The New Normalcy Has Only Begun
The New Normalcy Has Only Begun
In a few weeks we'll look back and say we didn't know how good we had it.
My friends would concede that my natural state is mentally depressed nihilism. I understand millions of Americans live normal and happy lives where they get to pretend that if only we got rid of the bad orange man in the office, then suddenly we could go back to pretending to living in the greatest country the world has ever produced.
Maybe if I lived in the suburbs or some newly constructed apartment complex with young professionals or a country with nationalized healthcare, I would be happier.
Instead I live in Franklinton, where you never have to go far to see what historic wealth inequality and expanded corporate power has wrought on the most vulnerable citizens. As Mayor Ginther, who works 2.5 miles away at City Hall, famously said while apparently walking our streets for the first time: “It’s not a place I’d want my kids to grow up.”
A lot of Americans are feeling that quiet desperation for the first time in the lives this week.
I’m not talking the cancer diagnosis of a grandmother or the death of a sibling. I’m talking about material struggle — wondering how in the Hell you’re going to pay your mortgage that month before coming to the horrific conclusion it won’t be possible if you want to feed your children.
I gotta say, I always thought vindication of my pessimistic worldview would feel better. Instead I want to go back in time and punch me and all of my friends when we used drunkenly recycle that famous comedic line of humanity needing a good plague.
Since our socialized, planned economy emerged victorious from World War II, the ruling class deluded everyday Americans into thinking America’s superpower status would remain impervious as long as we dumped a gazillion dollars into our military-industrial complex. (Eat shit, Eisenhower!)
We deluded ourselves into thinking “big government” was inherently bad and that single-payer healthcare was “socialism” (spoiler: it’s not). We spent years shredding our tax code and funneling money upwards towards the investor-class parasites that “pulled themselves up by the boot straps” to “make America work.”
We spent decades shitting on poor people. Racists like Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton came along and convinced Americans that their problems came from down the economic ladder, not above it. We lapped that shit up like the diseased hogs we are.
Two decades after Clinton the sexual predator left the Oval Office, sixty-three million Americans would cast their vote for another sexual predator to run the federal government, an entity that can literally print its own money, like a business.
The cocaine fiesta known as the stock market went crazy. Those gremlins love nothing more than snorting a big fat tax cut at the expense of Americans that have to work for a living.
What those fetishists of Gordon Gekko never realize is the high times never last. And they sure as hell weren’t planning on a once-in-a-lifetime plague erupting while their naked emperor overlorded over them:
Keep in mind that coronavirus is devastating to the point that fucking up for 24 hours is a grave mistake.
President Business Deals lied to the country for two fucking months and now that he’s realized he can’t bullshit his way out of this like he has everything else in his life, we’re still getting stories like this:
At least we know Trump lied about taking the coronavirus. Who knows, Deals could be dead in two weeks and our country would be better off even with that puppet Mike Pence, the man who can’t eat dinner alone with a woman who isn’t his wife without getting horny.
At least Fox News has decided to take this pandemic seriously after weeks of downplaying it to their Baby Boomer audience who is most under threat.
At least Trump has the excuse of being a flagrant moron for his entire life. Anybody who knows anything about the man’s history and listens to him speak for more than 30 minutes can tell he’s a carnival barker with animal cunning—at best.
One of those people is Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who made the political calculus that letting an incompetent criminal like Trump run the White House was worth stacking the federal courts with young, unqualified Federalist Society judges who think Brown vs. Board of Education wasn’t properly decided.
Let’s see how this ghoul spent his four-day weekend in Kentucky:
This is how our world ends. To the thunderous applause of four robed reptiles.
While the blood of those to die will be directly on the hands of people like Trump and McConnell (and Oklahoma’s dipshit governor who is still telling constituents to go out to eat despite the mayor of Oklahoma City shuttering restaurants), do not underestimate the blood on the hands of low-information Americans who either don’t know or don’t care about how coronavirus will reshape our society for the foreseeable future.
Ah, they put down a “fat deposit” for a trip to Florida—an exotic place that few Americans ever get to see. Good excuse to danger some old people.
Word of advice to those on luxurious vacations right now: Even if you do feel that “you’re not under threat” — you are — do not go on camera and give an interview like this.
You are going to look like a stone cold murderer by April, and the last thing you’re going to want is somebody on your quarantine block remembering you as the glib asshole soaking up the son while millions of your countrymen had already socially distanced themselves.
Then you have people who mean well, yet clearly don’t know enough about the threat to avoid putting themselves at risk.
Please keep in mind the Center of Disease Control says to avoid crowds of more than 10 people and keep at least six feet between you and other people:
Did I mention that for the last forty years we have gutted funding of our public schools, pared civic education, and produced fewer and fewer critical thinkers?
