In the Same Breath: Documentary Review

New HBO documentary ‘In the Same Breath’ examines the horror of Covid and the Chinese and American government’s initial misinformation campaigns in response to the outbreak.

The film shows that trusting government, whether it be socialist or democratic in nature, is a fool’s errand.

In the Same Breath, the flawed but at times fascinating new documentary airing on HBO and HBO Max, chronicles the inept response and often deceptive practices of both the Chinese and U.S. governments in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic and the power of propaganda to shape perception.

The documentary features some harrowing and horrifying footage from within Wuhan during the height of the Covid outbreak. Scenes of patients gasping for air and dying, and families struggling to decide whether their elderly mother should die in a hospital parking lot waiting for care that will never come or admit death’s inevitability back in the comfort of their apartment, are gut-wrenching.

One of the most unnerving sequences in the film is when a CCTV camera captures the very beginning of the pandemic when it records a cavalcade of people from the Wuhan fish market coming to a clinic with a cough and high fever. The doctor who greets and treats them then develops the same symptoms and goes from hospital to hospital looking for care, but is turned away every time, and later dies.

Director Nanfu Wang, best known for her searing documentary One Child Nation about China’s one child policy, obviously has insights into the Chinese mindset and she is unforgiving when it comes to the Chinese government.

In the Same Breath spotlights the relentless drumbeat of misinformation from the Chinese government that at first diminished the disease’s power, with officials declaring it doesn’t transmit human to human and dissenters arrested for their heresy. When the truth became undeniable, the government shifts into propaganda mode and stories of brave front line medical workers flood the Chinese tv market, with the message that the government and people of China are working hand in hand to defeat the Covid menace takes hold.

Wang, an American citizen born and raised in China, is a skilled documentarian who has a keen eye for Chinese propaganda but a bit of a blind spot for her own American political bias.

The two main villains of In the Same Breath are the corrupt Chinese government and the incompetent Trump administration. Both are deserving of scorn, but at least in the American side of the coronavirus pandemic story, this documentary feels a little shallow as it isn’t just the Trump administration that has misinformed and deceived regarding coronavirus, it’s been the entire political and media establishment.  

The documentary almost seems quaint when it ponders potential Trump authoritarianism when in his absence vicious tribalism and covid misinformation have continued to flourish unabated.

To her credit, Wang does briefly highlight some Democrats as being misinformation agents too, and excoriates Dr. Anthony Fauci, for his repeated deceptions, especially early in the outbreak.

What Wang doesn’t do is challenge the orthodoxy of HBO’s decidedly liberal audience. For example, the scientists and medical professionals who signed a letter in the summer of 2020 saying that protesting against the lockdown was dangerous and but that protesting for Black Lives Matter was mandatory because of the alleged epidemic of racism in America, are never mentioned, never mind ridiculed. This egregious event is tailor made for Wang’s thesis but is undoubtedly a bridge too far for the bigwigs at HBO and their liberal audience.

She also studiously avoids the controversial lab-leak theory.

Wang’s main focus is that she’s afraid of what people in power will do to maintain and expand their power, especially during a pandemic. She highlights China’s numerous authoritarian abuses and the Chinese people’s not only acceptance of those abuses, but outright praise for them, to make her case.

This all seems very relevant to the hotly debated vaccination issue here in the U.S., but unfortunately In the Same Breath only covers 2020, so that issue is never raised.

I’m devoutly agnostic on the vaccine question, but it’s striking to me that the same Chinese tactics and techniques regarding Covid featured in the documentary are currently either being copied or mirrored by the elite in the U.S

For instance, Wang makes a strong case that China has undercounted the number of dead in order to make the government seem more effective, turning a possible 30,000 dead in Wuhan into just 3,000.

In contrast, the U.S. corporate media have used a bait and switch approach where the highest number is always the one featured, possibly in an attempt to scare people into compliance. For example, in the early days of Covid the death toll made headlines, then it subtly shifted to the number of positive tests, and now to the percentage of sick who are unvaccinated.

Wang also expresses frustration with the U.S. government’s refusal to share accurate data with the American public, a sentiment she admittedly shares with ‘deplorable’ Trumpers.

China bullied people into silence and compliance by making emotional and nationalistic pleas, while in the U.S., the argument for people to take vaccines is also emotional – do no harm to grandma, and collective – we need to work together for herd immunity.

The bullying impulse is strong in the pro-vaccine movement too, as restricting liberties and requiring vaccine passports for government aid have remarkably become the default position among elites, many liberals and the media, despite resulting in obvious racial disparities.

