The Worm Turning; The Worms Squirming
‘The most damaged survive today as limbless trunks, others whose legs and arms were reduced to digital “flipper” extrusions from the shoulder...’ – Harold Evans on Thalidomide's casualties
Diary of a Dissenter: A Week From My Window.
SUNDAY. We head into the cithole centre to have lunch with some visiting friends — all women, as it happens — from Italy, Hungary, England and Brazil, whom we had not seen for several years. These are sharp and highly successful people, mostly members of a particular Catholic lay-movement. But the lunch would have been an eye-opener had we been buying in with anything more than mild optimism to talk of A Great Awakening.
Everyone is warm and friendly, but there is a slight edge to things, which sharpens perceptibly when the conversation touches on certain topics. The recent funeral of Pope Benedict XVI is one example: They love, or used to love, him very much, but now this love has a jagged edge because of the brooding presence of Bergoglio in the chair of Peter. Their movement is pro-papacy, regardless of incumbent, so they fall silent at any broaching of topics like Benedict’s dramatic abdication, the strange shifts and lurches things have taken in the past decade, the bizarre statements of the man claiming to be pope, and so forth.
But we keep things non-committal on those topics, and so it is de Covid that eventually threatens to end the lunch prematurely. We had marked them in advance as likely deplorables, but alas!, these good people have not the faintest notion what’s been happening in the world. I have a policy of not broaching the topic, but also, when the fictional drift of the conversation reaches a certain indeterminate pitch of delusion, of implementing my iron rule: If they don’t know, you have to tell them.
So I do. This part of the conversation kicks off with Rita contributing to a discussion about air travel and the information that we are currently prohibited from entering the US, on account of being unjabbed, triggering some eggshell-walking. I stay out of it as long as I can, until it becomes clear that our guests are all either totally on board with the vax mandates or are keeping schtum.
