Sunday, March 22, 2020

Random Thoughts On Frail Existence

Thanks to all the contributors to the comments section for all your outstanding posts and links!

Like everybody else, I'm awaiting the details of the top-secret trillion dollar-plus stimulus package currently being tied up in slippery snakelike ribbons by the Senate racketeers..It's always a bad sign whenever you don't get to see what's in one of these emergency measures before it's too late. It's also a bad sign when the individuals and families allegedly -maybe-  on the receiving end of pennies to the dollar awarded to the usual corporate grifters of the world are being cynically referred to as "workers" and "taxpayers." This would seem to leave out the growing masses of the unemployed, the disabled and others who already are too poor to pay any taxes at all.


The odious "skin in the game" mantra of our neoliberal overlords is as much a part of their rigid brains as the coronavirus becomes a literal and lethal part of every human cell that it invades. 


So, how is everybody coping? 


Whenever panic and depression threaten to overwhelm me, I do artsy-craftsy stuff... for hours on end. I may not have a toilet paper and bleach stash, but I do have my yarn stash, accumulated for more years than I want to admit. There are lots of crocheted hats and maybe an afghan in the future, which I now count by the day rather than by the month or the year.


For pure mindless enjoyment, I also highly recommend adult coloring, which has a similar effect on the brain to valium or xanax.  My set of 36 Prismacolor pencils has become as necessary to me as my daily peanut butter sandwich.  And when I get tired of blending and burnishing, there are plenty of coloring tutorials on YouTube. Watching Chris Cheng do her thing accompanied by Erik Satie's piano music is guaranteed to lull you right to sleep if you're not careful. And of course there is the late painter Bob Ross on Netflix, whose 30 year old PBS demos do much to sooth the savage pandemic panic beast.


If it's stimulation you need, the inimitable Jimmy Dore is now streaming from his Pasadena garage almost daily. Don't just get mad. Get mad and get your news and info from a comedic lefty perspective at the same time.


I find that I have lost much of the concentration necessary to read deeply since the quarantine. Maybe it was the subject matter of Albert Camus's The Plague, which I hadn't read since high school and which took me over a week to slog through before I finally finished it. Too close to home, perhaps. But still, an invaluable psychological and philosophical treatise about the human condition in general as well as what it's like to live through a pandemic. It brings out both the best and worst in people, for sure.


Now I'm reading the much lighter The Devil Aspect by Craig Russell, which I downloaded from the New York Public library. It's about a psychiatrist in interwar Czeckoslovakia who has just taken a job at a hospital for the criminally insane, originally a medieval fortress built above a series of caves once believed to be the entrance of hell. Escapist horror is so much more edifyiing than real horror. Especially when it's well-written.


Speaking of which, here's a New York Times comment I wrote in response to Maureen  Dowd's profile of the national antidote to Trumpian horror, aka renowned epidemiologist Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Given the double peril of Trump's daily press cons and the danger of infection, it's probably time to stop covering them.
This daily ritual is not information, or even run of the mill propaganda. It's pure torture for everybody concerned. Trump's rhetoric is nothing but a giant toxic sneeze of disinformation. Perhaps one pool reporter could attend, based on a Shirley Jackson-inspired lottery system. That way, Trump's magic potion cures and odes to himself could be discreetly muted, if not ignored outright out of an abundance of journalistic responsibility and the ethics which are so sorely lacking in the highest office in the land.
Because which is more dangerous - Trump's reckless handling of the pandemic, or the pandemic itself? That is the question. It's noble enough to quarantine yourself, lose your income and your job and your social contacts, your health, and perhaps even your very life without also having to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous Trump-enhanced misfortune.
 I had to stop watching him yesterday because his xenophobic insinuation that migrants and refugees are the ones bringing the virus over our precious border made me want to hurl. It has been the inaction at the highest levels of government, of politicians in service to the uncontained greed and venality of the oligarchs and corporations, which has helped spread the disease all over the world.
We must find a way to quarantine all of them.
  Universal basic income and Medicare For All!
On the bright side: have you noticed that the Coronavirus has at least temporarily quashed the unreal Russiagate scare as well as the media's presidential horse race theatrics? Also, there is a lot less pollution. The pandemic could be nature's own dispassionate way of protecting itself from global warming in particular and mindless capitalism in general.

Dispassionate but not fair, given that the rich historically fare better than the poor during times of catastrophe. There is a whole new media subgenre of coronavirus celebrity. The rich are different in that they get testing and treatment and also the means to escape to their second or third homes or their islands or their yachts. For every thousand diagnoses that go ignored, there's a constant stream of  Idris Elbas and Sophie Trudeaus for the unwashed, untreated, uninsured masses to identify with.

