Wednesday, January 5, 2022

Brace Yourselves For a Bracing 2022

 I know it's early days yet, but my nomination for the most annoying phrase of 2022 is "bracing for."

In lieu of paying people to isolate and quarantine during the worst outbreak of Covid-19 yet, our leaders are instructing us to simply brace ourselves for the inevitable. People will simply have to sicken and die if capitalism is to survive. So take one for the team, Proles. Go back to work and school. Take a tip from Joe Biden, who reassured us just the other day that we have every reason to be "optimistic about 2020." After all, if you heard him say that, it means that you survived the First Plague Year and that you are still alive, even if just barely.

 Uncle Joe is adhering perfectly to the modern job description of US presidents. To wit: Always Campaign, Never Govern. Leave the governing and policy formation to the billionaire donor class and to the Pentagon and the CIA. 

So I say give the poor guy a break. Since he was effectively prevented from physically campaigning during the final year of this country's most recent money-soaked perpetual campaign, that's all the more reason for him to go full Proust and search for lost time. He has every reason to be retroactively hopeful about 2020, because his depressing promise to donors that nothing would fundamentally change under his watch is what paradoxically propelled him to his less than stellar victory over Donald Trump.  

Since that miracle occurred, can you really blame him for continuing to indulge in such magical-thinking episodes as insisting that unvaccinated young children will be safe in their unventilated school buildings at the very same time he claims that this is a pandemic of The Willfully Unvaccinated? If he admitted that the current outbreak of the Omicron variant is directly attributable to the parallel pandemic of windfall Wall Street profits and super-spreading corporate greed, not to mention his own failure to prepare and to protect the country, then his snow-job might lose what little magic it still retains. This is despite social media going nuts and describing him as a "bad-ass" for bravely allowing snow to fall upon his heavily guarded self as he alit from Air Force One during this week's blizzard. It's called bracing oneself for low approval ratings amongst multiple bracing catastrophes - in lieu of actually doing anything to help people.




If, Biden insinuates, you can't be optimistic about the fortunes of the weaponized oligarchy, then please just accept your fate so as to appease the mightiest of them all, The Almighty Guy in the Sky. “There’s a lot of reason to be hopeful in 2020. But for God’s sake, please take advantage of what is available,” Biden scolded.

The  other thing that "we" are all supposedly bracing for is the dreaded anniversary of the Capitol Riot, a/k/a the attempted Fascist Coup. They are doing their utmost to make January Sixth the most awesome holy day of national obligation to come around year after year after year since September Eleventh.

Joe Biden will mark the new solemn day of remembrance and fear with a campaign event cast as a  major speech to the Nation - not about improving people's lives, mind you - but about Speaking Truth to Power, carefully limited to Donald Trump's lies. He will not, for example  (as two sources dished to Reuters), touch the voting rights crisis with a ten foot pole.

Good Catholic that he is, Biden should know that January Sixth is also the Feast of the Epiphany, or what Christians used to mark as Twelfth Night back when there was still a long Yuletide season and people weren't forced back to work after only one or two legal days off for the holidays. Besides the name of the day marking the Three Kings' legendary homage to the infant Jesus after following the star of Bethlehem, "epiphany" also describes "a moment when you suddenly see or understand something in a very new or clear way."

And notwithstanding the ruling class's apparent failure to see the Capitol riot and attempted coup not only as a result of Donald Trump's corruption and incitement to violence but at least partly as a manifestation of the legitimate angst of the working class, said working class certainly has signaled its own long-delayed epiphany about how badly neoliberalism has screwed them over for the last 40-plus years. They are quitting their jobs in unprecedented numbers.

 The most recent Job Opening and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) reveals that a record 4.5 million Americans voluntarily quit their jobs in November, an increase of more than 380,000 from October 2021. Most of those finally deciding to take this job and shove it were employed in the low-paying hospitality and service sectors, which now advertise the most job openings in the country. At the same time as "the Great Resignation," however, more than six million Americans have gotten new jobs, which ostensibly pay better wages and offer more benefits. After nearly half a century, labor is finally gaining the upper hand again.

No wonder Biden is nostalgic for 2020, when the pandemic and the ruling class's refusal to handle it has rightly weakened the ruling class and strengthened the resolve of the rest of us, shifting our priorities so inexorably that the erstwhile Movers and Shakers are bracing themselves for the Great Revolt following the Great Resignation.