As for In the Same Breath, it’s a flawed documentary, but if viewers can overcome its limiting bias and see the authoritarian forest for the partisan trees, it’s worth watching for no other reason than to remind of the insidious and nefarious nature of power and how easily freedom is suffocated by governments meant to protect it.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

A Not-So-Very "Expert" Opinion on our Future with the Coronavirus

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 48 seconds

Even though I am currently a student at the Hollywood Upstairs Medical College School of Epidemiology, I have, despite the status and privilege conferred upon me by my incomplete (and entirely inadequate) education, refused to indulge the urge to make pronouncements regarding the COVID-19 pandemic.

That ends today.

In the last few months I have noticed a major shift in the public’s psychology and attitude regarding coronavirus. This shift began in May, about two months into the lockdown, when I perceived that people were pretty much done with all this bullshit.

At first the shift was subtle and took the form of whispered doubts and frustrations, but then as time progressed this sentiment became much more pronounced and went from talk to action.

For instance, there are a plethora of people I know who were all in on being lockdown good citizens in April, who then questioned the validity of it all in May, and by June were throwing caution to the wind and going out to restaurants and traveling for vacation.

These folks, who all happen to be liberals of varying stripes, still “believed” in coronavirus and would say that it was happening and was serious, but that “belief” was almost entirely more politically driven rather than driven by sober, rational thought, and was most definitely betrayed by their actions.

I totally empathize with these folks as the desolation of our current cultural Manichean paradigm of good v evil forces us into binary labels and thus encourages and enables cognitive dissonance to thrive in the absence of nuance. For instance, the media has repeated over and over again that only “bad people” don’t believe in coronaviruas or the lockdown, so right thinking “good people” couldn’t say that too even if they had doubts about the efficacy of the lock down or the dangers of the disease. This results in many “good people” (liberals) acting, mask wearing aside, almost identically oblivious to the danger of coronavirus as the “bad people” (Trumpers), but just labeling their actions and intentions differently.

The thing that stood out to me about this shift of thinking and behavior among these “good people” was that it was almost entirely a function of emotional and mental fatigue as opposed to the animating principle of the “bad people”, defiance. The “good people” who dutifully obeyed the lock down in April grew fed up, sick and tired and wanted coronavirus to be over in May, and by the time June rolled around they simply acted as if coronavirus was over, even though it wasn’t. Yes, these “good people” were certainly conscious and conscientious enough, to wear masks out in public…but also unconscious enough to consistently go out in public when it wasn’t even remotely necessary.

I understand the feeling, as the mental and emotional pressure of living in lockdown is something that most people, regardless of the supposed comfort of their gilded cage, simply cannot handle.

Luckily for me, despite my decidedly ungilded cage, I am a monk at heart and in practice, so isolation is less of a burden. That said, even I have felt the sting of lockdown and the pang of yearning for normal to return. I can only imagine the intensity of that feeling for normal people who want to get out and interact and socialize and “live”…of course the irony of that is that getting out and “living” in the age of Covid 19 can lead to dying.

This blatantly obvious spike in cognitive dissonance regarding the coronavirus by the general public over the last two months was mirrored by health officials. The greatest example of this was the collection of “health officials” that signed an open letter stating that coronavirus is a deadly serious pandemic but that people should ignore lockdown protocols and get out and protest against racism, but that going out or protesting for any other reason was a function of white supremacy.

This is, of course, absurdly insane, as the virus does not recognize the righteousness of whatever cause someone is protesting for or against…it just wants to propagate itself.

The fact that these "health officials” would so quickly and willingly sell their professional integrity for politically correct social status is a stunning thing, and glaring evidence of a powerful cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias at work.

The New York Times did an article on these “health officials” a month after their letter was released and it is simply remarkable to behold, not just for the “health officials” abject denial of reality and lack of any self-reflection, but also for the Times utter dishonesty and blatant bias.

The result of these “health officials” selling their integrity will only result in the public not believing what health officials tell them…not a good thing during a pandemic. This distrust is only accentuated by the fact that both Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx lied to Americans at the beginning of the pandemic when they told them that they didn’t need facemasks. This lie was told in order to avoid a run on facemasks…which is not a reason that will bolster confidence in the pronouncements of Dr. Fauci and Birx. At this point, why would anyone believe anything any health professional ever said?

The media is equally to blame in all of this as they have long hyped the dangers of coronavirus but totally ignored the health danger of mass protests in the wake of the George Floyd killing because that didn’t fit their narrative. Just another of many reasons to distrust the long ago discredited news media.

This recent spate of decadent madness among the establishment and the hoi pollloi, where social justice trumps science and where emotionalism trumps logic and reason, is a symptom of an empire in very steep decline….and it is only going to get much, much worse at an accelerated pace.