Mike and Karen Pence testing negative makes the headlines and washes all that negativity right away. Where there's a healthy Mike Pence, there is hope, proles! 

Thanks again, readers. Please keep the comments, tips and links coming. I think we can all keep each other sane for the duration. A few laughs now and then would also be in definite order. 

14 comments:

Jay–Ottawa said...


Talk of "a Shirley Jackson-inspired lottery" to cover Trump's pressers followed by an update of Hamlet's suicide soliloquy sure do bring a smile to my face. Karen, I hope you always keep that inspired tickling quill within reach for when you give a well-deserved rest to the crochet needles.

The Joker said...

"ʻIʼm So Sorry I Worked for This Guyʼ: Ex-Staffers React to Bloomberg Reversal on Field Organizers.
The former New York mayor, announcing he would donate $18 million to the Democratic National Committee, abandoned a plan to employ his campaign organizers through November."

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/20/us/politics/michael-bloomberg-dnc.html

And:

"Read the memo Jeff Bezos sent to Amazon employees about coronavirus safety at warehouses".

https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2020/03/21/jeff-bezos-memo-about-coronavirus-safety-at-amazon-warehouses.html

https://blog.aboutamazon.com/company-news/a-message-from-our-ceo-and-founder

Bezos' memo ends "Please take care of yourselves and your loved ones. I know that we’re going to get through this, together."

No, Jeff, if your employees get through this, it won't be "together" with you, but apart from you, and in spite of you. Are you providing all of them (including temporary, part-time, and subcontracted warehouse and delivery workers) with paid medical insurance? Why not, if Amazon is providing such an "essential" service in these times?

Every day brings some new example of the "titans of industry" shafting their employees. The tables need to be turned on that.
Fuck these "titans". Fuck 'em all.

Eat the rich!
Tastes like chicken!

As far as how I'm coping, I'd like to during this period digitize some of my old film negatives and do some serious printing of them. It remains to be seen whether I actually am ambitious enough to follow through on that. Separate from that, I do think that I will read more serious progressive political analysis than usual. Here's hoping that a significant proportion of the public become more radicalized during these times. If all they do is entertain themselves, they won't. But hopefully a certain significant fraction might seek to understand why they and this country are in the present situation, and will seek non-trivial answers from good sources.

Annie said...

This is good for a laugh - 'What I think I'll do during the "Shelter in Place" order versus what I'm actually doing'

https://thenib.com/creativity-in-captivity/

puzzled said...

Karen,

Glad you’re well and yarning!

Tbh, I never really understood why Dore ignored Gabbard’s support for genocidal maniac Narendra Modi, and enthusiastically continued to endorse her.

Jeremy Scahill’s team was on to this over a year ago at The Intercept, though Dore could just have asked his Muslim friends and neighbors how they felt about the Modi-Gabbard relationship. Bit of a blindspot, mebbe?

https://theintercept.com/2019/01/05/tulsi-gabbard-2020-hindu-nationalist-modi/

When you break it down, Gabbardian support was overwhelmingly white, male and strikingly conservative, and thereby inherently limited; unlike other soi-disant progressive candidates, Gabbard never made the effort to expand her base to women, African Americans, LatinX, Asian-Americans, LGBTQ... you know, the kind of expanded base the left will need to actually effect change.

Perhaps give credit to the (mostly) young white kids at DSA for being skeptical of the limits of white leftism, they’re actively trying to be of use to communities of color. It has a little bit of the hope of Fred Hampton’s Rainbow Coalition, but with better tech skills.

I respectfully propose we allow Dore time to grieve in private, and lens our ears to other voices.?James Adomian and Anthony Atamaniuk have been doing better political comedy and deeper analysis, and they’re worth your readers’ time. A recent interview they did with Matt Taibbi is here:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/useful-idiots-with-matt-taibbi-and-katie-halper/id1476110521?i=1000468244136

Meanwhile, Sanders has regularly been doing live webcasts regarding the coronavirus crisis, you can link to them thru his twitter feed.

Another example of a boomer wildly popular with younger generations is activist/historian Mike Davis, author of Planet of Slums and City of Quartz. There’s a great interview with him on The Dig:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/jacobin-radio/id791564318?i=1000469002041

Solidarity, make it broad!

puzzled said...

