern woman… It’s a rich pot of stuff to go through, really.’

She loved having the chance to interview her mum. ‘In my head she’s always been this real trailblazer and very confident. She never seemed to have any guilt with any of her work, and I’m glad, because it gave me a good role model of “It’s OK for me to be selfish enough to have my work and keep it separate if I want to, and do the things I want to do.” I don’t think I would have been confident enough if I hadn’t had a mum like that; I’ve struggled a bit to give myself permission sometimes even with that.’

Another chat, with Yvonne Telford, founder of the fashion brand Kemi Telford, made her realise that at times she’s too self-critical. ‘She said she hates it when she hears women say, “Oh, I’m such an idiot,” and I was, like, “God, I do that all the time.” Even with the podcast, when I first started writing to people I wanted as guests, I’d say, “Don’t worry, I know how it goes – you’re probably too busy to reply.” Then I was, like, what am I doing? I’m saying to them, “Ignore me!”’ She bursts out laughing. It sounds as though making the podcast might be rather empowering. ‘Yes,’ she agrees.

[zer0landia]

renato’s facebook updates, so far, run through the least incoherent online translator i can find

3/8

When one is forced to stay at home, for an emergency like the one we are experiencing, it seems that the need to join in seems to prevail. Seeking in others, sharing and courage to face such a situation! I, who have spent most of my life on the streets, can certainly understand your enormous discomfort. Yet it is precisely because of the threat of this virus that we must ensure that it dies of its own ineffectiveness. To love and cherish each other. That is what we are asked. Perhaps we have run too fast. And in the race we did not anticipate, that we would find obstacles, tougher than usual.

Let's stay at home and take care of the things we have overlooked: phone calls to friends and relatives.

That book waiting to be read. Help your little brother or sister with their homework (so that they don't lose the thread). Collect from grandparents those testimonies of life that will not fall into silence.

Space for thoughts. To projects. To music... Time will be our ally. Let him work so that in the next few days he can put the right distance between us and this horrible bogeyman!

I think I'm interpreting the thought of our great family of music: stay safe in the knowledge that the next show we will put on will be to celebrate VITTORIA!

Renato Zero

3/13

A thought for the victims of the coronavirus, who left in a guilty and unjust silence. To them: the dawn of a new day, in a world, fairer and more reflective than this!

Renato Zero

3/14

To the men and women who, beyond their medical profession, provide themselves to defeat this pandemic. risking even their lives. You are the best and most magnificent part of this country.

By demonstrating a will and a spirit of self-sacrifice, still fortunately present. Skills, which we thought we'd lost.

This is the Italy that made us unique in the world!

Thank you from all of us, for this significant example of yours!

The coronavirus kneels before such solidarity!

And let us live free again!!!!

Renato Zero

3/15

People, I miss you so much! Smiles miss you. The chatter.

The effusions. Kisses miss you. Promises.

Trades. To window-facing. To carefreeness. Miss you every time it's too quiet.

That fear and melancholy reoccurs.

But you, do not miss the prudence. Commitment.

Patience. Respect for yourself and the rules... Evidence ... that will allow you to love tomorrow, tomorrow and then tomorrow again ... to infinity!

Renato Zero

3/16

Hello Life! Sorry we neglected you. Too caught up in the damn race. Always asking more of ourselves, in achieving goals that are not always necessary or rewarding. And so we have drifted away from our real and fundamental priorities. We have perhaps been light and ungrateful to you. But tomorrow is a new day... It was, even when we came into the world.

And unconsciously we ventured, ecstatic and eager to taste every moment that you, Life, would offer us.

We're here to tell you how happy we are that you're still with us.

Available mother. Faithful sister. And indispensable ally.

Give us again those cues to overcome all fear and uncertainty.

So that we may make you proud and proud. And let this deafening silence turn into a thunderous, contagious laugh!!!!

Your humble representative:

Renato Zero

3/17

To all Superman and Wonder Woman without super powers, prayer, not to defy certain elements, currently circulating on our planet Earth. Certain negligence would risk thwarting the efforts of simple but diligent humans. Understandable a normal frustration, in not being able to cross that doorway ... but once violated that limit, there is a risk that the imprudence of such action, could reflect negatively on the health of our family (and not only). Therefore, get out of the comic book and I recommend: Judgment!