Which brings us to where we are today.

In the coming days, weeks and months and years coronavirus cases are going to spike…then fall off…then spike again. Deaths are going to spike…then fall off…then spike again.

People are going to lose their minds because the normal they so crave is not coming back anytime soon, if ever.

And as people lose their minds, their will be more and more civil unrest…which in turn will lead to more and more spreading of the disease. Eventually there will be a very strident, dare I say, tyrannical lockdown to try and stop the spread…but that is a bit farther in the future.

As for the here and now…this is what I think is on our doorstep.

It bums me out to say this but…sports is not coming back. The NBA, NHL and MLB are trying to re-start and start their seasons but this won’t last very long. The coronavirus situation will become too untenable and all three leagues will have to shut down their seasons for good.

The NFL and college football will suffer the same exact fate. They may try and start things up in the fall but that attempt will pretty quickly fail.

You may think that sports don’t matter…but I beg to differ. I think the lack of sports was a major contributing factor in the intensity of the civil unrest in the wake of George Floyd’s killing. Sports are a psychologically and culturally necessary vehicle for catharsis. Sport is contained and controlled tribal violence…and without it and its cathartic effects on the population, that violent instinct gets released through uncontained and uncontrolled violence…hence the rioting and looting and large spikes in crime in the last few months.

Of course, if the sports leagues would listen to my expert advice and simply fill every arena and stadium with fans holding Black Lives Matter signs, which according to “health officials” and the mainstream media apparently confer immunity to coronavirus onto the sign holder and anyone in their vicinity, then sports could flourish once again and I could get my well-deserved Nobel Prize in Medicinery.

Another big problem in the coming weeks and months is that, as much as parents want it to happen, schools are not going to open in the fall, or if they do open, they wont stay open for long. Kids may not get very sick with coronavirus, but they spread it, and parents and teachers can and will get sick as a result.

Kids not going to school is a major issue as this puts an enormous amount of stress on parents, who are already stressed out. The pressures of trying to either work, or being unemployed, while not just raising but teaching a child full time, is a really bad combination that will only further increase the emotional and mental pressure cooker.

As stated, that pressure will not be released through watching sports…it also won’t be released through going to the movies, or concerts or to bars or out to restaurants. None of those businesses will re-open, and if they do it won’t be for long.

The economic situation will also continue to spiral out of control too as businesses will be unable to open. The cascading effects of this will be a tidal wave of bankruptcies and commercial and residential real estate evictions followed by foreclosures. It will be like 2008…only much worse because it will be happening across the country and with no end in sight.

Here in Los Angeles…things will be really bad, as film and tv production will not be coming back any time soon. This means that large swaths of the city will be unemployed for great periods of time, leading to evictions and foreclosures and a general economic and personal depression.

The lack of new movies and tv shows will also contribute to the general anger and fury growing in America, as a population used to being distracted by sports and entertainment, will have little or none of either.

This means that the election in November, whether it happens or not, is going to be extremely volatile…and no matter who wins…there will be either spasms or volcanic eruptions of violence as a result. I actually think there will be less violence if Biden wins, but there won’t be no violence, as Trump supporters, denied their choice for president and their football, will be extremely on edge.

On the other hand if Trump wins (by vote count or by other means)…God help us all. This country…or at least large swaths of it…will explode and will make the George Floyd protests, riots and looting look like a church picnic. There will be massive amounts of civil unrest in the wake of a Trump victory…probably followed by strong arm totalitarian tactics to quell it.

Maybe I am wrong. Hopefully I am wrong. But I can’t help but notice a less than subtle shift taking place now where the wishful thinking of those who were “done” with coronavirus back in May and June is running head first into the brick wall that is the coronavirus reality…and that is causing a tremendous amount agitation and anxiety that is building up to dangerous levels.

Look, I get it, people are tired, emotionally spent…but the virus doesn’t care about your feelings. It doesn’t care about anything but spreading, and all we need to care about is surviving.

Sadly, we as a people have no leadership…anywhere. Not in our federal, state or local government. And when we need each other the most, when we need community…we have none. We are all on our own and that isolation will break a lot of people and will cause others to try and break what is left of our civilization.

The bottom line is this…that the normal so many are yearning for is not coming back anytime soon….and we all need to get used to the new normal of no normal at all.

©2020

Covid-19 is Deadly, but It Will Never Kill the Relentless Stupidity of Wokeness

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 16 seconds

As the ‘woke’ reaction to coronavirus has shown, even a pandemic won’t slow down the incessant political correctness of woke culture.