Never ones to let such a serious crisis go to waste, though, they will no doubt pair the January Sixth anniversary with the Nine-Eleven Anniversary to justify the imposition of even more surveillance and repression upon the citizenry, which as a body are simply not going to take any more of it.

Biden can nonsensically call the slowly collapsing ruling order a "pandemic of the unvaccinated" till he's blue in the face, but his swirling, scapegoating blizzard of fear-mongering, alternating with the obligatory insipid platitudes, makes crystal clear to the vast majority of us just what their vile agenda truly is.

Ask yourselves this: why have more 700 alleged Capitol rioters been arrested, but the supposedly reviled and existentially threatening Instigator-in-Chief not only remains free, but continues to grow rich and powerful while holding his political rallies? Could it be because Trump is essentially just the oppositional wing of the ruling oligarchy, and vital to the liberal, "Democratic" party side, because he makes them look so good by comparison? 

Vigilantism and militia movements in service to the ruling class are not just the bailiwick of the right wing faction. As chillingly headlined in the Jan. 5th edition of the New York Times:

While the Justice Department has called the inquiry one of the largest in its history, traditional law enforcement officials have not been acting alone. Working with information from online sleuths who style themselves as “Sedition Hunters,” the authorities have made more than 700 arrests — with little sign of slowing down.

The government estimates that as many as 2,500 people who took part in the events of Jan. 6 could be charged with federal crimes. That includes more than 1,000 incidents that prosecutors believe could be assaults....

But a big question hangs over the prosecutions: Will the Justice Department move beyond charging the rioters themselves?

So far, the department has provided no public indication of the degree to which it might be pursuing a case against former President Donald J. Trump and the circle of his allies who helped inspire the chaos with their baseless claims of election fraud. Attorney General Merrick B. Garland is scheduled to give a speech on Wednesday, one day before the anniversary of the attack on the Capitol, but is not expected to provide any signals about the direction of the department’s investigation. A spokeswoman said he would not address any specific cases or individuals.

It's all about surveilling, intimidating and controlling the masses of people. The rich and powerful make no secret of despising regular people, whom they find convenient to pit against one another by virtue of their alleged cultural differences and political allegiances. They have taken to admitting that their concern about the threat to democracy has nothing to do with the ongoing threat to the lives and livelihoods of actual people.

If the title ("Is Democracy Failing and Putting Our Economic System at Risk?) of a recent Brookings Institution (a neoliberal Democratic Party-aligned think tank) paper doesn't make what the elites are truly bracing for clear enough for mere mortals, then the lead paragraph, penned by a Harvard Business School poobah, certainly should:

"I think the decline of democracy is a mortal threat to the legitimacy and health of capitalism."

Since democracy and capitalism are defined as the exact same thing according to neoliberal ideology, the Demos, or people. are not actually part of this pathocratic equation, are they?

The Brookings Paper, by the way, was produced in conjunction with the neoconservative United States Democracy Center, whose own chilling mission statement is heavy on weaponized police protection of oligarchs to protect them from the Demos. Its board of advisers is a rogues' gallery of Bush-era Iraq War architects, surveillance privateers, military brass and GOP bigwigs who are now finding unabashed common cause with centrist Democrats. This should give absolute lie to the controlled media narrative of "divided government" and congressional gridlock. 

For as long as the bipartisan protect racket can embrace Trump as their main scapegoat, as long as they can delay holding him to account, then their increasingly undemocratic and repressive hold on power will persist.

Their problem is, they just aren't all that bright. 


12 comments:

Thorstein said...

"So far, the department has provided no public indication of the degree to which it might be pursuing a case against former President Donald J. Trump and the circle of his allies who helped inspire the chaos ... "

However it has become abundantly clear that the department will not be pursuing a case against the FBI agents who organized the "insurrection" ...

https://www.revolver.news/2021/12/damning-new-details-massive-web-unindicted-operators-january-6/

Kat said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Erik Roth said...

Capitol Rioter Admits False Statements to FBI, but Prosecutors Haven’t Charged Him With a Felony —
The Justice Department frequently charges Muslims with felonies for making false statements to federal agents.
https://theintercept.com/2022/01/03/capitol-riot-january-6-proud-boys-fbi/
January 3, 2022 ~ by Trevor Aaronson

Anonymous said...

