I've seen the entire Sopranos series cycle several times, but it's been at least five years or so since the last time. One minor story arc that keeps popping up in my mind lately, as I observe the tactics and operational ethos of the hideous people who run this crack den of an administration, involves the unfortunate landscaper Sal Vitro. The poor guy gets the shit beaten out of him for mowing a lawn that was in someone else's "territory," so he then turns to Tony's capo Paulie for protection, and by the end of the series, poor Sal and his son are mowing (for free, it appears) the enormous lawn of Tony's useless blob of a sister, who has wheedled her way into Johnny Sack's old estate. Remember all that?
I think what really stuck with me about that extended (though again, very minor) storyline was how subtly it underscored the point that these well-off men of power and influence had their tentacles in everything -- construction, garbage collecting, and yes, landscaping. No opportunity was too small for them to pass up, including enslaving small business owners in order to line their pockets with just a few more illicit bills.
That's what rings true about Fat Donnie's crew, too -- as dumb and useless as they are just in terms of being able to do any sort of legitimate work, as vile as they are in terms of basic human decency, no opportunity is too small. We are, after all, talking about someone who infamously cashed a thirteen-cent check back in the day. Someone once joked that Trump was the kind of person who would line his own coat pockets with latex rubber, so he could steal soup. Interesting visual, and entirely accurate.
We have a society where for-profit incarceration -- and therefore a clear vested interest in keeping people incarcerated, and finding more people to throw in the clink -- is commonplace. We have a society where using incarcerated labor at substantial discounts -- or even for free, since they get paid pennies per hour and then have to use that to pay for their basic commissary items -- is routine.
And now, the plague has given the monsters a new and grand opportunity. The official unemployment rate has tripled overnight to almost fifteen percent, which means the real rate is probably at least twenty percent. The Senate is in the process of leveraging aid to states and counties on the condition that businesses be indemnified from liabilities incurred from (to put it politely) economically coercing people to go back to work, since unemployment insurance systems are deliberately inoperable in many states. You know, because you lazy motherfuckers will just take advantage of it.
The goal has never been to prevent pandemic or mitigate damage. It has always been to make sure someone else gets blamed for everything, while continuing the racketeering, and the hijacking of PPE supplies to be fenced, the profits laundered and offshored. It's the ultimate no-show job for Sil's crew, combined with Paulie's crew robbing the cigarette trucks, and pushing all the proceeds through the Bing. There's really nothing more to it. Anyone still talking about misgovernance is completely missing the true picture. Things are running exactly the way they want them to run.
There is a perfect -- and by "perfect" I mean perfectly horrible -- economic storm brewing. For years, private equity has been quietly chewing through the backbone of many vital American employment sectors. You know how people blame the internet for killing off newspapers? That's only partly true. Private equity firms have been doing most of the heavy lifting.
Another sector where private equity has been working overtime is the retail and service sector. Have you been to a department store lately? You know how many people work in those employment sectors? Again, Amazon bears part of the blame for this, but not as much as one might first assume.
Regardless, ten percent of the total population has been dumped just in the last two months. The reason the stock market seems bullish boils down to two important factors:
We're way too complacent about all of this. We watched these monsters herd refugees into for-profit detention centers, where children get raped and people pass communicable diseases around, under the rubric of keepin' out them illegals. Everybody agreed that "someone" should "do" "something," but could not apparently reach any sort of consensus -- or even a quorum -- on who and what and how.
And we're fine with lubricating the machinery of the scut-work service center in this country with the blood of illegal immigrants. Who the hell do we think is processing our meat, picking our produce, cleaning and cooking and serving food in our restaurants? Who else, besides people whose entire lives are spent under the thankless lash of economic coercion, would do this crap for peanuts, have to listen to useless losers talk shit about them 24/7, and then be told to risk their health by going back to those jobs after all that?
Think about where all your food is coming from. Buy local as much as you possibly can. The best way to dismantle the system is to starve it as much as possible.
