Thread by @doctorow

In his 2017 book Four Futures, @pefrase uses science fiction to sketch out four ways our society could go as capitalism ruptures, from communism to exterminism, this being the expression of bosses' fear and dependence on workers.

boingboing.net/2017/01/06/fou…

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Frase posits a possible mass-automation event that makes workers superfluous (I'm skeptical of this: climate change guarantees 2-3 centuries of full employment, e.g., relocating every coastal city).

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But in light of the Current Situation, he imagines a different form of exterminism.

jacobinmag.com/2020/03/corona…

It's not just the GOP's willingness to murder 20% of seniors in the hopes of rescuing the Dow.

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Plutes and their bootlickers have been calling for mass-deaths as a preferable alternative since the crisis first manifested, as when Tea Party founder Rick Santelli suggested "Maybe we’d be just better off if we gave it to everybody."

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And of course, there was Boris Johnson and Dominick Cummings' plan to infect all of the UK to create "herd immunity." As Cummings said, "if that means some pensioners die, too bad."

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Now Trump wants to potentially murder 20% of American seniors to rescue share prices, and the GOP is going along with him.

https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1242444277264740353

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The Republicans have become the Party of Death, with establishment figures like Thomas Friedman providing ideological cover ("“let many of us get the coronavirus, recover and get back to work").

nytimes.com/2020/03/22/opi…

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Frase: "The ghoulishness of this strategy will become apparent when it is too late, when the hospitals fill and the health care system and the economy both collapse."

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"Those in power will be held blameless, and those with wealth will sadly lament the foolishness of the lesser orders."

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"Socialists have always insisted that human needs should take precedence over profit, that the stock market is not the economy, and that we need to utterly transform an economy that is immiserating working people and destroying the planet."

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"That message will only become more urgent as our opponents across different parts of the ruling class come to the conclusion — mournfully for some, gleefully for others — that in the contest between loss of profit and loss of life, they choose death."

eof/