Life requires continuous sacrifice. But then, fortunately, it can always happen, that the sky could turn even more blue and an even more appreciable embrace.

Renato Zero

3/18

We feared tsunami. Earthquakes. Cyclones. Acid rain.

Radioactivity and various cataclysms.

Today we're dealing with you, tiny, yet malignant entity.

You must feel so amazing that you've come into our lives and turned our lives upside down. And here we are. Faced with a devious enemy, you, forcing us to siphon our attention to others.

To suppress the momentum. To hold back kisses.

Surely this progress and globalisation have presented us with a truly exaggerated bill. Back to you, we advise you to retreat, and yet quickly! That if all men disappeared, you would lose power and effectiveness, and surely you, you would regret having been born.

Renato Zero

3/19

"Renato, I dreamt of you last night! What a beautiful dream it was. We met again after a long time, but it wasn't 2020... it must have been the '90s, I was a kid and you were a kid, both with long hair. We hugged each other tightly, tightly, no trace of the amuchina (maybe it didn't even exist at that time)...

How we missed the hugs, the noise of the cups on the bar counter, the smell of coffee. We also miss the fights in traffic. But there is no lack of hope.

A hope nourished by you, who have dedicated a lifetime to music and your audience. Music is helping us, saving us.

On the one hand, there are the doctors on the front line, doing the impossible.

On the other hand there are you, there are you poets at the turn of two millennia, who light up from our coffers and illuminate our souls again, bring back the smiles on our sometimes lost face.

Thanks Renato and best wishes for Father's Day!

We are all your children!"

From a fan of mine who's already been through a tough time. But who obviously hasn't lost his faith! Thank you to everyone like him.

Renato Zero

3/20

Here I am! A man before an artist. But above all, a grandfather! With his years and his frailty. All that I am and that I have learned in all this time, could be a useful protection to help my two little girls to grow up in safety and serenity. A great responsibility.

But also a formidable opportunity for me, that thanks to the intervention of our Lord, I have found myself a son and a beautiful and prosperous family. The primary thought of the grandparents is not alone, the natural preservation of themselves. But above all, the joy of being able to follow the dreams and hopes of those who are looking to the future.

So love and protect these grandparents!

Don't let them miss caresses and smiles, never!

Don't keep them in the darkness of desire. Doubts and uncertainties that will sooner or later appear before you.

Today, everyone is a soldier. Everyone has a task and a responsibility... And if it's to be a war, we don't want slackers or deserters! And age, this time, is only a minor detail.

Because to win; you need everyone's heart. Indiscriminately!

...and watch out for grandparents. Don't underestimate them. They know better than the devil!!!!

Renato Zero

3/21

The time that decides and conditions the unfolding of life on this planet. That establishes rules, modalities, rhythms and pauses, in the path of men. This time enjoys infinite power, which even allows it to intervene in the stories of each of us.

This time, which is said to be, cursed and tyrant. Carnal cousin of fate. Today, if he were merciful, he would have to rig our clocks to give the "Covid" such an acceleration that he could take him away from us for good. Too bad we made an enemy of time. Neglect him.

Not giving him the importance he expected from us. So many hours lost, behind sterile prospects. Questionable encounters. Cloudy affairs and loves often commuting or temporary if not unhealthy. Air! Yes, we miss that. Precisely that oxygen, which allowed us to appreciate the space and that expanding our lungs let us enjoy that feeling of freshness and satiety. Let's take back that time. Spread it out a little bit for everyone so that everyone can enjoy it.

That time in which we launched our projects, like the suitcase on the ferry in front of us before we boarded... Because that suitcase went and must be saved. Because the future is in there.

Right there in that little suitcase are our great aspirations...

I love you all very much.

Renato Zero

3/22

So we're back to the masks. An ancient way, to represent moods and feelings. Sometimes grotesque. Sometimes dramatic.

Others, rhetorical or dreamy. And then again, mystical or hieratic.

So many ways of communicating life. Today's ways are the same. They are generously opposed by those who unwittingly bring negativity and those who unwittingly risk being involved in it... Me, I have a warehouse full of masks.

I've worn a lot of masks all this time.

But not to hide, but to look for me.

To answer my fears. My shyness.

A use, which made me stronger and more aware, of the many roles I would have forced myself to play. There are many "I's" inside each of us. Often repressed, or at least not expressed to the maximum.

Today the mask is for everyone. Becoming indispensable.