At first they mounted the endless line of stairs with a sense of resolve and purpose, regular man and giant cat. After about ten layers of the pyramid had passed, they began pacing themselves.
Who built this?
An ancient civilization. They have been gone for many eons.
How did they build it?
They did not leave any records that anyone has been able to decipher. There are hieroglyphics, but they appear to mostly be descriptions of their customs and daily lives. No one knows for sure. All we know is that the building is here, in this place.
As they passed layer after layer, Aapo noticed that he did not see any seams anywhere -- not between layers, nor between steps. Rather than being assembled brick by brick with dressed stones, it appeared as if an immense block had been placed here, and then chipped and carved into this form, or vice versa. It was an unnerving idea to think about. And there was no vegetation at all on the structure, no climbing vines or flowers or leaves of any kind.
He paused on a step, looked down at the top of the jungle canopy, emerald and chocolate and ebony, then looked up and around the sky, noticing that there were no birds, no clouds, no sun, just as endless expanse of subtly variated yellow, a screen of firmament that reflected light without revealing the source.
The steps were high and steep, and while Ek Balam traversed them with the sure foot of a mountain goat, Aapo kept his line of sight intently on the next step, and the next one, and the next, in order to retain his footing. The embarrassment of a trip or stumble on these hard marble steps would be nothing compared to the pain of smacking face-first into one.
Yet for a second, Aapo decided to look up the stepped path, in order to see what was left, and was dismayed to find that he could still not see the summit.
How much farther is it to the top?
Don't worry. We're nearly there.
Aapo pondered how that could possibly be, when he had just looked up to see an endless flight of these seamless steps. Suddenly -- or finally -- they stepped on to a plateau, a square of about twenty-five feet to a side, with a fifteen-by-fifteen foot cube with a doorway set atop the square. Like the rest of the pyramid, the cube was chalk white, smooth as marble, hard as granite.
Aapo stopped and took a deep breath, expecting to be thoroughly winded and sore by now, as they had been climbing for nearly an hour -- or was it a day? Yet he felt fine, strangely exhilarated in fact. He took a few deep breaths and looked down to his right, to see the jaguar looking up at him rather impatiently, then to the doorway.
I think what really stuck with me about that extended (though again, very minor) storyline was how subtly it underscored the point that these well-off men of power and influence had their tentacles in everything -- construction, garbage collecting, and yes, landscaping. No opportunity was too small for them to pass up, including enslaving small business owners in order to line their pockets with just a few more illicit bills.
That's what rings true about Fat Donnie's crew, too -- as dumb and useless as they are just in terms of being able to do any sort of legitimate work, as vile as they are in terms of basic human decency, no opportunity is too small. We are, after all, talking about someone who infamously cashed a thirteen-cent check back in the day. Someone once joked that Trump was the kind of person who would line his own coat pockets with latex rubber, so he could steal soup. Interesting visual, and entirely accurate.
We have a society where for-profit incarceration -- and therefore a clear vested interest in keeping people incarcerated, and finding more people to throw in the clink -- is commonplace. We have a society where using incarcerated labor at substantial discounts -- or even for free, since they get paid pennies per hour and then have to use that to pay for their basic commissary items -- is routine.
And now, the plague has given the monsters a new and grand opportunity. The official unemployment rate has tripled overnight to almost fifteen percent, which means the real rate is probably at least twenty percent. The Senate is in the process of leveraging aid to states and counties on the condition that businesses be indemnified from liabilities incurred from (to put it politely) economically coercing people to go back to work, since unemployment insurance systems are deliberately inoperable in many states. You know, because you lazy motherfuckers will just take advantage of it.
The goal has never been to prevent pandemic or mitigate damage. It has always been to make sure someone else gets blamed for everything, while continuing the racketeering, and the hijacking of PPE supplies to be fenced, the profits laundered and offshored. It's the ultimate no-show job for Sil's crew, combined with Paulie's crew robbing the cigarette trucks, and pushing all the proceeds through the Bing. There's really nothing more to it. Anyone still talking about misgovernance is completely missing the true picture. Things are running exactly the way they want them to run.