The coronavirus pandemic is a very scary and unsettling time for all of us. Everyone one I know is worried about their health, their finances or both.

Every cough or sniffle feels like a potential calamity and every missed paycheck and new bill coming due like the onset of economic ruin.

No one knows if or when life will get back to normal and we can resume working without fear of infection and with it the possibility of death. All of this uncertainty is extremely unnerving.

But thankfully there is something that can anchor us to our carefree, pre-coronavirus past…something persistent and reliable that, like herpes, will stick with us through thick and thin. I am, of course, referring to the idiotically self-defeating, painfully myopic and infuriatingly insipid, politically correct philosophy known as wokeness.

Like the ever-resilient cockroach surviving and thriving in the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust, that strain of vacuous thought known as wokeness is proving itself to be immune to the Covid-19 contagion.

In those halcyon days before the disease ravaged the U.S., the ‘woke’ narrative was that coronavirus was a human problem, not a Wuhan problem.

Social justice warriors resolutely decreed that coronavirus was not to be attached to ethnic identity and declared that blaming the disease on China or Chinese culture - with its penchant for wet markets and eating bats, was racist, and somehow a slur against Asian-Americans. Of course, only the most in-bred troglodytes believe that Asian-Americans go to wet markets and eat bats and would blame Asian people for the Chinese government’s abysmal failure.

Diminutive, two-bit hack comedian Bill Maher ran afoul of the woke brigade last weekend when he went against this specific politically correct talking point in a much-publicized, and shockingly accurate, rant on his HBO show, where he lambasted those who would deny empirical facts blaming China because it might trigger idiot racists to be racist. This quickly resulted in a cavalcade of woke panties once again getting all in a bunch.

It seems though that woke dogma is shifting now that the deadly coronavirus has spread like wildfire throughout the U.S., either that or these pandering nitwits are just brazenly and shamelessly hypocritical.

For example, the newest decree handed down by the politically correct twitterverse and vapid dopes in the mainstream media is that coronavirus is racist because it “disproportionately” effects black people.

Apparently coronavirus isn’t about identity…unless it is.

The aptly named Charles Blow of the New York Times has become the standard-bearer for this new race-infused woke storyline. Blow, like all social justice hammers that see the whole world as a white racist nail, acrobatically twists logic, the English language and statistics to fit this theory of Covid-19 as the ”Brother Killer”.

In Blow’s latest column, creatively titled “The Brother Killer”, he states that black men are particularly at-risk of coronavirus because they make up larger percentages of the vulnerable prison, homeless and poor population than their percentage of the overall U.S. population.

Blow writes “For these (black) men, the devastating effects of this virus may be as much about pre-existing social conditions as pre-existing medical ones.”

If Blow, and the rest of his woke minions, wanted to be accurate and weren’t blinded by race and flaccid identity politics, that sentence should read, “for poor people of all colors, the devastating effects of the virus are about pre-existing economic conditions.”

The calamity of the coronavirus isn’t about black men in prison, in poverty or living on the streets….it is about PEOPLE stuck in those conditions being susceptible to the disease.

The coronavirus does not care about race, ethnicity, gender, nationality or sexual orientation…just like the ‘woke’, it only cares about propagating itself.

Blow ends his piece with his usual straw man racial calisthenics when he writes, “History has shown that we are callously comfortable averting our gaze away from (black) men like these. We construct racialized rationales that allow us not to care, to say that they courted their fate, that pathology is at play, that one reaps what one sows.”

In what social justice warrior fever dream did Charles Blow conjure up people not caring about coronavirus and shaming its victims? The entire country has shut down in a quixotic attempt to contain the pandemic and minimize its spread, and no one but the most barbaric sociopaths feel anything but pity and sympathy for the poor souls who’ve lost their lives to the disease.

Are the adherents of wokeness, like Charles Blow, correct that alarming numbers of black people are dying from coronavirus? Yes. But it is also true, and equally unjust, that white, Latino, Asian and Native American people are dying in alarmingly large numbers. In other words…a lot of HUMAN BEINGS are dying of coronavirus…regardless of their racial or ethnic background. The Covid-19 pandemic is not a racial tragedy, but rather a human tragedy.

The cold, hard reality is that coronavirus has killed over 30,000 Americans of all races and ethnicities, and more than 130,000 people from nations across the globe. The disease could very well kill me, or you in the coming days, weeks, months and years. But rest assured, no matter how bad it gets or how long Covid-19 rages, it will never, ever kill wokeness – the indestructible cockroach of belief systems.