Just want to say how very much I appreciate this website. I have it bookmarked and read everything you post.

I comment at a couple of other websites, one hosted by Ian Welsh and the other being Naked Capitalism. Is it okay with you if I sometimes copy from your posts to share at those websites?

Karen Garcia said...

Thank you, Anonymous, you are welcome to share my posts and glad you enjoy the blog!

Valerie Long Tweedie said...

Well, it is all exactly like Ralph Nader said long ago and the readers of Sardonicky understand, voting for the Lesser of Two Evils (TLOTE)is still voting for evil. We all smelled a rat when we lost Elizabeth Warren in March, Bernie suddenly dropped out of the race a month later, and Joe Biden - the weakest candidate - got the votes for the nomination. He was clearly being paid off for years of faithful service and could be relied upon to remain faithful, as president, to the neoliberal order.

The Democrats haven't changed their strategy one single bit. Their only strategy for winning any election is blame the Republicans - and revive the threat of Trump at every opportunity. It's no surprise, Biden and the Democrats focussed on January 6 - otherwise, they would have to address the continued wealth inequality, a militarised police that goes after peaceful protesters at the behest of the world's corporate overlords, a house of cards stock market that has only survived because of endless bailouts which are continually abused, a pandemic resulting in continued strain on the already broken health system, shortages, the list goes on and doesn't even address the two giant elephants in the room, climate change and nuclear proliferation.

Those in power have always - at least in my memory - equated capitalism with Democracy. The thought that the government might just intervene on the behalf of its citizenry rather than giving "under the table" handouts to private enterprise is immediately dismissed as socialism - as if a bit of socialism is going to destroy democracy.

So no, I do not think 2022 is going to be any different from 2021. In fact, I am expecting it to be worse. To what extent, I cannot say but the economic house of cards can't go on indefinitely, we can't keep giving lip service to climate change and we can't keep provoking countries with nuclear weapons into stand-offs without consequences.

voice-in-wilderness said...

My favorite phrase these day is "we are doomed," with reference to both U.S. democracy and global warming. I also add that the more we know, such as by reading Sardonicky, the worse we understand the situation to be.

My current focus of disappointment is Merrick Garland. Or Mild Merrick, as Joy Reid called him on her show. Garland comes after the disappointing performance of Robert Mueller. No doubt I should blame myself for allowing my expectations to rise in each case. One key difference is Mueller was kept hidden until the end, while Garland is out there talking. I'm even rethinking whether Garland was a good choice of the Supremes.

Patricia M. said...

I'm with you, Valerie.

Jay–Ottawa said...


What a marvellous post, dripping with satire and solidly-connected dot-to-dot facts. Mencken lives.

Annie said...

Right on, Valerie. Another great post, Karen.

Ralph Nader has great points about the development of the corporate state since Nader's Raider's heyday. I especially appreciate his remarks about the corporate pimping (my word) of children:

"7. Without challenge to their marketing, corporations commercialized childhood, directly selling to kids junk foods and junk drinks that set off the deadly obesity epidemic and its health-damaging results. They sold violent programming and exploited the weaknesses of children, circumventing parental authority and discipline.

In the Internet Age, corporations can be described as raising our children, getting their personal information for free, and selling this collected data to advertisers. They are trapping these youngsters in the peonage of click-on contracts they never see through in their daily screen hours.

Whether in reality or virtual reality, corporations have become electronic child molesters with few pursuing sheriffs."

https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/01/10/think-big-to-overcome-losing-big-to-corporatism/

VLT said...

Annie,

It is so much worse than you can imagine in schools. The technology/computer sector effectively markets to teachers, administrators and children. More and more, schools have no money for libraries or book sets because the money is spent on buying i-pads and Chromebooks. Instead of lessons and discussions, students are left to follow the white rabbit in a computer program that advertises itself as "teaching to the individual needs of the student." Any person with awareness can see that class sizes will grow and the need for teachers will decline. After all, the computers and the computer programs will do all the work.

I see young teachers and principals buying into the paradigm and those who question its validity (such as moi) are silenced. Ironically, the intelligent parents get it and don't want their, particularly primary, students bombarded with technology. But on the whole, it is a vastly profitable product to be sold and marketed and the educational sector is ripe for the picking.

Carol said...

So witty and funny, Karen!

Jay, you are right! HL Mencken has been reincarnated (if you believe in that sort of thing).