Lost Opportunities and Dastardly Deeds in the Age of Coronavirus
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On March 17th, I published an op-ed titled “Coronavirus Will Eventually Get Better, But America Never Will”, that made the argument that while everything should change because of coronavirus, but nothing would change because of corruption. This week the Republicans and Democrats did me the great favor of once again proving me correct when they passed a gargantuan $2 trillion “stimulus” bill that is really just a massive bail out and corporate coup, all while fucking over the middle, working and lower class people of this country.
The coronavirus is the iceberg that has hit the U.S.S. Good Ship Lollipop as it wandered lost in the fog of its own decadence. The delusional, the duped and the damned are left in shock, stunned that such a calamity could actually befall The Greatest Nation on Earth® they thought was invincible.
What the ruling elite are doing with this bailout bill is once again stealing from the poor in order to try to reinflate a bubble, in this case the post-2008 bubble, which is actually a bubble on top of a bubble on top of a bubble going all the way back to Reagan. What ends up happening when you reinflate bubbles is that they become more and more unstable and more and more untenable, and when they burst it takes more and more effort to reinflate them until there is nothing left in the lungs to exhale. Eventually U.S. economic policy will be reduced to bailouts that are the equivalent of a corpse giving CPR to another corpse.
For example, when the tech bubble of the late 90’s burst it was propped back up with the housing bubble. The housing bubble burst in 07/08 and that was propped up with the stock buy back bubble of 2009-2020, which has now burst upon the rocks of reality revealed by the coronavirus. The stock buyback bubble is what they are trying to reinflate with the yet another bazillion dollar corporate handout.
The bottom line is this, our economy is as fundamentally unstable as a one-legged stool and as crooked as a dog’s hind leg and has been for decades. The Reagan/Clinton casino banking model has always been just another Titanic, and this trillion dollar bailout package is nothing more than the hoarding of deck chairs by the rich as they throw the poor into the icy Atlantic of inescapable poverty to try and keep their financial monstrosity afloat for just a few glorious seconds longer.
As long time readers know, it wasn’t just last week that I was a bringer of bad news. In 2015 in a review of the Ridley Scott film The Martian, I wrote about how our economy was fatally flawed and that a tsunami was coming. I did the same thing in my 2016 review of The Big Short, where I wrote, “The house of cards is coming down whether we are ready for it or not…it isn't a matter of if…it is a matter of when. You can either prepare for the coming tsunami* or not, that is up to you…but what you cannot do this time around...is say that no one told you it was coming.”
CRISIS AS OPPORTUNITY
I have always maintained that crisis is an opportunity…for good or for ill. The coronavirus pandemic presents a unique set of problems, and the correct answers to those problems could possibly transform our country and society in extremely positive ways. The problem though is that our political class is so riddled with the cancer of corruption that any chance of good coming from this is basically nil, and the odds of bad things coming from it are so high they are off the charts.
With that in mind I decided to put together a little list of things that should or could have happened in response to coronavirus to save this country and its people…but never will. I’ve also compiled some terrible things that most likely will happen that are even worse than the $2 trillion bailout we just had rammed into our collective anus.
No doubt these lists will infuriate most everyone for one reason or another, but as you can imagine I am pretty used to that.
HEALTH CARE AND HEALTH INSURANCE
Coronavirus has shown that our deplorable health care and health insurance system is not just a health crisis, it is a national security crisis, and yet we have two political parties dedicated to preserving the corporate status quo that fails Americans and leaves the nation vulnerable.
Health care must be made not only a human right, but a national security priority.
Pandemic preparation must be as great a priority as our military preparation, as coronavirus has proven that we are much more vulnerable to invasion by illness than by enemy.
The for-profit health insurance industry must be eradicated from the face of the earth. In order to do this health care must be classified a national security priority so that funds from the bloated Pentagon budget can be diverted for a massive rebuilding of our medical infrastructure. This infrastructure includes building more hospitals, building a medical manufacturing base and training more nurses and doctors, as well as implementing a Medicare-for-all, single payer insurance system.