A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2020

Coronavirus Thoughts and Musings

Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes 27 seconds

With the coronavirus currently kicking us all in the ass and with Dear Leader announcing that the “self-distancing” protocols will stay in effect for at least another month, now seems as good a time as any to throw out some thoughts regarding this entire viral nightmare that has become our reality.

One of the benefits of being stuck in self-imposed isolation is that it gives one time to reflect and ponder on things. What follows are some of my reflections and ponderings.

PSYCHOLOGY OF A PLAGUE

The psychology of coronavirus is pretty fascinating to observe, in others and in myself.

In the weeks leading up to March 12th, when all hell broke loose in America when the NBA and NHL postponed their seasons over Covid-19 marking a new stage in the seriousness of the pandemic, I spoke to a bunch of people living across the U.S. to ask them what they thought about the coronavirus story.

At that time, every single person I spoke with told me that the coronavirus story was overblown or media hype. Not a single one of them took it even remotely seriously or adapted their lifestyle or began preparing for a prolonged pandemic.

I bought into the coronavirus story pretty early and was genuinely concerned about it, enough so that I stocked up on food and supplies back in February. When I spoke with people about coronavirus, I did not try to convince anyone else to change their opinion, but instead only listened to their perspective. I was keenly aware that to challenge people on their coronavirus beliefs of the moment could be interpreted as “judging” them, which was not my intention. I was only aware that human psychology being what it is, if I pressed people on their beliefs that would only engender defensiveness and further strengthen the belief I was questioning.

What I discovered through these conversations was that the consensus of doubt appeared to be a manifestation of both denial and cognitive dissonance.

What further bolstered this finding was that when I stopped to examine my own journey regarding coronavirus, I quickly discovered that I too went through some stages of palpable denial fueled by cognitive dissonance.

Proof of my cognitive dissonance shows itself in the fact that my concern regarding Covid-19 was so striking that I actually prepared my home for quarantine back in February and at the same time even began lobbying my wife (unsuccessfully) to pull our young son from pre-school, but despite all of that I still engaged in foolish and dangerous behavior anyway.

For example, in the first week of March, even though I was deathly frightened to do so, I still went to two concerts. On March 4th I took crowded public transportation to the Staples Center and saw Kiss, and then four days later went to the Saban Theater to see Buddy Guy. I was hyper-aware of the risk, and was vigilant in avoiding touching things and my face and every fifteen minutes or so doused my hands in Purell, but still, going to those concerts was incredibly reckless.

My thinking when deciding whether to go to these concerts or not was this…”well, I already paid for the ticket so I don’t want that money to go to waste.” This thinking, which my good Irish friend Liam called “Potato Famine Mentality”, is utterly insane. In my mind I was risking my life to go to these concerts, but still went out of not wanting to “waste money”. This is denial in action and shows the power of my own cognitive dissonance.

On March 9th, the day after I attended the Buddy Guy show, consensus was finally reached in the Politburo of my household and so we pulled my son from school, and my wife stopped going to work. This was one full week before all of LA and LA schools were shut down and three days before the NBA and NHL shut down. So basically my family has officially had a one week head start on wrapping our head around the very difficult-to-grasp concept of quarantining. From this vantage point it has been enlightening to see other people go through the same mental gymnastics we did, just a week or two after us.

For instance, days after I pulled my son from school both LA and New York City began debating whether they should shut down schools. The arguments they used were, like my Potato Famine Mentality, utterly insane, such as “kids don’t die from the disease” or “parents can’t stop working to stay at home with kids” or “kids get their meals from school”. These statements may be true but they are entirely irrelevant when dealing with a deadly pandemic. LA and NYC schools were victims of their own cognitive dissonance and stuck in denial because to acknowledge reality was too heavy a burden to bear. The officials in LA and NYC were simply incapable of wrapping their heads around the gravity of the situation because it was in their own personal best interests to not do so. Thankfully, they eventually came to their senses and a week after I made the same decision, they closed schools.

President Trump, the federal government and some state governments, have gone through that same roller coaster ride of denial, until reality crashed upon their heads and it could no longer be denied. Trump, ever the American id, sometimes goes through masturbatorial episodes of cognitive dissonance and denial even in the course of a press conference or in the answer to a single question.

The biggest lesson I learned from my struggle with cognitive dissonance and denial was that people really are entirely resistant to the concept of their own vulnerability and massive upheaval and change.

For example, baby boomers seem to be in deep denial about the dangers of coronavirus, and have been very slow to grasp the dire nature of the situation. Added on top of that is their denial of the reality that they are, in fact, elderly. It seems the vast majority of that generation are oblivious to the danger of Covid-19 and to the fact that they are not invincible, and have acted recklessly and selfishly in an act of adolescent defiance. You’d expect the delusion of invincibility from teenagers whose brains haven’t even fully developed yet, but not from 70 year olds with a lifetime of experience.

