Re: <nettime> The Communist Manifesto 2015 WTF

[Brian Holmes <bhcontinentaldrift@gmail.com>]

On Sat, Mar 28, 2020 at 7:06 PM Keith Sanborn <mrzero@panix.com> wrote:

> Either Morlock was pranking or it's a case the greatest skeptics
> being the most gullible.


Whatever the answer to that question, the weather in the United States
is currently excellent for madness of all kinds.

Starting about three days ago, the entire right-wing blogosphere,
twitter-verse etc is seething with condemnations of China, each
more outlandish than the last. These are driven from the top by
Trump, Secretary of State Pompeo, and trade adviser Peter Navarro,
who is in the process of drafting a new executive "Buy American"
order - at a moment when US hospitals are desperately lacking in
personal protective equipment, some 80% of which is sourced in China,
along with antibiotics and precursor chemicals for a wide variety of
medicines. The rhetoric on both sides simulates war, at the worst
possible moment for such posturing.

Also about three days ago, Trump pivoted from his momentary concern
for the health of the population straight back to his abiding fixation
on the health of the stock market, calling for the whole country
to be back to work by Easter - which is roughly when the epidemic
is expected to reach its peak in New York, to be followed later by
other cities. This move to "reopen the country" is driven by major US
capital interests. The first sign of it was a tweet last Sunday from
former Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein. The Easter part of the new
policy position is just another sop to the evangelical Christians who
form the majority of Trump's electorate.

Meanwhile the red meat of the right-wingers has become the country's
leading epidemiologist, Dr. Fauci, now widely reviled by the
MAGA fauna for having once addressed an encouraging email to
Hillary Clinton. Fauci is a distinguished laboratory scientist
and public-health advisor to both Democratic and Republican
administrations since the 1980s, when he began his career fighting the
AIDS epidemic. For much of the country he briefly served as the voice
of reason and the reassuring "top doc" - until the hate mail began.
His crime is correcting the most egregious factual errors ad-libbed by
the president.

The polarization in the country is probably impossible for anyone
outside to comprehend, except maybe Britons who had to go through
Brexit. Now, as Trump threatens to cut off aid to states whose
governors do not display proper thankfulness, we enter the tragic
period of spiraling deaths and collapsing hospitals - but with no
plan, no resources, no science and no compassion from the executive
branch. This morning (March 28) came the news of an executive signing
statement attached to the $2.2 trillion stimulus bill, to restrict
independent oversight of the money disbursed to big corporations. As I
write, the headlines coming out of the White House are about sealing
off New York from the rest of the country, presumably by force. Oh,
and I forgot to say that yesterday, Trump's coronavirus response
coordinator, Deborah Birx, began casting doubt on the Imperial College
study that finally caused the administration to take the epidemic
seriously. The blogospew / tweetorama is full of claims that the
lead scientist of that study, Neil Ferguson, has "walked back" his
conclusions, lowering his predictions of total fatalities. The reality
is that Ferguson is now factoring in the positive effects of the
quarantine measures that the right wants to lift as soon as possible.

Two weeks ago, Trump finally admitted the gravity of the situation
and began to address it in extended press conferences that have since
devolved into substitute campaign rallies. I deluded myself for a few
short days into thinking that a coherent public health response might
take shape. Instead the administration and its supporters have gone
off the deep end. The radical uncertainty surrounding the evolution of
the virus itself has been doubled by the chaos of competing private
interest groups and the delirium of the narcissist-in-chief, emulated
and replicated by half the population. Unfortunately, no one is
entirely immune to this chaos. The fever is gripping us all.

Stay safe, stay rational, stay empathetic. We owe it to the dead and
to all those struggling selflessly for the living.

Brian



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