This is what a hollowed-out state looks like -- perpetually stupefied, listless, unable to agree on even a common shared reality, much less some plan of action. Reading countless posts and articles over the years about the profitable cruelties and bland, indifferent immiserations of the for-profit health-care system has the cumulative effect of the old "everyone complains about the weather, but nobody does anything about it" joke.
The country has for decades been run by an increasingly aggressive group of institutionalized rackets -- health care, higher education, finance, the privatized carceral industry, the perpetual political campaign and consultancy machine -- that control and confine every life to some extent in this country. Very few individuals ever manage to stay completely off the grid from any of them, much less all of them. People are either under the thumb, or they're a shareholder in the hand. Sometimes both, futilely hoping to climb over that spiked iron fence and into the country club.
It does not matter if the Dow loses ten thousand points next week, or gains that amount. On a gain, the profiteers would do their thing and recoup their losses. You would get crumbs, at best. On a loss, taxpayers would be forced to bail out the billionaires once again in some form or other. You would get nothing in that instance, beyond the warm feeling of helping out your betters once more, so that they can keep you wriggling on that debt -- which is their equity -- fishhook forever and ever, amen.
The billionaires' losses would be, to use a word that is politically potent these days, socialized. You may remember that particular hit song from about twelve years ago.
When Barack Obama won the 2008 election by a bona-fide landslide, the economy's death plummet halted and slowly reversed. People began to feel that the ship had begun to right itself, after eight years of in-your-face malfeasance from the Cheney regime. (Remember those guys? Good times.)
In retrospect, maybe the long run proves that declining societies, like bad stock runs, have dead cat bounces -- brief periods of apparent recovery that quickly revert to the overall declining trendline. And the overall trend has steadily worsened for a very long time, and shows no signs of abating.
Remember that chart I linked the other day, showing the largest daily losses and gains? Look further down, to the "Largest intraday point swings" chart. Seven of the top eight are from the past six weeks; six of those are since March 2nd. That sort of volatility indicates that investors are getting squirrelly about their near-term prospects.
South by Southwest, which brings in over a quarter-billion per year to Austin, has been cancelled. The rest of the NBA season has been suspended. The NCAA basketball tournament, cancelled. Major League Baseball, postponed for at least a couple weeks. The Olympics may get cancelled, may still be held in closed stadiums, without paying spectators. Broadway shows postponed and cancelled until further notice, small concerts cancelled and postponed, and on and on.
So that's athletes and performers, but also concession workers, transport, equipment hauling and handling, caterers, crew members. Some them may have things to fall back on or jump to, some don't. Either way, it's a huge amount of money lost to local economies which, unlike billionaires who just hoard and keep score, actually spend and circulate money. That's all just in the past week or two, and the economy is always a lagging indicator -- the results from what's starting to happen will be felt more acutely in the next two fiscal quarters. Just in time for the election, if there is one.
I've used this analogy before -- if the circulation of money is the lifeblood of a stable economy, what happens to the human body when 80% of all the blood suddenly ends up in one spot, like the head or the foot, instead of circulating properly?
Look at how easily hundreds of billions of dollars have been "injected" into the monetary system, just over the past seventy-two hours or so. Nearly two trillion dollars, and interest rates dropped to zero. Interesting how when billionaires need a break, everyone springs into action, but figuring out a way to get minimum-wage workers a few sick days so they don't spread the plague? Well, hopefully we can hammer out a deal, but not one that impacts the largest minimum-wage employers or anything. You understand.
We can never find money to fix all the ongoing daily crises in this country -- crumbling infrastructure; no plan for climate change mitigation; working class on the debt hook of the rackets that run this country; expensive, shitty health care system; homelessness; food insecurity; and so forth. Informed, passionate people draw up wonderful plans to address these issues and are immediately bombarded with how we gonna pay for it plaints.
But boy howdy, one of Trump's oil-sucking butt-buddies loses some couch-cushion change in the market last week, and there's not even an ask -- we're dumping trillions of dollars of liquidity into the market for their benefit, and we might even be forced to bail out the shale oil industry, even though they were on the verge of financial insolvency well before the virus hit. This too is a hallmark of a hollowed-out state, an entity that retains just enough legitimacy to ensure that the people who own the system get to use everyone else's money to bail themselves out.