The implementation of single payer healthcare will also have the benefit of releasing working Americans from the indentured servitude that is employer based health insurance and the corporate slavery that is the abomination called Obamacare.
In terms of economics, having a robust national health care system and Medicare-for-all/single payer health insurance will create a safety net that will put American business and enterprise on equal footing with their competition across the globe. It will also free people from staying in jobs that mistreat them, thus giving more power to workers, and will invigorate the entrepreneurial spirit, freeing people to start their own businesses knowing that they wont have to carry the burden of their employees health care or worry about not having health care themselves if their business fails.
Another instrument that would spur economic growth and entrepreneurialism would be a Universal Basic Income. As Andrew Yang showed in his Quixotic presidential campaign, it is a manageable program that could be funded simply by fairly taxing a behemoth like Amazon. It would also be good to see a stake through the heart of the trickle down thinking that has brought the U.S. to this point in its demise. Some “trickle-up” economics would be a wise change of pace.
ECONOMICS, TRADE AND IMMIGRATION
Another national security crisis is the globalism and free trade that has decimated the working and middle class in America so that corporations and the investor class can increase their wealth and power.
Free trade is a national security crisis because our supply line runs through China and other nations, which leaves America, its citizens and military, weakened and defenseless since we rely on the Chinese for many of our medications and medical supplies. This is the equivalent of relying on Japanese manufacturers to build the engines of our fighter planes during World War II.
It is simply untenable for any nation to rely upon others for vital goods, be it weapons, food, energy or medical equipment. For the U.S. to be so intertwined with China and other countries is good for investors, but bad for America.
I don’t think we should go to war with China or be belligerent towards them, but I do think we need to unwind our economic relationship with them so that it benefits American workers and companies, and solidifies our national security.
China always behaves in its best national security interest, so why don’t we?
Immigration is another national security issue highlighted by coronavirus. If we were an actual country in control of its borders, and had even the the most basic competent leadership, we should have shut the borders down the second the disease began to pop up around the globe. But ever the buffoon, the orange shitbag Trump was afraid of acting decisively and spooking the markets that got spooked anyway, and he, as always, failed magnificently.
The reality is that illegal immigration leaves us exposed and it leaves the working class in America unprotected. I don’t blame illegal immigrants for trying to come here from the third world shitholes they’re trying to escape. Much of the reason why those third world shitholes are third world shitholes is because of malignant and malevolent American empire, colonialism and meddling.
That said, when the third world migrates to the first world, the first world deteriorates into the third world. Drive around the streets of Los Angeles and you’ll notice something pretty quickly, this is unquestionably a third world city. 60,000 people live on the streets in the shadow of multi-million dollar homes, where they all shit and piss and where many steal and shoot drugs…and the LAPD are basically mandated to not do a single thing about it.
The cheap and easily exploited labor of illegal immigrants creates third world conditions by depressing the wages of working and lower class Americans and enriching the corporate and investor class, thus expanding our extreme wealth disparity. To deny this is to be willfully ignorant and blinded by sentimentality.
What needs to happen is that our border must be closed and illegal immigration stopped entirely, and legal immigration must be put on hiatus for the next 5 years. If we don’t get our immigration situation under control we are doomed. The best way to do this is to punish companies that use illegal/undocumented immigrants…and don’t punish them with fines, punish their managerial class with actual jail time. The market for illegal labor will then quickly dry up, and American workers (of all ethnicities and races) will have more leverage to demand higher wages and better working conditions.
Temporarily stopping legal immigration and eliminating the often-exploited H1B visas for “skilled workers”, would force American companies to solely hire American workers, thus elevating the standard of living in…AMERICA.
Now, the counter-argument is that this will lead to corporations moving overseas for cheaper labor. Good for them. But the way to stop that is to put exorbitant tariffs on all products made outside of the U.S. All of them. If a product isn’t made by American workers, it should cost an arm and a leg to sell it in America…and missing out on the American market would be a death knell for most any company.