BTW,

I really enjoyed reading this old post from Karen:

https://kmgarcia2000.blogspot.com/2019/12/compassion-neoliberal-style.html?m=1

Comments from Jay were also very strong in response to a slippery “anonymous” commenter who, I might wager, works in real estate development sector.

Erik Roth said...


I Spent a Year in Space, and I Have Tips on Isolation to Share —
Take it from someone who couldn’t: Go outside.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/21/opinion/scott-kelly-coronavirus-isolation.html?searchResultPosition=1
March 21, 2020 ~ by Scott Kelly
Mr. Kelly is a retired NASA astronaut who spent nearly a year on the International Space Station.

Five years ago >>—>
Message from the International Space Station to COP21
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfhR0kZxFjg
United Nations - on 5 December 2015 at the UN Climate Change Conference (Action Day) astronauts sent a passionate message from the International Space Station to delegates calling for an effective action on climate change. They were joined by scientists and former astronauts from around the world.

"We went to the Moon as technicians; we returned as humanitarians.
You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, 'Look at that, you son of a bitch.’ "
~ Edgar Mitchell, Apollo 14 astronaut, People magazine, 8 April 1974.

"This planet is not terra firma. It is a delicate flower and it must be cared for. It's lonely. It's small. It's isolated, and there is no resupply. And we are mistreating it. Clearly, the highest loyalty we should have is not to our own country or our own religion or our hometown or even to ourselves. It should be to, number two, the family of man, and number one, the planet at large. This is our home, and this is all we've got.”
~ Scott Carpenter, Mercury 7 astronaut, speech at Millersville University, Pennslyvania, 15 October 1992.

"I really believe that if the political leaders of the world could see their planet from a distance of 100,000 miles their outlook could be fundamentally changed. That all-important border would be invisible, that noisy argument silenced. The tiny globe would continue to turn, serenely ignoring its subdivisions, presenting a unified facade that would cry out for unified understanding, for homogeneous treatment. The earth must become as it appears: blue and white, not capitalist or Communist; blue and white, not rich or poor; blue and white, not envious or envied.”
~ Michael Collins, Gemini 10 & Apollo 11 astronaut, Carrying the Fire: An Astronaut's Journeys, 1974.

"There are no passengers on Spaceship Earth. We are all crew."
~ Marshall McLuhan

Quarantine may be necessary, but speaking from experience, isolation is not healthy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8lOLNfnCBg

Take care, stay safe, be well.
One hand washes the other.
Speaking of which, today, March 22nd is World Water Day.
https://www.worldwaterday.org/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FDuqYld8C8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wD3-6JIUF7M

p.s.
Need uplifting?
Lord knows we all do.
A dog named Stella shows how. >>—>
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tu3HN-MmJc4


puzzled said...

It was beautiful outside today, sunny and windy with dramatic storm clouds on the horizon. I walked in Cesar Chavez Park (once a garbage dump) where we all observed the six-foot distancing rule, but called out to one another and laughed watching the dogs chase themselves through the grass.

Our German neighbor, an engineer, had sailed his very young children out to Angel Island yesterday and they moored there overnight, coming back this afternoon. He had wanted to teach them patience by showing them how to fish, having explained to them that they would “have to wait a long while for the fish to bite.” But the fish hooked themselves one after the other, and the entire lesson was scrapped, with the fish unhooked and returned wriggling to our bay.

This poor handsome man suffers nothing but frustration in trying to instill values his children might already possess, and it cracks me up.

The air is cleaner, the water, too. A cormorant let me get so close I could almost reach out and touch his feathers. The birds and animals are bolder now, as we humans have been forced to retreat.

When I see them, I fret less over my own survival. As an American, despite my technical poverty, I’ve enjoyed plenty that most humans couldn’t imagine.

“I’m not proud to be an American,” my sister announced quietly after a year spent teaching in Shanghai in the early 1980s, “I’m just grateful.”

What I hope is that, if humans survive this and coming pandemics, we can outline a plan to mitigate the toxic pollution we are leaving behind.

I want to live. It seems criminal to say otherwise but it is how I feel. But if I am among those who do not make it, it gives me some comfort to think that the planet might survive better with fewer humans. Since we have all been part of this remarkable planet, what measures can we take to mitigate environmental damage if our human population dwindles? How do we gradually deactivate nuclear reactors? Oil refineries? Chemical refineries?

The wealthy make out their wills. But there is a higher estate planning we need to think about - as Mr. Roth pointed out, the earth.

Annie said...

Here's a funny tweet I saw:

"My 76 year old not particularly radical mom right now: 'Bernie should just declare himself interim president and tell us where to show up to overthrow the government - we can take my car'."

