Monday, May 11, 2020

Neoliberalism Stinks

I got a weird phone call on Saturday afternoon from a guy who said he had just left a "medicine delivery" at my front door. Since I don't take prescription drugs, I was puzzled. But in a brief burst of the same kind of wishful magical thinking that has taken the ruling class by storm, I thought that maybe some Good Samaritan had left me a bag of marijuana along with the thrice-weekly meal deliveries I've been getting from my county's "Project Resiliency" program.

So when I opened the door only to discover a beautiful Mothers Day bouquet from my son, I thought that I must be finally losing my hearing as well as my mind. Then I read the name of the florist on the attached card - "Meadow Scent."  My hearing was still more or less intact! Then I started to worry anew, because when I thrust my nose into the little red flowers and yellow tulip buds, I could not discern any meadow scent let alone any aroma whatsoever. Was my smell going? Was I exhibiting the first telltale symptom of Covid-19?


I suppressed that thought, and called my son on Face Time to thank him. Suddenly the room started to spin. But it was only my just-turned-two granddaughter gaining control of the phone so that I could converse with her dolls. Which I did.  For quite some time.


The next day, I got a "Happy Mothers Day" email from one of this blog's readers, in which I was cheerfully referred to an article about the "real" Lord of the Flies. Much to my edification and relief, it chronicled the adventures of a group of Tongan boys who, bored with their parochial school routine, ditched classes in favor of a nautical joy ride that culminated in their being marooned on a small Pacific island for more than a year. Contra the Hobbesian plot of the grim William Golding novel, these boys survived by dint of mutual aid, and cooperation. But when they were finally rescued, they were not completely celebrated for their resourcefulness and courage. They were briefly jailed for having stolen and wrecked the boat they used for their escape.


It's the kind of crazy reaction being leveled against the nurses who are fired for speaking out against the working conditions in our for-profit health care marketplaces, or for wearing unapproved protective gear as they work double overtime shifts saving the lives of pandemic victims.


It's why multiple generations of American high school students who are taught that history is nothing but a series of endless wars and cutthroat competition and who never learn the meaning of "civics" are forced to read "Lord of the  Flies" in English class.  I had to read it, my children had to read it. We all hated it. When my daughter was a sophomore, her reading assignment over the Christmas break was... you guessed it. The season of peace and joy was ruined by the feral antics of teenage boys and the murder of Piggy.


"All against all" has been drummed into most of us from our earliest, most susceptible formative years. It's just the way it is, people. 


So no wonder, as the British medical journal Lancet flatly reported in December 2009 on the passage of Obamacare :"Corporate influence renders the US government incapable of making policy on the basis of evidence and the public interest."


The structural social violence perpetrated against the citizenry was underway long before Donald Trump became its convenient scapegoat during this pandemic. Trump simply makes it easier for the de facto architects and enablers of a historically cruel system to look virtuous by comparison.


Now that tens of millions of American workers have lost their precarious employer-based health insurance, these anti-Trump architects and enablers are still adamantly opposed to Medicare For All. Their idea of a solution is to bail out and prop up the predatory insurance industry rather than treat patients who've already lost their jobs and livelihoods. To keep United Health Care and Blue Cross solvent, the government will shoulder hospitals' costs of Covid-19 treatment and only Covid-19 treatment - and perhaps increase Obamacare subsidies to those jobless people who were just kicked off their health insurance.


Barack Obama, in a "private" conference call with his government-in-exile last week, purported to be shocked and dismayed by Donald Trump's "chaotic" response to the pandemic:

"This election that's coming up on every level is so important because what we're going to be battling is not just a particular individual or a political party. What we're fighting against is these long-term trends in which being selfish, being tribal, being divided and seeing others as an enemy - that has become a stronger impulse in American life. And by the way, we're seeing that internationally as well," Obama was cited as saying in the private call according to Yahoo News, which said it obtained a tape of the call on Friday.
"It's part of the reason why the response to this global crisis has been so anaemic and spotty. It would have been bad even with the best of governments. It has been an absolute chaotic disaster when that mindset - of 'what's in it for me' and 'to heck with everybody else' - when that mindset is operationalised in our government.
"That's why, I, by the way, am going to be spending as much time as necessary and campaigning as hard as I can for Joe Biden," he said.
Obama's critique of the Trumpian "what's in it for me" Lord of the Flies ethic harkens uncomfortably back to his own personal ambitions. Chicago physician and social epidemiologist David Ansell recounts in The Death Gap a conversation he had with Obama at a 2003 fundraiser he co-hosted for him when he was running for the United States Senate:
In the living room of a modest single-family home in the neatly manicured South Shore neighborhood of Chicago, I asked the future president his position on national health care reform. His words presaged what came to be known as "Obamacare." 
"I'm a proponent of a single payer system," he responded. But he explained that the political power held by the health insurance companies was so formidable that opposing them would be political suicide.... Single payer will never get passed in the United States," he concluded.
Obama admitted that his political career trumped everything. This brand of raw selfish careerism is commonly lauded as being "realistic" or "pragmatic."

