Ran Gainesville's Depot Parkrun This Morning

Just at sunrise, when the weekly Gainesville Depot Parkrun began today's 5K (3.1 miles) event, it was 46 degrees with 97% humidity under clear skies.  I was there at Depot Park, a few blocks south of downtown, but Melissa had to be at work.  My intent for this race was to just run/walk it as I have been doing for the last few months and see how I felt at the end.  And in the end I felt fine, finishing with another sub-30 minute time at 28:18...then I promptly drove back home.  As I was sitting there in my car before the run, looking at all the assembled humanity around the starting line, I thought that it would be much better for me were there a system where individual runners could go somewhere, run a specific distance, and be "officially" timed and recorded as having publicly accomplished it instead of having to go through all this mingling and crowding in a race setting. I must be out of my mind to actually be considering running in a future big-city distance event when this much more subdued one irritates me so, but there were a lot more people than usual out there this morning.  In any event, click HERE for today's results...

Mass Rallies Creep Me Out

Back in the fall of 2020, when COVID-19 was going full blast, then-Florida Gator football coach Dan Mullen praised the over-full College Station, Texas stadium of his rival Texas A&M following a close loss to them, stating that UF needed to "pack the Swamp [their stadium]" as well.  Soon thereafter the next game against Missouri was moved back because of several positive COVID test results among the team.  Now, although this scourge is still raging unabated, there are no crowd restrictions, and the expectation is full stadiums in every football game out there...at least the college ones.  Just a few months earlier in '20, news outlets like CNN were meticulously filming...often using zoom lenses to distort the effect...beaches that were beginning to draw crowds following their reopening, trying to create the impression that assemblages were still improper.  Then, suddenly, mass protests started after the police killing of George Floyd and, just like the snap of a finger, the emphasis on avoiding crowds changed to embracing them...for the protest demonstrations across the nation, that is.  And so have mass rallies, protests and sporting events been used to manipulate public opinion even to the point of brainwashing people along a certain narrative.  I like to watch sporting events, but the tens of thousands of yelling fans creep me out almost as much as do those Trump rallies with all the head-bobbing grinning zombies pictured together behind the Orange Man as he blathers on.  I have attended a church in which a pastor got up in front of the congregation and acted as if we had all been doing something wrong by previously staying at home and watching online services in 2020, and then pronouncing it all over (even though it wasn't).  Packed churches, rallies, demonstrations, stadiums, concerts, whatever...getting a bunch of people together in a concentrated, noisy mass to parrot whatever happens to be the organizers' intended narrative...is the opposite of democracy, where people can individually calmly, quietly, and anonymously select their own leaders and vote on referenda.  I remember in 2016 immediately following Trump's election (which I recognized although I didn't vote for him), demonstrations against him were organized with the ongoing mantra "NOT MY PRESIDENT!".  I thought that was a bit over the top, but four years later it paled in contrast to Trump's refusal to concede the 2020 election and his call to Washington for militant groups like the Proud Boys to swarm the Washington Mall in protest of the Electoral Vote official certification by Congress, resulting in the violent storming of the US Capitol building.  If you derive a sense of legitimacy about anything by seeing masses of assembled people agreeing with you, then I believe you are a part of a serious problem that is only growing in this country.  Sure, I get it at sporting events...it's fun for everybody to get together and root for their team.  On the other hand, I was watching the baseball playoffs the other day and the home crowd, whenever their pitcher was on the mound, would loudly boo whenever the umpire called a ball on a pitch that was clearly far outside the strike zone...there's a difference between being passionate for your cause and being a dishonest, sore loser...did you get that, all you Trumpies?  I didn't think so..