Frat Boy

 

I first saw the connection to fraternities in a tweet by Robert Morro (@bmorro44) on July 27, 2021, calling Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida  “CEO of The Delta House.” This is my extrapolation on the theme.

As many of you know, I live in Florida.  I have found little more infuriating, than the positions the State has taken on the pandemic and how to handle it.

The latest surge in the Delta variant–which has now placed my own county at the forefront of affected areas in the US–has been met with stubborn assertions, that there will be no mask mandate, no masks in school, no local ordinances overriding the State’s own laissez-faire rules, and no order lasting longer than 7 days at a time.

Local officials are powerless to combat the variant with stricter rules.  And social-climbing Republican officials seize at the chance, to defy the CDC or other federal bodies, even the most common sense recommendation of masking in schools, to protect our vulnerable and unvaccinated children.  DeSantis got in trouble last week for referring to this practice as “muzzling” children.

“Freedom” is the clarion call  of these advocates of inaction, and “individual responsibility” is their mantra.

Having gone to a school with a big Greek (sorority and fraternity) presence in the 1980’s, I am vaguely aware of some of the excesses of frat boys.  They drank too much.  They did crazy things.  They defied authority, just to show they could.  They paraded their school pride, and then had their privileges taken away, when a particularly egregious hazing or a date rape showed up in the headlines.  They were the cute guys, the ones with charisma, the ones with money and a girl on each arm.  And yet, they didn’t seem to give a damn for anyone outside of their club.

This is, of course, a negative portrayal of an obnoxious few–I am painting with a very broad brush.

But the way politicians are acting at this moment reminds me of that frat boy swagger: so lauded and extolled on one side, and so widely mocked, on the other.

Let us only hope, that the officials tasked with our COVID response rise from their hangovers, wake up, and smell the coffee.  Before it’s too late.

 

The opposite of common sense:

The vain erection of a fence.

The sworn protection of our rights,

The guarding of them, day and night:

Beside the point.  Protect our lives.

 

The choice to be more free, than well,

Abhorring Regulation’s Hell.

Forbidding simple blanket rules,

You take away our greatest tools,

And local leaders look like fools.

 

And We, The People?  We believe.

In choosing for ourselves.  Deceive

Us.  Say we’re better off this way,

That mandates have no part to play,

That there will be no Hell to pay.

 

Some watch one channel, get the shot.

Some watch another.  They do not.

Some –worried shots are yet unproved,

And waiting, till their fears are soothed–

Run over, ’cause they failed to move.

 

This fight against the Nanny State–

What good is it?  When you conflate

The value of The Constitution

With our weaker constitutions’

Health, you merely wreak confusion.

 

The opposite of common sense.

A macho, doctrinaire defense

Of rights, which simply have no bearing

On the question:  Are we sharing

Germs, which kill each other off?

How can you turn away, and scoff?

And scurry off, a silent mouse?

 

So reigns the King of Delta House.

 

Copyright 2021 Andrea LeDew

 

For another look at the effect of firm leadership, this time, within the family, read Upstaged.