Here's some more classic Kabuki theater in which Hillary Clinton extracts a vague promise from a barely-there Joe Biden to use the pandemic to try to discuss better access to the possibility of universal health care. She ominously uses the same crisis rhetoric that former Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel used to bail out Wall Street at the expense of Main Street - before proceeding to subsidize the health care industry through a bill which the insurance and pharmaceutical companies wrote.




These corporatist leaders still purport to be amazed that there exists what Ansell calls a "death gap" in America, most recently exposed by the disproportionately high Covid-19 mortality rate among black and brown people. Their contrived moment of discovery is similar to that evinced among the ruling elite when Hurricane Katrina inordinately harmed the poor people of New Orleans while those with the financial wherewithal managed to escape.

Since that disaster culminated not only in widespread death and damage and displacement, but in the complete for-profit privatization of the  city's school system, just imagine what the forced closings of our entire nation's public schools will do for predatory capitalism.  Now that the Covid-19 plague is also affecting children with a Kawasaki-type syndrome, we have to ask whether neoliberal politicians will use it as the perfect disaster capitalism excuse never to reopen them at all.

The writing certainly seems to be on the wall in New York, where Governor Andrew Cuomo has convened a task force to set the education policies of the future. Ominously called "Reimagine Education," it will involve the branded expertise of billionaire and education privateer Bill Gates and will deliberately exclude teachers, parents, current school administrators and students. This is right in the wake of Cuomo cutting billions from the state's Medicaid program right in the middle of a pandemic:
The governor’s announcement of a partnership with the Gates Foundation was immediately met with forceful opposition from New York educators and parents who are critical of the foundation’s role in developing the Common Core academic standards and linking student test scores to teacher evaluations.
Teachers were also concerned that the governor was looking for ways to supplant some in-person teaching, with the state teachers union president, Andy Pallotta, saying that “remote learning will never replace the important personal connection between teachers and their students.”
How much would you like to wager that American students will continue to be taught Lord of the Flies with the aid of a robot teacher and Bill Gates's monopolistic software?  Topics of discussion might include whether Sartre was right, and hell really is other people, and the desirability of living in enforced quarantine as isolated ants who are nevertheless all digitally connected in service to Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos.  It sure beats the hell out of fear of the latest manufactured or hyped-up threat, such as murderer hornets.

With that depressingly dystopian thought, I think I'll go try to smell my flowers again. 

I only hope that enough of us wake up sooner rather than later to smell the coffee.

8 comments:

Ralph said...

Could we say that Jack Merridew bears a striking resemblance to Donald Trump?

Given the opportunity and a large inheritance, the Jack Merridews of the world find a nurturing environment. Now the whole place is on fire! Where's the Navy when you really need them?

eva said...

Karen,

Great piece! Much to chew on in this....

I’m glad you enjoyed the flowers your son sent and you got to talk to your grandbaby.

The guy who wrote that Guardian piece about the shipwrecked Tongan boys is also the guy who publicly called out the Davos people on a live-streamed conference call recently. Real good person.

BTW, just want to briefly add thanks post-Mother’s Day and I hope it doesn’t embarrass you. When I lost my housing post-2008 economic crash, your words provided necessary reassurance as I struggled to piece things back together. It was a very hard time in my life, and it occurred to me that I had never publicly acknowledged your encouragement - in part because it was so painful to acknowledge my circumstances at all.

Almost a decade later, I wonder how many other people you patched through hard times without even knowing it?

One thing you said in particular I still remember nearly every day. I was so deeply ashamed of the situation I found myself in, and that shame prevented me from seeking what little assistance was available to me. Your reply, best as I can recall, was perfectly delivered, and with just the right kind of commiserative laughter: “Oh, I’m too poor to afford ‘shame’ anymore.”

You up-ended the shame of poverty in one neat line.

With that infusion of courage from you, I started, at a tortoise-pace, to find my way again. (I do kind of feel like we’re all a bit like Steinbeck’s tortoise, sometimes, the one Tom Joad picks up off the road as he steps off the truck at the beginning of the novel, only to discover his family has lost the farm.)

I have no idea where this pandemic will leave us, but glad you’re still making sense of this mad world.

I hope you take breaks as you need, but please don’t stop! Most of all, thanks.

voice-iin-wilderness said...

Well, the good news is that Goldman Sachs alums are able to occupy key positions in administration after administration, though a few have left Trump and he is down to just Secretary Mnuchin!

More seriously, if we are honest in criticizing the Democrats as well as the Republicans, where do we turn in the here and now of electing a president in November? Whomever the Libertarians nominate for president? Write-in Karen's name? Am I overlooking an obvious alternative?

The Joker said...