The baby boomer’s delusions of invincibility as well as their coronavirus denial fit nicely into American’s overall persistent inability to grasp that things can and will change, and will do so in a hurry. The one basic rule of life is this…things will not always be the way they are now. The aggressively delusional nature of our entire culture is stunning to behold when you step back and take a good look at it….and right now we all have time to step back and take a look at it.

Speaking of the delusional nature of our culture…

THE POLITICS OF A PANDEMIC

The coronavirus is a black swan event that is obliterating expectations across our culture and throwing everything, be it the economy, politics, entertainment, sport, you name it…into chaos.

As I argued in my last piece, crisis is always an opportunity for change, but the things that need to change in America won’t, and the things we shouldn’t change will…but for the worse.

Which brings us to the presidential election. My first thought regarding the election is I wonder if it will even happen.

There have been some epidemiologists saying that they believe that Covid-19 is a seasonal disease. This is good news and bad news…the good news is that it means that the disease will recede in the summer which will give people a much needed break from isolation.

The bad news is that being seasonal means it will return in the fall…right around election time. So if it returns in early November, that means that polling places could be a prime place for transmission and the pandemic could intensify over the winter beyond the nightmare through which we are already living.

If coronavirus returns earlier than that…say in early October, that could be even more troubling, as there is a distinct possibility that the election could be “postponed”. I know that sounds alarmist…but does anyone think that Trump would hesitate for one second to postpone/cancel the election if it were to his benefit? Does anyone think the Republicans in the Senate and the House, or conservatives on the Supreme Court would challenge him on that? No way.

It would also be difficult for Democrats to make a compelling case against this action since they will no doubt spend the campaign slamming Trump for having not done enough to prevent the coronavirus crisis in the first place or to fight it when it arrived. Trump would of course frame the “postponed” election as a preventative measure and would then turn the issue onto Democrats who are being reckless with America’s health.

Of course, this is all just speculation, and I hope the virus is soon eradicated and life returns to some semblance of “normalcy”. But normalcy seems much farther away than tyranny at the moment.

As far as the candidates go, due to coronavirus, they are not as set in stone as we might think they are. Both Trump and the presumptive Democratic nominee, Joe Biden, are in their 70’s and not exactly the picture of health. It is certainly not out of the realm of possibility that Trump or Biden or both, could get sick and ultimately die from the disease….or something else.

Trump dying from Covid-19 (or another health issue), would, depending on the timing, presumably put Pence on the ballot. It would also kick off a furious civil war within the Republican party that would obliterate any chance for their victory in November. Trump and his personal ambition are the foundation of the Republican party right now, and without his cult of personality, the party will crumble.

Even Pence being the VP choice is tenuous at the moment. Even though he is one of the most aggressive sycophants of the Trump era who has brought shameless ass-kissing to new lows, I could totally see Trump just kicking him to the curb for Nikki Haley or someone else.

Even though Trump has been excruciatingly awful in his handling of the coronavirus crisis and in leading the country through it, his poll numbers are skyrocketing (for him at least) so he may not have to cancel the election to win it. Trump is greatly aided by the fact that the Democrats seem to be rolling the dice with Joe Biden, who looks as though he reeks of formaldehyde. it is hysterical to me that Democrats chose to make their decision in the primary on “electability”, and landed on Biden, who is an absolute disaster of a candidate. He is obviously suffering from dementia, and appears to be having a stroke almost every time he is on camera.

In the early weeks of the coronavirus crisis Biden was totally MIA. In recent days he has come out of hiding and everyone now wishes he was back to being MIA.

Biden persistently appears like a doddering old man who has just awoken from a very long and disorienting nap. Even with the absurdly soft treatment he gets from the media, the incoherent Biden still looks so physically and mentally frail that it is painful to watch.

Beyond Biden’s age and health limitations, he is also just a dreadful politician, and always has been. He is exactly what we don’t need or want at this moment. He is a corrupt establishmentarian who believes in absolutely nothing except his own advancement. A brief glimpse at his long track record reveals a target rich environment where selling out isn’t just a recurring theme, but the only theme.

It is very apparent to me that Trump is not up to running the country, but it is also very apparent that Biden is not up to running for president. I think even the dipshits at the DNC can see that he is not up to a grueling campaign. I believe there is a decent chance that at, or before, the convention, Biden steps down, or is pushed…in fact I’d put the odds of Biden being the nominee in November at less than 50%.

