Today, I got a sore throat in the afternoon. It’s the first time I’ve felt symptoms of any kind. Incredible the density and breadth of the anxiety and stress that a single, perhaps benign symptom causes. NO! How could I say benign in a time when no condition under the sun isn’t malignant and perhaps telling of a potentially lethal threat to one’s constitution?
Day 15 was the day when the forecasted unemployment numbers finally got to Savannah. This epoch is going to make the Great Depression seem like the Okay Depression - you heard it here first - and she became worried about the possibility of losing her job. She made a lot of phone calls to contractors during the course of her day and the prognosis in a handful of cases was grim.
I have been saying it a long time and here it is, possibly: the death of this version of capitalism is written on the winds. There’s gonna be a lotta pain, and shit I may not make it all the way through, but I can’t help thinking that it’s for the best. The coming period in American history should be called “post-capitalist America” and it would be nice if it bore all the hallmarks of a more Canadian socialist republic. I find it ironic and fitting that a paragon of capitalism, our own Cheeto Benito, was the one to usher it in. America went too far and has become a shadow of itself, and after ten years or so I hope that something better will emerge from the depths of this darkness.
And it’s written: those that voted him in looked for single issues in the conservative clearinghouse, like abortion, like religion (bizarrely, as the man only worships himself and pantomimes care for literally anything else save his daughter), etc. And their reward? The news now is around his suggestion that in order to save the stock market the US shouldn’t spend money on saving old people’s lives. It’s the old Eskimo tack! If someone is slowing the march across the tundra, they know it and the group makes them up an igloo and sets them adrift on a floe, or just leaves them behind to freeze. Problem solved! Right?! Our conservatives would have anyone believe that they yearn for days for which they weren’t alive to develop a nostalgia. The 30s, the 40s….days their parents experienced and were some of the boomer generation’s first baked-in lessons in living life. But alas! The cowboys range now not between mountains and mesas but between kerbs and home stores, feeding the horse diesel gas, itself with computerized guts where before you could simply disassemble an M1 Garand if your engine was acting up, and make the repair with gun parts like a PATRIOT. Sigh….those indeed were the days.
The truth to me about this time period, the one that is dying aflame before my eyes, is that it has been an exercise in mass hallucination. Fools in this country didn’t like that we were living in a time when they perceived a black man was telling them what to do and how to be, and was a painful daily reminder that inclusion and equity were eroding their sense of white entitlement. How did they go about future-proofing themselves? They elected an avatar of their fading dream: a huckster, a magnate, a man whose addled mind remembers the America they do and has promised its resurrection. He is the emptiest of suits, a homunculus consuming only fast food for the television cameras.
But this is all known.
What isn’t known is how far the country will have to sink in order to rid itself of its capitalist past. Perhaps there is no bottom too deep. We are on a ride, and trying to control one’s destiny at the moment feels like a vain exercise that can only produce anxiety and fear in the unfathomable quantities that I mentioned earlier. Speaking of which, here are today’s headlines as they have presented themselves to me:
British PM Johnson tests positive for coronavirus - Reuters
Trump claims U.S. states don’t need the amount of ventilators they’re asking for: ‘I don’t believe you need 40,000 or 30,000’ - Newsweek
Gamestop to permanently close over 300 stores - Comicbook.com
Trump’s death cult finally says it: Time to kill the ‘useless eaters’ for capitalism. Republicans say the quiet part out loud: Americans must die of the coronavirus in order to save capitalism - Salon
Greek Australian Samaritan hands out $100 to each person at Centrelink - Neos Kosmos
In Belgium a first case has been reported of a cat being infected by Covid-19. The cat was infected by a human and also showed symptoms. - HLN.be
Corporate Socialism: The Government is Bailing Out Investors & Managers Not You - Medium
Amazon has been hiding product listings with faster delivery speeds - Vox
The discovery of multiple lineages of pangolin coronavirus and their similarity to SARS-CoV-2 suggests that pangolins should be considered as possible hosts in the emergence of novel coronaviruses and should be removed from wet markets to prevent zoonotic transmission. - Nature
German company Bosch produces 95% accurate test with testing time under 2.5 hours and no laboratory required - Faz.net
‘Holy Crap This is Insane’: Citing Coronavirus Pandemic, EPA Indefinitely Suspends Environmental Rules - Common Dreams
me, literally staring at the sun