It is not a coincidence that the only two identifiable skills Donald Trump has are:
This is all the federal government is now, and all the eleven-dimensional chess dreams from the Democrats won't change that. You either fight and kill the monster, or learn to live with it. They chose the latter a long time ago. Until you have more AOCs and fewer Bidens, that's how it's gonna be. Even then it might be too late already. We're way down the road, one real plague or Cat 5 hurricane wiping out Miami from seeing that. We've been very lucky for a very long time, and no longer have the reserves and resources we used to. The weasels stripped the car and sold the parts, and now we're all just sitting on cinder blocks pretending to drive somewhere.
Whatever the eventual pathological impact of the coronavirus ends up being, we know that there's an incubation period, and that the virus can live on surfaces for up to two weeks, and that people stricken with the virus can carry the disease in their respiratory system for up to five weeks. So there's a lag, which means that as bad as it is now, it is highly likely to worsen in the coming weeks.
It does not help that all the key players in the federal disaster management system are more concerned with buttering Dear Leader's worthless ass than anything else, including the well-being of human beings who don't have money or political influence.
But if it hadn't been that, it would have something else -- war, natural disaster, mass shootings, economic collapse caused by some mathematical probability in an over-leveraged system designed only to hoover money from people who work for a living and give it to people who own and acquire things for a living. The main dynamic in play is that the federal government is largely ceremonial these days, and retains operational capabilities only insofar as it can be utilized to further stuff the pockets of its rentiers.
That's really how it is, and most people understand at this point that there is no longer any "good" choice, there's just choices that make you feel slightly better about flooring the accelerator over that cliff. Because neither arm of The Party is going to do what really needs to be done, because it is in their best interest not to.
Let's construct a "best case" hypothetical: Good Ol' Joe wins a decisive victory over Preznit Tide Pod Challenge, one that cannot be cheated or ignored away. Not only that, several states come to their senses and eject their Republicon senators -- McConnell, Graham, Collins, and more. Now you have maybe fifty-five Democratic senators. The House retains its Democratic majority, even adds a handful more, thanks to all those abrupt Gooper retirements the last few years.
Ginsburg and Souter retire the day after Biden is inaugurated, and two suitably liberal replacements are instated. A few noises are made to investing in infrastructure or climate change mitigation, maybe incentivizing the fossil fuel industry to move to manufacturing renewable energy equipment. Great.
But you can be sure that by fall 2021, the Democrats will reflexively start tacking toward their old reliable "we have to shore up the party for the midterms" guff, the usual excuse for not actually moving anything forward -- better working conditions, better voting processes, a real commitment to economic justice and fixing the planet for The Children, Who Are Our Future, etc. Sorry guys, just can't do it this time. Don't forget to vote!
By 2024, whether or not Biden retires and his veep (probably Kamala Harris) steps in, disaffected party voters will have had one too many go-rounds with Lucy and her magic football, and either stay home, primary the incumbent, or start up a third party and stick with it.
All of that ignores the significant possibility that the virus abates over the next month, thanks to the measures taken by state governments and responsible private entities such as sports leagues and amusement parks. They're trying to get out in front of this thing while Nero plays his fiddle and fiddles with his tiny old wiener. The people who did nothing, or bragged about how they're still gonna get their Red Robin on so fuck you will immediately gloat that it was all just an overhyped hoax in the first place. And the morons who believe them will keep on believin'.
And then six months down the line, fall and winter -- and the next flu season -- arrive, and the virus renews, as they do, adaptively mutated to cause just a little more damage, and the panic begins anew. By then they'll be ready, in the sense that "readiness" consists of operational measures to ensure profiteering and "security"; that is, enforced quarantines. Careful what you wish for there, and think about whether you want Donald Trump and Mike Pence and their gutless toadies deciding when you're permitted to go out for a burger or to shop for toilet paper. In the meantime, you can bet they'll be cashing checks from all the testing and vaccination processes that will be in place by then.
Greedy plutocrats and their soulless minions have hollowed out the state for their own benefit. Until at least one political party commits in a major way to undoing that regression, nothing will ever change. And honestly, it's unclear if there actually is any singular event or even a trend that will make that fact clear and imperative. A million or ten million people dying from the virus would just give 'em an excuse to do what they do best.
We've turned into the Soviet Union circa 1988 -- people can't find toilet paper and school children are prevented from graduating for owing school lunch money. The rich fucks should be very pleased with themselves -- not only do they get away with all of it, but they've convinced enough of the peons not to hold them responsible for any of it.
Posting here will be even more sporadic than usual for the next month or so. I have a backlog of home and creative projects that need attention, and there will be plenty more opportunities for disaster porn in the weeks and months to come. If you run out of toilet paper, you can probably snag a few copies of Art of the Deal from your local Barnes & Noble cutout bin. Stay frosty, folks.
