My grandfather is a doctor & medical researcher & has been very concerned with COVID (rightfully so) and, in the biggest indication to me that the world is shifting back into lockdown, has decided, w/input from all of us, to cancel the in-person family holiday event this weekend.
I think this is absolutely the right choice. We have a ton of at-risk people at all ages of the family. Considering that he was ok with in-person Thanksgiving I can't think of a more foreboding sign to me personally that NYC/the US/the world is backsliding into a lockdown.
"The new despair wells up from the gap between what we knew & what we did, like sulfur seeping from deep-sea vents. Having had the chance to tame the virus and failed to do so, and then fallen prey to exactly the risks that we foresaw—this is a new burden" theatlantic.com/health/archive…
Like we see with climate change there is this creeping feeling that we (the world and the US in particular) cannot overcome the profit motive for long enough to save ourselves from ourselves. I increasingly feel these are all branches from the same root of extreme capitalism...
And we can't rid ourselves of the symptoms of the disease without having at least a conversation about the source and that source is that we just cannot stop being so fking greedy. Too greedy to have any foresight or compassion. It sucks.
I think a lot about how much this traces back to the 80s, the politics and economics of the 80s, how it influenced everything, including both left and right politics, how it twisted and transformed our already troubled version of capitalism into the seed of the monster it is now.
This is latest in how a boomer generation manifested the 80s fk-you-get-mine philosophy & burned the world for their own benefit. It's hard to look into the future w/out looking back at the past & seeing myself in the 1st generation facing down worse prospects than our parents...
I still think one of the best reads of the last decade was goodreads.com/book/show/1082… - which just put in focus for me how none of how we got here is an accident.
If there is anything that I hope gets burned into the history disk we leave on a pedestal after the fall of our civilization, it's that we were doomed by the Reaganism.
We could have had the world, but instead a whole generation decided that they'd rather get and die rich.
This is what we get instead.
This is what we get instead.
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