There is a lot of speculation afoot that the current “savior of the moment”, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, or as I call him, Rudy Giuliani with a Prostate, may be foisted upon the nation at the convention. I have an intense dislike for Andrew Cuomo, who is an absolute piece of shit and one of the biggest assholes we have in public life - quite an accomplishment.

Governor Cuomo is out there now bitching and moaning about a lack of hospital beds and supplies in New York needed to fight the plague of coronavirus, but it is his policies, including gutting medicaid - which he is still doing even during a pandemic - that have closed hospitals and removed 20,000 hospital beds from the state. Once again a politician makes it rain outside then complains about the weather.

Andrew’s brother Chris, who just tested positive for Covid-19, is a CNN host and may very well be the dumbest human being to ever walk the face of the earth. I sincerely hope that Chris recovers in full, if only because I hope to meet him one day, call him “Fredo” and then beat the few brain cells he actually has out of his stupid, dopey head.

It has been well established that Chris Cuomo is Fredo Corleone…but make no mistake, that does not make Andrew Cuomo - Michael Corleone…or even Sonny or Tom. No, Andrew Cuomo is Phillip Tattaglia…and just like Tattaglia, Andrew Cuomo is a skeezy pimp.

Besides Cuomo as a Biden replacement, there have also been rumblings that Hillary Clinton would, like a nasty strain of chlamydia, resurface once again. This is unlikely, but considering it is such a catastrophically bad idea, the DNC might just do it.

Regardless of who the candidates are, there is one thing we can count on…the American people are going to get fucked over six ways to Sunday by whichever douchebag wins.

PLAYING PANDEMIC DURING A PANDEMIC

Ten years ago this April 14th, my good friend Ben Morris died from cancer. Ben’s death was a staggering blow to all of us who loved him.

Ben battled the disease for over two years before it took his life. In those years, where he was more or less stuck in his brother Jem’s apartment in Los Angeles or at his parents house in Seattle, Ben became interested in, and sort of obsessed with, high end board games.

Ben, Jem and I would play these pricey board games for hours and hours on end. Games like Catan, Puerto Rico, Die Macher, Princes of Florence and many others were on the menu for our marathon sessions.

Board games were perfect for us because playing them was a social act, we could converse and joke and actually look at one another as we played, unlike with say video games, where there is very little human connection.

Ben and I got so into board games we actually designed our own, which I have to admit was a pretty cool game. Sadly, a mutual friend (former friend actually) stole the idea after Ben died and is now trying to sell it as his own. Rest assured, if I ever see this cunt again I am going to kick him in the mouth so hard his teeth will fly out his asshole, and then I’ll decapitate him with a wooden spoon and throw his empty fucking head into a septic tank.

Sorry…I got distracted by rage…what was I talking about? Oh right…board games.

Anyway, one game that Ben really got into when he was sick was Pandemic. Pandemic is a board game where you work as a team to try and stop a series of disease outbreaks across the globe. It is a pretty cool game.

Ben went through a period during his illness when he was obsessed with Pandemic…so much so that he would play solitaire games of it for hours on end. The psychology of someone battling cancer being obsessed with a game where you are trying to stamp out disease popping up across the globe is fascinating. It seemed obvious to me that Ben was using Pandemic as an avatar for his own battle to stamp out the disease in his body.

Which brings me to today and the coronavirus pandemic.

When Ben died Jem gave me a lot of the board games we all used to play. Not being much of a social entity, I have not played the games a great deal over the last decade. But when the coronavirus pandemic hit I immediately thought of Pandemic and went to try and find it. I couldn’t though. The game is somehow missing from my collection. So I searched online and found a video version of it instead that only cost $4.99…which is a huge bargain since high end board games can run $50 or more. So I bought Pandemic online and began to play it on my own.

I can now fully understand how the fear of dying from a disease can fuel an obsession with Pandemic. There is an urgency and profound meaning to every game I play. When I lose and the pandemic runs out of control over the earth, my heart sinks as I ponder the chance of that happening in the real world. My mortality doesn’t just feel inevitable, but impending.

When I actually win the game, which is maybe 1/3 of the time, I find myself being much, much more optimistic about the coronavirus pandemic and how bad it will get and how soon it will end. After wins I find myself gravitating to more positive news regarding our own pandemic…away from death counts and toward cures, vaccines and optimistic timelines and such.

I think my current fascination with the game Pandemic is just another extension of the denial I mentioned earlier. In the coronavirus pandemic we all feel hopeless and helpless and there is nothing we can do…but when I play Pandemic it feels like I am doing something. The thing I am doing is, every time I win at least, purging my anxiety, and when I lose it is an exercise in embracing humility in the face of a gargantuan existential problem.