The country has for decades been run by an increasingly aggressive group of institutionalized rackets -- health care, higher education, finance, the privatized carceral industry, the perpetual political campaign and consultancy machine -- that control and confine every life to some extent in this country. Very few individuals ever manage to stay completely off the grid from any of them, much less all of them. People are either under the thumb, or they're a shareholder in the hand. Sometimes both, futilely hoping to climb over that spiked iron fence and into the country club.
It does not matter if the Dow loses ten thousand points next week, or gains that amount. On a gain, the profiteers would do their thing and recoup their losses. You would get crumbs, at best. On a loss, taxpayers would be forced to bail out the billionaires once again in some form or other. You would get nothing in that instance, beyond the warm feeling of helping out your betters once more, so that they can keep you wriggling on that debt -- which is their equity -- fishhook forever and ever, amen.
The billionaires' losses would be, to use a word that is politically potent these days, socialized. You may remember that particular hit song from about twelve years ago.
When Barack Obama won the 2008 election by a bona-fide landslide, the economy's death plummet halted and slowly reversed. People began to feel that the ship had begun to right itself, after eight years of in-your-face malfeasance from the Cheney regime. (Remember those guys? Good times.)
In retrospect, maybe the long run proves that declining societies, like bad stock runs, have dead cat bounces -- brief periods of apparent recovery that quickly revert to the overall declining trendline. And the overall trend has steadily worsened for a very long time, and shows no signs of abating.
Remember that chart I linked the other day, showing the largest daily losses and gains? Look further down, to the "Largest intraday point swings" chart. Seven of the top eight are from the past six weeks; six of those are since March 2nd. That sort of volatility indicates that investors are getting squirrelly about their near-term prospects.
South by Southwest, which brings in over a quarter-billion per year to Austin, has been cancelled. The rest of the NBA season has been suspended. The NCAA basketball tournament, cancelled. Major League Baseball, postponed for at least a couple weeks. The Olympics may get cancelled, may still be held in closed stadiums, without paying spectators. Broadway shows postponed and cancelled until further notice, small concerts cancelled and postponed, and on and on.
So that's athletes and performers, but also concession workers, transport, equipment hauling and handling, caterers, crew members. Some them may have things to fall back on or jump to, some don't. Either way, it's a huge amount of money lost to local economies which, unlike billionaires who just hoard and keep score, actually spend and circulate money. That's all just in the past week or two, and the economy is always a lagging indicator -- the results from what's starting to happen will be felt more acutely in the next two fiscal quarters. Just in time for the election, if there is one.
I've used this analogy before -- if the circulation of money is the lifeblood of a stable economy, what happens to the human body when 80% of all the blood suddenly ends up in one spot, like the head or the foot, instead of circulating properly?
Look at how easily hundreds of billions of dollars have been "injected" into the monetary system, just over the past seventy-two hours or so. Nearly two trillion dollars, and interest rates dropped to zero. Interesting how when billionaires need a break, everyone springs into action, but figuring out a way to get minimum-wage workers a few sick days so they don't spread the plague? Well, hopefully we can hammer out a deal, but not one that impacts the largest minimum-wage employers or anything. You understand.
We can never find money to fix all the ongoing daily crises in this country -- crumbling infrastructure; no plan for climate change mitigation; working class on the debt hook of the rackets that run this country; expensive, shitty health care system; homelessness; food insecurity; and so forth. Informed, passionate people draw up wonderful plans to address these issues and are immediately bombarded with how we gonna pay for it plaints.
But boy howdy, one of Trump's oil-sucking butt-buddies loses some couch-cushion change in the market last week, and there's not even an ask -- we're dumping trillions of dollars of liquidity into the market for their benefit, and we might even be forced to bail out the shale oil industry, even though they were on the verge of financial insolvency well before the virus hit. This too is a hallmark of a hollowed-out state, an entity that retains just enough legitimacy to ensure that the people who own the system get to use everyone else's money to bail themselves out.
It is not a coincidence that the only two identifiable skills Donald Trump has are:
- Losing other people's money.
- Finding more suckers to invest in his next scheme.
This is all the federal government is now, and all the eleven-dimensional chess dreams from the Democrats won't change that. You either fight and kill the monster, or learn to live with it. They chose the latter a long time ago. Until you have more AOCs and fewer Bidens, that's how it's gonna be. Even then it might be too late already. We're way down the road, one real plague or Cat 5 hurricane wiping out Miami from seeing that. We've been very lucky for a very long time, and no longer have the reserves and resources we used to. The weasels stripped the car and sold the parts, and now we're all just sitting on cinder blocks pretending to drive somewhere.
