Right around the beginning of quarantine, I watched an interview with Mark Cuban. (This was part of my secret Antifa tactical training. My eyes were clamped open Clockwork Orange-style for thousands of hours of Mark Cuban footage to make me more bloodthirsty and lethal when I finally attack him while pitching a hard seltzer for dogs on Shark Tank.) In the interview, Mark Cuban offered this tip for young people: “The first thing people will ask you when this is all over is ‘How did you make use of the quarantine?’ And you can either say, ‘I took a Coursera class on machine learning,’ or ‘I sat on the couch playing Fortnite.’”
Fortunately, Mark was wrong. Nobody will ever ask you that. A decent person will not inquire how your pandemic went, because the answer is more likely to be “My grandpa died, I got laid off, and I’m genuinely fucked,” than “I took a bold step toward a new career.”
At the heart of Mark Cuban’s view of the situation is an unwavering belief in individual choice. It could be the tagline of a scam artist motivational speaker who sells $500 seminars to desperate people: “You choose who you are in this world! You are the sum of your choices!” But pandemic life is defined by choicelessness. Our jobs slipped away for reasons beyond our control, followed by our unemployment checks. The other jobs to get are dangerous or nonexistent. We wear our masks and stay home, and still we get sick. We make plans for the future and they always fall through.
However, there is one choice I’d never thought about before that keeps crossing my mind in The Time of Corona: What country should I live in? It seems to me that people are seriously considering exit plans. Watching the rest of the world move on with their lives practically begs us to imagine life elsewhere. Of course, in 2016, people joked about running north to Canada if Trump won. That was obviously not serious, and if you had the means to instantly relocate to another country you probably didn’t really believe that a single presidency could ruin your life. But now, I’m considering it more honestly. If Trump wins and thing gets worse, what would be the final straw before I jumped ship? Where would I go?
Maybe I’d leave the American experiment pretty early. I’d Irish exit without a word, leaving the party to dwindle down without me. The ends of parties always suck anyways, with everyone drunk and sad-horny or higher than a blimp playing Mario-Kart. It doesn’t even feel like a betrayal of my country for me to quit and go elsewhere. I’m Jewish. My entire family history is people barhopping from one country to another, having a couple drinks then leaving when the DJ puts on something a little too Nativist.
But I don’t know where I’d go. (And not just because of the coronavirus travel restrictions.) Most of the appealing, affluent countries know what they have and aren’t willing to just let people in. Without a family tie or significant capital, it’s pretty hard to immigrate somewhere. Besides, as a comedian and writer, I have none of the specialized skills these countries want. (The Uzbek government did say I could come if I helped insert covert anti-Kyrgyz sentiments into their sitcoms). Italy has a program where you can live there if you restore a rural, decrepit farmhouse, but then I’d need to have a loud, stocky wife who yells at me for tasting her sauce then chases me around with a rolling pin.
The one country I could move to easily is Israel. But that’s not happening. Besides the war crimes, ethnic apartheid, rampant corruption, constant drought, and colonialism, the lifestyle simply does not appeal to me. I don’t want to have one dreadlock and walk around wearing orange capris, sandals, and an assault rifle. I don’t want to live in a permanent mental fog because I did MDMA for 400 consecutive days during my post-military rumspringa in Peru. I don’t want to earn a living running ATV tours for Birthright trips that includes a mandatory $31 falafel lunch in the middle.
When it comes down to it, the decision of where to go is quite difficult because there are maybe a dozen countries that are potentially preferable to the United States. And they don’t really want me. So, I’m not going anywhere. I don’t have a choice. But one thing I’ve learned from this pandemic is that the absence of choice contains some small liberation. There’s a nihilistic comfort to losing your autonomy. In a previous Chazzy’s World, I likened the experience to going from steering a powerful motorboat to a directionless liferaft. At some point, you stop trying to get somewhere and just focus on keeping the damn thing afloat.
This week, the Washington Post reporter Jeff Stein has been sharing posts from r/unemployment on Reddit. I have read and reread them. They paint a heart-wrenching picture of our country’s other epidemic: despair. Here are some excerpts:
I’m on my way to another state for a medical emergency with my fiancé and I’m broke. Tomorrow my $250 comes in. The $600 pua was keeping her medicine in stock. I can’t afford one copay. Jesus I hope they come to an agreement soon.
Now the time comes where I’m literally on the verge of losing my truck, my credit, and my sanity and the suits and ties just look on, while I financially bleed out and lose everything that I’ve worked hard and improved myself for, in my adult life. I need some serious help, man. I’m drowning in my own agony and I don’t know what to do anymore.
Idk what to do and I’m ready to say **** it go to vegas and drop my last 200$ on black and if it misses take a toaster bath.
In his column this week, Chris Hedges writes that this is what it feels like to live in an empire’s decline. He writes: “The belief .. that if we work hard, obey the law and get a good education we can achieve stable employment, social status and mobility along with financial security becomes a lie. ... The disintegration of these bonds has unleashed a widespread malaise ... The self-destructive pathologies that plague the United States — opioid addiction, gambling, suicide, sexual sadism, hate groups and mass shootings — are products of this anomie.”
Coronavirus has revealed the underlying savagery of American life. Our nation is a cage match melee of individuals fighting each other for survival, with kleptocrats gambling on the winner from the boxseats. Our individual sufferings, consequences of the same virus that brought the entire world to its knees, must be our own faults. You lost your job because the government forced your employer to close? Fuck you for thinking the government would help pay the bills. You’re especially susceptible to a lethal virus? Fuck you for thinking your neighbors should protect you. You paid for the most expensive healthcare in the world your entire life? Fuck you for thinking it would save you.
We have to fix this country. We have to rebuild it from the ground up. There’s nowhere else to go. We have no choice.