1,743 people died of Covid yesterday. Most ppl I know are holding to make most future plans in the near future. Meanwhile, commerce just rolls on as if nothing is happening, as if everything is going to be just fine, as if there's no need for a holding pattern. It unsettles me.
It's outdoors, maybe things will be better by the summer. But the relentless way commerce just rolls over our consciousness as if nothing is happening will never not unsettle me.
AIDS took 50,000 people in its 15th year. We blow through that in Covid deaths every six, seven WEEKS.
I think abt what 50,000 AIDS deaths means compared to 400,000 Covid deaths in a year...with the former, it was within a relatively small, often geographically close community. So the effect, and memory holding, was very close, even if ignored by the main society.
With the latter, we have all experienced this pandemic (even those who try to ignore it or feel unaffected by it) so much, in our every day lives for so long, I can't see it receding from collective memory
But, who knows. Survivors of the Atlantic slave holocaust, survivors of the Nazi holocaust, survivors of torture—many they have gone years or decades in a state of shell shock before (or if) they open their mouths to tell their stories.
I mean I totally get, and try not to judge, ppl making life plans. Two years in, we need things to look forward to—we need to live! Even among death. What freaks me out is "Harry Styles to headline 250,000 person festival." Will he? Should he? Might not it be cancelled?
I get dismayed at this country's inability to assess what is actually happening. To desire entertainment instead of art. To allow the social force of capitalism propel everything forward, regardless of needing time to grieve, or needing to wait and see, or to allow us to
consider other ways to live and to be. Other ways to be in community and to experience intimacy. Informed by what we've lost and what we've learned.
That is what is so sad to me. The social force of capitalism to yell, "Yeah, everything's fine" when everything, is not, fine.
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1. Obama was unusual in that he wasn't the handpicked candidate of the DNC or its owners. (Having billionaire Penny Pritzker run his fundraising sealed his Wall St bona fides.) Otherwise, Dems choose unelectable VPs (Biden, Kaine, Harris) they hope they can install later.
2. But it's weird they always tend to pick VPs who are just awful retail politicians with no support. Biden ran unsuccessfully for president for decades and called Obama "articulate" and "clean." Harris was polling 5th in her home state. TIM KAINE?!!!?! Who was he???
3. You can see the utter contempt on Harris's face. She didn't win primaries. She hates ppl. She seems put out by @cthagod or journalists. She is not comfortable working a room, unless it's of rich donors who tell her she's brilliant bc they know they'll dictate her policy, they
1. A report from the streets of Chicago, where CPS students are walking out, demanding better conditions to face Covid-19. Riding my bike up Statr St towards the Board of Ed, I already see hundreds of students on their way
2. Students crossings fittingly, at Ida B. Wells Drive
3. A really beautiful scene — several hundred students in front of the Board of Ed chanting “Hey hey, ho ho, Lori Lightfoot has got to go”
It's fine to be angry w Democrats. You can't reason w Republicans. But a pro-Hillary friend once asked "Do you want to argue w neoliberals or w fascists?" The Dems have the WH & Congress, so I am arguing w & angry at them, bc they're letting ppl die & handing off to fascists.
For years, the Dems have been using the threat of Republicans like an abusive spouse with their fist raised uses the threat of violence ("Do what I want or I'll put you out on the street, then you won't have a home at all and you'll REALLY have something to cry about." )
But...the Dems aren't even providing any of the material comforts they are threatening might be taken away? More ppl have died of Covid under their year of governing than did under the (pre-vaccine) Republican governing year.
Well @RoniNYTimes, shall we dig up the arrest record of everyone's crimes from 35 years before deciding if they are deserving of a vaccine, dental care, an organ transplant—or should they get THE DEATH PENALTY nytimes.com/2022/01/13/hea…
Carceral thinking everywhere. The NYT wants you to go the doctor and have someone—the receptionist? A Twitter poll?—decide if you are good enough to receive care or bad enough to be denied care.