These kids are like 4 years old. Four of them. Playing Ring Around The Rosie. Repeatedly.

Parents are still teaching kids this? They must’ve had a better experience with the Covid pandemic than I did.

When I think about people who voted for Trump, largely because they’re upset at how the Democrats handled Covid somehow have no memory of how Trump and Republicans were in charge. How there was no national strategy, how states were left to fend for themselves and figure it out. How the CDC’s public communication was kneecapped and routers through the hangable Mike Pence. The deaths, the job losses, the inflation, impeachment 1 over election interference,  the insurrection, impeachment 2 over treason, the January 6th hearings which detailed (with loads of direct evidence) an attempted coup and fraud against all Americans by Trump and his cabinet. These people somehow didn’t recall any of this when they went back to the ballots a couple of years later.

George Orwell’s Animal Farm is dizzying in its portrayal of changing histories flowing out of a fictional democracy as it succumbs to fascism.

They used to call it “spin” when the news pushed information through its filters to sanitize it for a more advertiser friendly take. The internet is a tornado of memory. Data is kept in the cloud. There is no need to remember anything anymore.

Then I’m reminded that I remember something or another about this Ring Around the Rosie not even being about the plague. That it was originally called Ring a Ring o’Roses, and that there was no reference to ashes and kids either danced around a rose bush or a designated “rosie” player in the middle. That it might have something to do with pagan dance rituals or folk traditions or whatever.

That the plague connection was made up by some creative people looking to add more to the history. To keep things exciting. Still, it’s creepy when kids dance and sing, I wish they would stop.