Count me in!

puzzled said...

Annie,

Save me a spot!

Here’s some interesting news, Bloomberg being sued by ex-staffer. Good for her! (My favorite Doomberg campaigners were the ones who would just go door-to-door telling people to vote for Sanders, or basically anyone but B-berg. And they got paid for it - now that’s entrepreneurial!)

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/23/us/politics/bloomberg-employee-lawsuit.html

Erik Roth said...

‘Wartime President’? Trump Rewrites History in an Election Year
The president is brazenly grabbing his only clear option to bolster his re-election hopes, portraying himself as a take-charge leader the country can’t afford to lose.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/22/us/politics/coronavirus-trump-wartime-president.html?action=click&module=Top Stories&pgtype=Homepage
March 22, 2020 ~ by Annie Karni, Maggie Haberman, and Reid J. Epstein

my posted comment:

We are faced with a catastrophe exacerbated by President Trump’s failure to act for our defense against a pandemic and inflaming the crisis by his anti-science lies and xenophobia.
We cannot wait until November. The 4th section of the 25th Amendment must be invoked immediately. Trump must be dumped for the sake of the nation, if not the entire world. NOW.

Which was inspired by this:
Dear Vice President Mike Pence:
Please Use the 25th Amendment to Remove Trump and Save Us From the Coronavirus
https://theintercept.com/2020/03/23/25th-amendemnt-pence-remove-trump/
March 23, 2020 ~ by Mehdi Hasan

Trump Disagrees With Top Immunologist Over Untested Drug Treatment for Covid-19 —
https://theintercept.com/2020/03/20/trump-disagrees-top-immunologist-untested-drug-treatment-covid-19/
March 20, 2020 ~ by Robert Mackey

“Hope Is Not a Strategy”: Emergency Doctor Asks, Where Are COVID-19 Tests? Where Is Protective Gear?
https://www.democracynow.org/2020/3/23/dr_leana_wen_coronavirus_testing_supplies
March 23, 2020
As the number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. rises to more than 35,000, doctors are facing a desperate lack of supplies, and tests continue to lag. We speak with Dr. Leana Wen, an emergency physician and public health professor at George Washington University. She previously served as Baltimore’s health commissioner. She says healthcare workers are “putting their lives on the line every day” as they work in hazardous conditions with inadequate supplies, including N95 respirator masks. “First we’re going to run out of masks, and then we’re going to run out of doctors and nurses, because they’ll become sick,” Dr. Wen warns.

Nurses: We Need Protective Gear. Now. —
“Why are all the nurses in other countries in bunny suits and hazmat gear — practically like Ebola protocols — and we’re not?”
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/coronavirus-nurses-lack-protective-gear-970301/
March 20, 2020 ~ by Brian Hiatt

The Epic Failure of Coronavirus Testing in America —
China and South Korea offer lessons in how to curb this pandemic.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/19/opinion/coronavirus-testing.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=Editorials
March 19, 2020 ~ by The Editorial Board

Dr. John Campbell: daily reports and coronavirus studies ...
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Dr.+John+Campbell

puzzled said...

Erik,
Mehdi Hasan is a hero. It’s long past time for the 25th amendment, which Hasan has been pushing for a long time.
Meanwhile it looks like Cuomo is handing control of covid-19 economic recovery to Blackstone’s Mulrow? While attempting to cut medicaid in NY state?
shock doctrine indeed

Jay–Ottawa said...


@ puzzled

To sweeten or at last temper the sour of the news Sardonicky might benefit from its very own nature columnist.

This is an example of what I'm talking about:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/23/opinion/coronavirus-nature-outdoors.html

Given two of your essays so far along that line (i.e.:17 March 2020, 11:26 AM; 22 March 2020, 11:52 PM,), I'm petitioning Karen to establish a sidebar, name it what you will if this idea ever gets to committee, the column to be refreshed weekly with a new essay at a time you work out with the editor/publisher/boss.

Annie said...

Old national health policy: Don't Get Sick

New national health policy: Hurry Up and Die

puzzled said...

@Jay,
Thanks for the uplifting suggestion! Gotta admit I’m terrible at weeklies, though. But happy to insert nature notes here and there!
Has anyone noticed #GeneralStrike trending?
Looks like a lot of employees are rightly walking out or threatening to do so.
The young people in the DSA set have been asking recently about the legendary ‘34 strike - a topic I’ve long been fascinated by.
I wonder if this is just an echo or the start of something larger than ‘34?