Beyond that, I have no further insights on coronavirus at the moment, so I will conclude my rambling by telling you to stay safe, stay healthy and stay alive.

©2020

Lost Opportunities and Dastardly Deeds in the Age of Coronavirus

Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes 27 seconds

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

Hollywood and the Economic Time Bomb of Coronavirus

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 28 seconds

Note - This article was written on Tuesday March 10, 2020

Fear of COVID-19 is wreaking havoc on Hollywood’s economy, and it is the working class of the entertainment industry who will pay the price.

Let me start off by saying that I have no idea if the fears around coronavirus are justified or hyped, but I do know they are having a devastating affect upon the film industry.

Hollywood is facing a potential $5 billion loss due to coronavirus. As a worker in the movie business, the news around the pandemic feels like the old narrative device of the ticking time bomb, each story that comes out is another tick.

Mission Impossible 7 shuts down production because of an outbreak in Venice…tick…the new James Bond movie No Time To Die reschedules its opening from April to November…tick…the film/music festival South by Southwest (SXSW) is cancelled because of health concerns…tick.

Most people think of the movie business in the abstract, as a sort of detached phenomenon known as ‘Hollywood’. The reality is that ‘Hollywood’ is more an idea…and Los Angeles the place that brings that idea to life.

Los Angeles isn’t the glitz and glamour of the Tinsteltown movie star myth rather it is a blue collar, industry town. The vast majority of people in L.A. are working stiffs who are among the thousands of people who work on each film or tv show as artists, crew members or laborers, be it in the production office or the camera and lighting, sound or arts departments, or as carpenters, caterers, electricians, drivers, extras or in other capacities.

These folks scratch out a living as freelancers in this massive and perpetually temporary gig economy known as the entertainment business. These Hollywood peasants, and as a writer and acting coach I count myself among them, are hustlers who work their backsides off as they scramble to survive by eating the crumbs off of corporate Hollywood’s overstuffed table.

Now, with as much as 70% of a blockbuster’s revenue coming from overseas markets, the Covid-19 fueled restrictions in China, South Korea, Japan and Italy are already leading to major shockwaves in corporate Hollywood.

The Mission Impossible 7, No Time to Die and SXSW postponements/cancellations may seem trivial to casual movie-goers, but to the thousands and thousands of Hollywood hoi polloi who work in production, marketing or staffing of films and festivals who count on that income for the basics, missing out on these paychecks isn’t just an inconvenience, it is an outright catastrophe.

Another example is Pearl Jam postponing two concerts scheduled for April at the L.A. Forum due to COVID-19.

For lead singer Eddie Vedder, postponing those shows is no big deal, but for the hundreds of minimum wage vendors, parking lot attendants, ticket takers and security guards who depend on that income to survive, it is a massive deal. They may make that money back eventually, but that won’t help them pay the rent next month.

The reality is that people working in the entertainment industry ecosystem are just as poorly situated financially as the rest of Americans, 40% of whom do not have the savings to afford a $400 emergency. 

While Tom Cruise has a $100 million rainy day fund, Hollywood’s plebeians do not get sick days, rarely if ever get unemployment, and are perpetually saddled with financial and employment insecurity.

They are also burdened not only by exorbitant L.A. housing costs but also by over-priced and under-performing health insurance when they are lucky enough to have any insurance at all.

Coronavirus slowing down or stopping film and tv production is a cataclysm for Hollywood’s proletarian backbone. The desperation here is already palpable as the stark reality for those living paycheck-to-paycheck is starting to sink in. The 60,000 homeless people already living in filth on the streets of L.A. are a constant and stark reminder of how quickly things can go bad.

The corona-inspired economic insecurity and health concerns will inevitably lead L.A.’s wealthy inhabitants to stay home and stop spending money at restaurants, bars and clubs, which will further spiral the economy downward, impacting small business owners and service economy employees the most.

And remember that while the rest of us are at home in self-quarantine enjoying streaming services and indulging in my list of best pandemic movies, the workers at movie theaters will be laid off from their minimum wage jobs by their corporate overlords.

It is easy to laugh at ‘Hollywood’ for its much publicized excess, extremes, absurdity and depravity, I do it all the time, but know that with coronavirus it is the normal, everyday, working class people of Los Angeles who will bear the economic and health burdens, not obnoxious celebrities and over-paid movie stars.

Sadly, James Bond and Tom Cruise are incapable of defusing the cornavirus bomb…and regardless of whether that bomb actually detonates or is a dud, the damage done will most likely leave Hollywood’s economy a smoldering crater…and as always, the rank and file of La La Land will be the most severe casualties.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2020