Manufacturing simply must be returned to America in full in order to maintain our nation. If a product isn’t made here…BY UNION EMPLOYEES… then it must not be allowed to be profitably be sold here. Protectionism must be our top priority, regardless of what it does to the smoke and mirrors bullshit of the stock market or the investor class.
If we don’t rebuild our country from the working class on up…our boom/bust economy will continue to collapse and reinflate and collapse again until we have wheelbarrows full of worthless paper we used to call money.
In addition to all of that, while we are building a plethora of new hospitals across the country we should also be building government run housing in order for the homeless to have shelter and be accessible to receive much needed health, mental health, addiction and employment services.
Now…will any of these things listed above, that seem not-so-pie-in-the-sky when compared to the magical trillions of dollars the government just conjured up to hand out to corporations, actually happen?
No.
Coronavirus has shown us that the ruling corporate class in America would rather we all die than implement a single payer, non-profit health care system. They would rather have cheap labor from illegal immigrants than a secure border. They would rather have their profits from globalist free trade than protect Americans from the vulnerability of a supply chain that runs through China and other nations. They would rather bail out the wealthy corporate and investor class than hard working Americans who have been struggling just to survive for decades.
That is the ugly, awful, cold, hard reality.
Speaking of terrible things…
CIVIL LIBERTIES
The coronavirus pandemic is much, much, much worse in scope and scale than the catastrophe of 9-11, and as i explain above our response must be much, much, much more aggressive if we ever hope to save this country.
Of course, after 9-11, Bush and company went to work to turn the crisis into an opportunity, so they quickly moved to strangle civil liberties with the Patriot Act, rev up the military industrial complex for some heavy doses of corruption, and invaded Iraq…not to mention put into place a torture regime. All not good.
As evidenced by the bipartisan coronavirus stimulus bill, the same corrupt and tyrannical forces will exploit this coronavirus crisis for their own nefarious ends. The money train has already left the Washington station with its final destination the pockets of millionaires and billionaires as well as those who hold the levers of power.
The next step is the rise of the implementation of the police state and the reduction of civil liberties. What is so ingenious about the civil liberties angle is that people are imprisoning themselves under house arrest and shaming anyone who disobeys. This is an Orwellian stroke of genius for the police and surveillance state.
Another benefit of more than half the U.S. population in confinement is that there is no opportunity for any type of meaningful protest like an Occupy Wall Street or anti-Iraq war marches or even the right-wing Tea Party protests.
I am not saying that people should violate the stay at home orders, or that this is not a legitimate health crisis, but I am saying it is extraordinarily convenient for the ruling powers that the social dynamic now in place is that to leave your home is an immoral act that could kill you or others.
In keeping with this theme of tyranny, the Department of Justice has asked Congress for the power to eliminate Habeas Corpus during emergencies…with coronavirus already officially being designated as a national emergency.
The government will always try to expand its powers when the population is scared and right now the population is scared both for their health as well as for their financial well-being. People are ripe to be manipulated and propagandized to accept just about anything in order to “feel” safe.
In addition,the technology companies in Silicon valley are teaming up with governments across the globe to figure out a way to track every person to see where their have been, who they have talked to and what they have done in order to “track the virus”. Ummm…yeah…that sounds totally benign.
Some states are now even saying they will stop cars and knock on doors to identify people, and decide who may or may not have been to states with high infection rates. States are also closing their borders to travelers from certain areas. Freedom of movement in these allegedly United States of America is no more.
Another wonderfully Orwellian maneuver is that many local governments, like mine here in L.A., are forcing the closing of gun shops. Yes, the last thing we need when our government, led by a voracious authoritarian tyrant, is declaring a state of emergency and moving to impose draconian restrictions on the entire population, is an armed populace.
So as a result of coronavirus we have the federal and state governments eliminating our First, Second, Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment protections. What could possibly go wrong?
As Orwell told us, “If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever”. Well America, the future is now….better get used to the taste of boot leather.
©2020