There is a perfect -- and by "perfect" I mean perfectly horrible -- economic storm brewing. For years, private equity has been quietly chewing through the backbone of many vital American employment sectors. You know how people blame the internet for killing off newspapers? That's only partly true. Private equity firms have been doing most of the heavy lifting.
Another sector where private equity has been working overtime is the retail and service sector. Have you been to a department store lately? You know how many people work in those employment sectors? Again, Amazon bears part of the blame for this, but not as much as one might first assume.
Regardless, ten percent of the total population has been dumped just in the last two months. The reason the stock market seems bullish boils down to two important factors:
- These people are fucking scum. Seriously, they're nothing but vampires, profiting from mass immiseration.
- They are herd animals, all trying to to get in that final second of profit-taking before the whole thing blows up.
We're way too complacent about all of this. We watched these monsters herd refugees into for-profit detention centers, where children get raped and people pass communicable diseases around, under the rubric of keepin' out them illegals. Everybody agreed that "someone" should "do" "something," but could not apparently reach any sort of consensus -- or even a quorum -- on who and what and how.
And we're fine with lubricating the machinery of the scut-work service center in this country with the blood of illegal immigrants. Who the hell do we think is processing our meat, picking our produce, cleaning and cooking and serving food in our restaurants? Who else, besides people whose entire lives are spent under the thankless lash of economic coercion, would do this crap for peanuts, have to listen to useless losers talk shit about them 24/7, and then be told to risk their health by going back to those jobs after all that?
Think about where all your food is coming from. Buy local as much as you possibly can. The best way to dismantle the system is to starve it as much as possible.
At first they mounted the endless line of stairs with a sense of resolve and purpose, regular man and giant cat. After about ten layers of the pyramid had passed, they began pacing themselves.
Who built this?
An ancient civilization. They have been gone for many eons.
How did they build it?
They did not leave any records that anyone has been able to decipher. There are hieroglyphics, but they appear to mostly be descriptions of their customs and daily lives. No one knows for sure. All we know is that the building is here, in this place.
As they passed layer after layer, Aapo noticed that he did not see any seams anywhere -- not between layers, nor between steps. Rather than being assembled brick by brick with dressed stones, it appeared as if an immense block had been placed here, and then chipped and carved into this form, or vice versa. It was an unnerving idea to think about. And there was no vegetation at all on the structure, no climbing vines or flowers or leaves of any kind.
He paused on a step, looked down at the top of the jungle canopy, emerald and chocolate and ebony, then looked up and around the sky, noticing that there were no birds, no clouds, no sun, just as endless expanse of subtly variated yellow, a screen of firmament that reflected light without revealing the source.
The steps were high and steep, and while Ek Balam traversed them with the sure foot of a mountain goat, Aapo kept his line of sight intently on the next step, and the next one, and the next, in order to retain his footing. The embarrassment of a trip or stumble on these hard marble steps would be nothing compared to the pain of smacking face-first into one.
Yet for a second, Aapo decided to look up the stepped path, in order to see what was left, and was dismayed to find that he could still not see the summit.
How much farther is it to the top?
Don't worry. We're nearly there.
Aapo pondered how that could possibly be, when he had just looked up to see an endless flight of these seamless steps. Suddenly -- or finally -- they stepped on to a plateau, a square of about twenty-five feet to a side, with a fifteen-by-fifteen foot cube with a doorway set atop the square. Like the rest of the pyramid, the cube was chalk white, smooth as marble, hard as granite.
Aapo stopped and took a deep breath, expecting to be thoroughly winded and sore by now, as they had been climbing for nearly an hour -- or was it a day? Yet he felt fine, strangely exhilarated in fact. He took a few deep breaths and looked down to his right, to see the jaguar looking up at him rather impatiently, then to the doorway.
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