Not Ignored Any More

Going Viral

This pandemic has revealed some underlying truths about capitalism that have been ignored:

“We’re Number One!  We’re Number One! … in Covid-19 infections.  This is modern nationalism.

When is a pandemic response also like martial law?  In other words, how do you advocate for socialized medicine, for aid to New York, against Trump, against the corporate bailout, or anything else?  Suggestion:  1 person every 6 feet with signs, geared up with protective masks, gloves and face shields or goggles, on both sides of the longest street in town.

Then there are also strikes of ‘essential workers.’  Staying home might make the bosses think twice.  And think fast.  Instacart workers might go out tomorrow.  Amazon works might also go out.  Unionization doesn't look so distant.

Pittsburgh sanitation workers wildcat for protective gear

“Health versus Economy!”  Really!?  Let’s open the restaurants and churches so that we can also fill up the clinics, hospitals, morgues and cemeteries.  No mention of what losing productive workers might cost economically, not to mention the social cost.  Both are intimately connected, just as jobs and environmentalism ultimately are, but that won’t stop the capitalists from trying to divide the undividable.

Who knew that many workers in the U.S. were one or two paychecks away from running out of money?  Oh wait, this has been known for years.

There is life after shopping.

Learning to cook is actually good.

Reading is also not dead.

If you don't like music, you are in trouble.

Nature isn’t sick.  The sick humans have dropped environmental standards however. 

Mass layoffs in Cambodian or Bangledeshi textile industry are occurring because no one is buying fast fashion.  We now know a world economy centered on consumers in rich countries or among wealthy classes is not a stable economy.

A plunged casino stock market.  We now know an economy centered on making bets in private markets is not a stable economy.

The sadly unprepared U.S. health system, dominated by profit and right-wing politics.  We now know a patchwork, private health system is uniquely unqualified to deal with a general health crisis, let alone provide anything resembling universal health care.  But Biden’ His Time is still the front-runner!

The ruling class has been crying poverty and recommending austerity for everyone but themselves or the military for years.  In the process they counsel that the pace of ‘change’ has to be very, very slow or non-existent because it’s expensive, you see.  For the second time in 12 years when their system is at stake trillions of dollars have suddenly appeared.  Hmmmm… 

Our town now has free WIFI internet for a few months.  How could that be?

The neo-liberal strategy of building necessary things outside the U.S. has come home to roost, especially in an emergency.  And emergencies always arise. 

Matt Stoller pointed out in a Guardian article and a combative Democracy Now! interview that Sanders, Omar and Warren’s support of the Virus Bailout/Stimulus bill in the House and Senate has hidden trillions in corporate welfare - far above the $500B reported.  Every industry wanted a handout and many got one.  As part of this the investment banking firm Blackrock will be handling the issuance of funds, for a fee.  Stoller estimates that the real handouts to corporations hidden in the text amount to $6-$10 trillion.  Stoller quotes Republican and head of the U.S. National Economic Council Larry Kudlow as saying it is really a $6T bailout.  Some on Wall Street see $10T as possible.  It is not clear if these numbers are on top of earlier actions or a supplement to them.

If true and accurate, Sanders has officially begun to transition from a pyromaniac to a sheep-herder.  ‘Disaster capitalism’ has won another round in making the rich richer and the U.S. more unequal, looting the ‘democratic’ federal government for their own gain.

We are not ‘the wealthiest country in history” or “the world” or “on the planet.”  Only our capitalist class is.  Stop repeating that cliché.

No tears for the cruise ship or oil/fracking industries.  They are both symptoms of a larger problem.

Religious services have been declared non-essential.  About time.

Notice how the 'happy' advertisements on TV seem very odd?

Small businesses shut down, large chains stay open.  Who wins?

No more primaries – the winner has been declared by the DNC and the media.

Whose important now?  Nurses, doctors, home health aides, grocery store workers and warehouse people, truck and delivery drivers, postal workers, factory workers, unemployment clerks, teachers and so on.  I.E. not small businessmen, not most professionals, not even most white collar paper-pushers and certainly not the upper class.

The environmental subtext of this virus relates to how humanity has impinged on natural environments, disrupting habitat and then gorged on the animals it found there. A recent report in Grain refines this, as they claim factory pig farms were also involved in the spread.  Factory meat farms are biologic petri dishes for pathogens.

At bottom this crisis has revealed that our human body – our health – is an existential issue for society.  They call it mortality. And that every human except religious fundamentalists and the upper class share something very basic.   Which is why we obviously need socialized medicine, which will return the human body from being a commodity to itself.

May Day has a number of books regarding pandemics and health-care from a left-wing point of view.  Other prior reviews on this subject, use blog search box upper left:  “Who Gets Bailed Out?”

With apologies to Jeffrey St. Clair. 

Note:  May Day is on lockdown due to the virus and a robbery.  Please call ahead or knock on the door to pick up a book.

Red Frog

March 29, 2020