And whoever wears it lets that childlike tenderness shine through, which must be understood without the use of words. Without making a sound. Children observe and wait for signals, to regulate themselves on what to do.

Which direction to take. And how to move. The mask therefore induces us to be attentive and reflective. And maybe when we will finally be given to take it off, maybe then, we will have definitively defeated: The intruder.

...the only possible weapon: Tenacity!

Renato Zero

3/23

The "comfortable"?

Earned sometimes. Other times mugged. Useful, yes! But not indispensable.

The fact is, we've been seduced and abandoned.

They've taken over our musculature.

The central nervous system. Our pockets and our primary thinking. Go back? I wish we could, overnight. But it's useful to be prepared to live on the essentials. To siphon off the resources. Don't waste anything that can be profitable tomorrow. Those of humble beginnings are prepared for anything. He smiles with hope. He appreciates what comes. And adapts to all seasons. Temperatures. The circumstances. He prays again. And when he does, think of it, he's convinced that God is listening. That simplicity is another magnificent shield. It's the Batman suit. It allows us to appreciate every lesson nature and life offer us. A large slice of Italy has peasant origins. They are the heirs to the grape harvest and the threshing grounds. Of the fruitful relationship with the clods of earth. This establishes, that the quality of our blood is excellent. Therefore, one is able to face the sacrifices.

Therefore, even without the comfortable, our inspiration and our ability to adapt will allow us a very good estate. To get as far away from laziness as possible. And from resignation.

And as my brother in art, Francesco De Gregori, would say:

Long live Italy!!!!

Renato Zero

if anyone here speaks italian, could you please look at the originals and tell me if it’s just the translator or does he really just write like that?? i mean it’s lovely just... very, very flowery. it’s pretty!!

[lilaetleloup]

the manipulator during the epidemic

I wrote an article I have not yet published that explains how good guys underestimate the amount of bad guys. And that bad people reveal themselves a lot more in times of crisis. I thought about wars or revolutions. But the current crisis is also accurate.

My estimation, based on books, observation, logic, history and, dare I confess, clairvoyance, is that there are around 35% of negative people in most democracies, the countries where we are less traumatized and thus, not pushed into survival mode.

In non-democratic countries, where this survival instinct has been activated, it has also the side effect to have people put the best of humanity aside, compassion and love, and it's my belief that in Russia and China, for example, the positive citizens are a minority. And it must be hell for a person with empathy, I feel, to live there.

Among this negative people, there are roughly 30% of selfish persons, who do not manipulate and can still have some conscience wake-up calls, 40% of narcissists who are manipulators without conscience but less Machiavellian cleverness than the other 30% of psychopaths or sociopaths. And this is to bring back to the total. In any given democracy, it means there would be roughly 10% of psychopaths.

And in peace time, this little world of egotistical people is more or less hiding behind the social norm of our "modern" times. But when there is a crisis, they clearly enjoy being themselves.

It could have been arrogance or it could have been a tough childhood that had the manipulator cut himself form a good part of his emotions. Notably the best part: at the bottom of his Pandora box, there is only pleasure left.

And with this spectrum of emotions which has him feel more like a stone than a human, it will be so much easier for him to adapt to social distancing - doesn't know anguish, nor depression - and to boast, from this "moral" point of view, that it's very easy to cope with the stuff, that you "just" have to lounge on a couch, or "just" have to watch TV.

And when, on Instagram, some people expect followers to admire their example, telling them that you "just" have to push on your internal happiness switch, as if we were all just clocks, I would bet a lot, that they are manipulators. And more so when this advice is written under a selfie.

The manipulator doesn't fear much but he fears being discovered, getting old, getting sick and death.

Not for those he loves, of course, he loves nobody but himself. Or yes, sometimes, those he sees as a projection of himself. His survival is essential to him, it may have been the reason he chose to cut himself from emotions. I do not mean here, that we, positive people, have reached a Buddhist detachment but that we are able to take risks for others and believe in something or someone more important than we are. For the manipulator, his own end is the end of the world. And the spectre of this Coronavirus has him lash out; anger is one of the emotions he has left. I'm  not surprised, then, when I read that conjugal violence is rising. As do divorces. And racial crimes.

Some negative people, in France, will harass medical staff, putting messages in mailboxes, asking nurses to think about their health - the nerve! - and move. Some owners will even put an end to rental contracts without notice. And I dare say it's not even legal.