@voice-in-wilderness

No good options for this election cycle. Long term, I'm starting to believe that most traditional candidate election routes are futile. Sure, someone's got to do it, as competition to most of the assholes holding or desiring office, but I think best option for most people is to be a rabble-rouser, either 1) directly, through mostly broad issue-based organizing, or 2) indirectly through film, television, or some performance venue. Think about that second suggestion. The public's biggest interest is being entertained. What's the audience for a film, a TV show, or a stand-up comedian -- versus the audience for serious political analysis? Think George Carlin. As much as I admire good written analysis on social-cultural-political matters, Carlin via his performances undoubtedly had a greater and more lasting influence on more people than if he had run for office, or worked for some candidate, or seriously published. Maybe we should all work up some good commentary for delivery and when things open up, head for open-mic night at our local comedy club or coffee shop. Or start a podcast or YouTube channel. Or burn CDs or DVDs, and sell or give them away, wherever. (If you're any good, be sure to reserve for yourself all broadcast, disc, and internet rights; you can permit case-by-case uses as you see fit, but YOU want to retain control, not have the corrupt system or some asshole appropriate them. And good or not, don't anyone end up like Lenny Bruce.)

https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/george-carlin-american-radical/

The Joker said...

"The coronavirus slayer! How Kerala's rock star health minister helped save it from Covid-19.
KK Shailaja has been hailed as the reason a state of 35 million people has only lost four to the virus. Here’s how the former teacher did it."

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/14/the-coronavirus-slayer-how-keralas-rock-star-health-minister-helped-save-it-from-covid-19

NOTE: She's a member of The Communist Party of India (Marxist)!

voice-in-wilderness said...

To add to my earlier post -- I had a realization back in December that has brought me perverse peace of mind about the presidential election. I realized Trump will not leave the presidency in November, regardless of the popular or electoral college vote. The Democratic candidate is not going to be a deciding factor, though Trump would prefer to have the Democrats snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

Pundits have been slow to wake up to this. In March I started to see columns that brought it up and then dismissed it because it would be unconstitutional and against the law. Such wishful naivete! Now I see more columns that recognize it is a very real possibility and that Trump has hinted at it in the past.

You can sketch in your own scenario as to his claims of election fraud, or starting a small war somewhere, or ...

Who would remove Trump? Not the Justice Department and Pentagon that he controls. Not Congress. Not the Supreme Court. Not the NYT or WaPo. And at that point as one reader of the NYT noted a month or so ago, Trump will only be limited by his imagination and the laws of physics.

Maybe I'll become like Winston Smith at the end of "Nineteen Eighty-Four," with tears coming down my cheeks, realizing that I love Big Brother. But I do want to bypass Room 101!




eva said...

I just had the odd experience of reading through hate mail I received from a white supremacist in response to an article I wrote about a specific set of reparations within our home County in California.

This was followed an hour later when I clicked on a link to the Jimmy Dore show interview wherein Max Blumenthal critiques Anand Ghiridharadas.

I have to say I was jolted by the fact that two white men were devoting 30 minutes of criticism of an US citizen of South Asian heritage after joking REPEATEDLY that neither of them could pronounce his name.

Dog whistle, much?

It’s an easy name to pronounce, and both of them are MORE than capable of learning how to say it. They repeatedly laughed as they mangled it, like two schoolyard bullies. It established immediately a real lack of respect not just for the presumed seriousness of their critique, but for themselves as members of an increasingly racially diverse media community.

Blumenthal then excused his inability to pronounce Ghiridharadas by saying that telemarketers mispronounce HIS name.

But Blumenthal is supposedly a REPORTER, not a telemarketer, and the dig about a presumably foreign telemarketer being unable to pronounce the name “Blumenthal” seemed designed to taunt.

Let me point out that I’m not here to defend Ghiridharadas - he’s a capable writer and social critic, anyone who read his book would understand that much of the thin substance of Blumenthal’s criticism was not valid.

Further, there is a generally valid skepticism of his affiliation with Vice News, and his McKinsey past, which Ghiridharadas himself critiques in his book.

But I ask my white friends and acquaintances to consider how many of these dog whistles they’ve been able to ignore on Dore’s show.

This is literally the third time I listened to any clip from Dore, and it was thrown right in my face. It occurs to me this might be what some in Dore’s audience misinterpret as a feature and not a bug.

Just a thought.


BTW, if you’re looking for something more illuminating than Dore, I can recommend some excellent Three Stooges films. Or, more seriously, the #ALABseries podcast.

The Joker said...

@voice-in-wilderness:

"Who would remove Trump?", you ask.

Perhaps not who; what. Hopefully, those little COVID-19 virion particles. There's nothing like some schadenfreude, when bad people get what they deserve. Can't think of a more fitting end for someone with so much arrogance, malevolence, selfishness, greed, ignorance, incompetence, hypocricy... -- than to be done in by a pandemic that he helped grow exponentially. What a karmic consequence that would be for someone who denies most scientific predictions and undermines best contagion-management practices, pulls medical recommendations out of his ass, and won't wear a mask for his inspection photo-ops when the people he interacts with are wearing them -- probably because for him to wear it runs counter to the wishful narrative he wants to project, and because in his irrepressible narcissism, he has to see his own uncovered face on TV. Whatever the reason, here's hoping he collects the ultimate Darwin Award for his arrogance and stupidity, specific and general. It almost happened to Boris Badenov in the UK, maybe it can actually happen to Trump in the U.S. -- and hopefully, to his entire coterie of sycophants and co-conspirators as well.