Whatever the eventual pathological impact of the coronavirus ends up being, we know that there's an incubation period, and that the virus can live on surfaces for up to two weeks, and that people stricken with the virus can carry the disease in their respiratory system for up to five weeks. So there's a lag, which means that as bad as it is now, it is highly likely to worsen in the coming weeks.
It does not help that all the key players in the federal disaster management system are more concerned with buttering Dear Leader's worthless ass than anything else, including the well-being of human beings who don't have money or political influence.
But if it hadn't been that, it would have something else -- war, natural disaster, mass shootings, economic collapse caused by some mathematical probability in an over-leveraged system designed only to hoover money from people who work for a living and give it to people who own and acquire things for a living. The main dynamic in play is that the federal government is largely ceremonial these days, and retains operational capabilities only insofar as it can be utilized to further stuff the pockets of its rentiers.
That's really how it is, and most people understand at this point that there is no longer any "good" choice, there's just choices that make you feel slightly better about flooring the accelerator over that cliff. Because neither arm of The Party is going to do what really needs to be done, because it is in their best interest not to.
Let's construct a "best case" hypothetical: Good Ol' Joe wins a decisive victory over Preznit Tide Pod Challenge, one that cannot be cheated or ignored away. Not only that, several states come to their senses and eject their Republicon senators -- McConnell, Graham, Collins, and more. Now you have maybe fifty-five Democratic senators. The House retains its Democratic majority, even adds a handful more, thanks to all those abrupt Gooper retirements the last few years.
Ginsburg and Souter retire the day after Biden is inaugurated, and two suitably liberal replacements are instated. A few noises are made to investing in infrastructure or climate change mitigation, maybe incentivizing the fossil fuel industry to move to manufacturing renewable energy equipment. Great.
But you can be sure that by fall 2021, the Democrats will reflexively start tacking toward their old reliable "we have to shore up the party for the midterms" guff, the usual excuse for not actually moving anything forward -- better working conditions, better voting processes, a real commitment to economic justice and fixing the planet for The Children, Who Are Our Future, etc. Sorry guys, just can't do it this time. Don't forget to vote!
By 2024, whether or not Biden retires and his veep (probably Kamala Harris) steps in, disaffected party voters will have had one too many go-rounds with Lucy and her magic football, and either stay home, primary the incumbent, or start up a third party and stick with it.
All of that ignores the significant possibility that the virus abates over the next month, thanks to the measures taken by state governments and responsible private entities such as sports leagues and amusement parks. They're trying to get out in front of this thing while Nero plays his fiddle and fiddles with his tiny old wiener. The people who did nothing, or bragged about how they're still gonna get their Red Robin on so fuck you will immediately gloat that it was all just an overhyped hoax in the first place. And the morons who believe them will keep on believin'.
And then six months down the line, fall and winter -- and the next flu season -- arrive, and the virus renews, as they do, adaptively mutated to cause just a little more damage, and the panic begins anew. By then they'll be ready, in the sense that "readiness" consists of operational measures to ensure profiteering and "security"; that is, enforced quarantines. Careful what you wish for there, and think about whether you want Donald Trump and Mike Pence and their gutless toadies deciding when you're permitted to go out for a burger or to shop for toilet paper. In the meantime, you can bet they'll be cashing checks from all the testing and vaccination processes that will be in place by then.
Greedy plutocrats and their soulless minions have hollowed out the state for their own benefit. Until at least one political party commits in a major way to undoing that regression, nothing will ever change. And honestly, it's unclear if there actually is any singular event or even a trend that will make that fact clear and imperative. A million or ten million people dying from the virus would just give 'em an excuse to do what they do best.
We've turned into the Soviet Union circa 1988 -- people can't find toilet paper and school children are prevented from graduating for owing school lunch money. The rich fucks should be very pleased with themselves -- not only do they get away with all of it, but they've convinced enough of the peons not to hold them responsible for any of it.
Posting here will be even more sporadic than usual for the next month or so. I have a backlog of home and creative projects that need attention, and there will be plenty more opportunities for disaster porn in the weeks and months to come. If you run out of toilet paper, you can probably snag a few copies of Art of the Deal from your local Barnes & Noble cutout bin. Stay frosty, folks.
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