Without a spouse or a scapegoat, you can always lash out on Twitter or from a window. Lynching and stoning is a group pleasure no negative person could refuse. And social media, in our “civilized” times is quite as good as the real thing. "Stay home" will he shout without bothering to know what the purpose of the walk is. The good old mask of virtue and common good allows some to express anger and hate with impunity.

The solitary walk in a forest is, it would seem, after the masturbation, the least dangerous activity in these dangerous times and it has been, within limits, authorized in France. And this hasn't prevented some, there, on Twitter, to clutch their pearls and threaten to shoot the walker. I even saw a picture of a tarpaulin under which the would-be-murderer claimed he wished to put his future victims. Murdering someone or talking about it, in the name of an hypothetical common good, in general, is a good indication of hypocrisy or manipulation. Torquemada comes to mind, who, in his own time, would have had the reputation of a saint, taking care of others’ souls, while enjoying the legal torture. Or Robespierre, claiming that in the name or purity and the good of a whole country, he was ready to behead half of it. And would have done so if he hadn't succumbed to his own tool first.

And it will be the same profile, and even the same person, who will walk his dog ten times a day or rent one, still clothed with the same respectability cloak, because in this case, you use the basis of the law, if not the spirit.

There is also some anger that can at least express itself in some French regions when they slash tires or damage the paint of cars that seem to come from other counties, worst of all... from Paris! They can at last show what they really think about the loathsome Parisian. And certainly, some people who have run to their secondary house when travelling was forbidden and they knew the consequences on the local community, may have been negative people. But it was not necessarily the case of those who had this reflex at the beginning of everything when they had no apparent symptoms. If I had been living in a flat at the time, in the absence of rules and thorough information on the matter, honestly, I don't know what I would have done. And the good people who indiscriminately damage others' cars (one local doctor whom it happened to, had a borrowed car with a "foreign" license plate ) should think that they should take care of their reputation. Because it would have an impact on tourism and their future prosperity.

When, in front of the crisis, and in the absence of any possible panic attack, so many citizens are hoarding toilet paper or disinfectant, hurting others who will have none, this lack of solidarity, this selfishness can also be the sign of someone being negative. Some go farther still, selling this stock at higher price: taking advantage of chaos and others is so manipulator 101.

In the united States, we have the selfishness and narcissism of young people who don't want to skip Spring Break and party on the beach before coming home and redistributing generously the virus among their families. The youngest among us are also those with the less symptoms and I hope they'll think twice before kissing their grand-mother. As, in a recent post, I spoke about this possible tendency, for older persons, to worry more and feel bitterness, I can as well have all generations hate me, telling that there are negative people of all ages.

And freedom, this right this country holds dear shouldn't be a right to be selfish.

Because those of us with a conscience know that our freedom stops where the others' begins.

We witness also, in the same country, the most extraordinary protests of negative people: a collective of Trump fans who protest in compact groups during a pandemic, against the closing of shops and stay at home orders. In the name of extreme individual freedom, the one that has no respect whatsoever for others' and is just selfishness in disguise. What I find interesting is that what I've seen written the most on their placards, is a demand to go to the hairdresser, which is plain shameless narcissism. The faces are scary masks of hatred and anger, the talk without any empathy, nor ambiguity: "these people will die anyway". No matter the number of deaths among others, as long as I can have my my my haircut. A speedy class on the sense of priority of negative people.

The most odious is when these people harass or insult medical staff that work day and night to save others, risking their mental and physical health. So, of course, there are also negative people among the medical staff, - I've been raised among them, I should know - but I can't imagine the anguish and sadness for the positive ones among them who work to save others. The horror.

The manipulator, the negative one, reveals himself in time of crisis.

And I think about my fellow good people who take risks to help others, without judging or condemning those who wouldn't be as exceptional. For example, this doctors who will maybe have to cure some of these protesters with nice haircuts who spit on them the previous day.

I think about my fellow empaths who, as well as having to fight against their own stress and fear, will be enclosed with a negative person focused on draining their energy. Who will suck them, and unload on them and generally show the whole range of his toxicity off.

The only good side of this is to have to toxic ones reveal themselves. Also their values and influence on a world and a destructive economy.

And when the worst will have gone, they will have learned nothing and won't have changed.

We will have to be the ones to learn from it and fix the mess.