We spent trillions of dollars developing weapons of mass destruction and could end the world tomorrow if we wanted. In the end, the gravest threat to our uniformed citizenry was a virus.
WE NOW PAUSE FOR SOME GOOD NEWS
Do you remember the simpler times of last week? That was before Tom Hanks and his wife announced they contracted coronavirus and their son, the infamous Chet Haze, dropped his fake Jamaican accent in a video that started with the immortal words of “What’s up everybody? Yeah, it’s true. My parents got coronavirus. Crazy.”
Anyway, here is some art of Tom Hanks beating the living hell out of Corvid—19.
I’m old enough to remember when Hanks contracting the coronavirus led verified journalists on Twitter to conjecture that the day Forest Gump contracted the deadly virus would be a turning point for how serious Americans took the threat.
I assume these people are fortified in nuclear bunkers in the Hamptons by now.
At least Hanks got tested in Australia. In America, it will be a scandal as soon as more people realize only the rich and politically connected are getting tested for coronavirus. If you fall outside of that category? Good luck.
Not even my friend Dr. Joel — you might remember him from Baby Billy’s midlife crisis tour — a physician at a major academic institution in California(!) knows where to get tested.
ONCE A PROSECUTOR, ALWAYS A PROSECUTOR
Lawyers are some of my favorite people to hang around despite the fact I’ve never attended a class of law school. Lawyers are fun. They know how to party; they have been dead inside as long as I have, and they are also neurotically wired to enjoy arguing almost as much as me.
It’s a natural companionship.
One breed of lawyer I do not enjoy, however, is a prosecutor. I don’t know how anybody could delude themselves into “putting away the bad guys” to the point they’d be willing to throw an innocent person in jail, which is what inevitably happens if you prosecute long enough.
Some lawyers stay prosecutors their whole careers. Others evolve into higher positions of authority, like judgeships.
From Cory Shaffer of cleveland.com:
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A Cleveland Municipal Court judge has for two days held court hearings despite a directive from her court’s administrative judge to postpone all court hearings for defendants who are not currently in jail as a means to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus.
Judge Pinkey Carr, a former prosecutor in her ninth year on the bench, has held court hearings for defendants who are free after posting bond, despite an announcement on the court’s website declaring that all such hearings scheduled between Monday and April 3 would be rescheduled, a court spokesman told cleveland.com in response to questions posed on Tuesday.
Carr has also issued arrest warrants for defendants who heeded the court’s website and did not show up to court.
One silver lining that will come out of the coronavirus is how 90% of arrests, imprisonments, and court proceedings are unneeded horse shit.
Judge Pinkey Carr deserves to be disbarred for her recklessness. Given that Cleveland Clinic is leading the state in testing for Covid—19, she has no excuse not to know the threat that the virus poses to public health.
You might be startled at the flagrant disregard for the rule-of-law. That’s the irony of prosecutors—when push comes to shove, the rule-of-law only applies to the people they prosecute. Not to them. It’s a mentality that poisons their brain forever.
DICKHEAD HUSTED AND FAKE-ASS FRANK SHOW THEIR COLORS ONCE AGAIN
Governor Mike DeWine made the right move Sunday when he shuttered bars and reduced restaurants to carry-out and delivery only. (Though he will regret not shuttering restaurants entirely.)
These actions, though right, threw tens of thousands of Ohioans into the streets. In a normal civilized society, there would have been swift governmental aid to help these displaced workers in their time of need.
Lieutenant Governor John Husted, who has only given a fuck about business owners for his entire career, has advice for the displaced worker who might have their hand out for unemployment benefits: Go sell your body to the richest man in the world and work in a 21st century sweatshop that will soon be exposed as coronavirus hotbeds.
Husted doesn’t associate with anybody who makes under $250,000 a year. He has no clue about the plight facing most of the fired workers.
For example, my neighbor, Donnie, lives in a humble one-bedroom house on the corner of his landlord’s property that sits caddy-corner from my back alley. Donnie is 58 years-old and moves like a man who has done manual labor for his entire life. For the last decade he has worked at The Patio, a bar two blocks away. He makes $4.25 an hour plus tips.
He works 40 hours as a week and like 40% of Americans, lives paycheck to paycheck. He doesn’t own a car and has meager savings.
He is now out of a job for the foreseeable future. And Husted’s advice is to go get one of a “myriad of jobs” — as if we’re not headed towards Great Depression 2.0? The man would die if he worked for two weeks in an Amazon warehouse. And I’m no longer talking about Donnie.
Meanwhile, the Ohio Democratic Party has rightfully sued the state to allow the Legislature to decide the next primary date and to force mail-in ballots for public safety.
The Legislature, by law, is entitled to set the date of the primary. Mail-in ballots are an easy way to increase participation in democracy (see: turnout in Washington).
Which of course means Secretary of State Frank LaRose opposes the notions.
From John Kosich of news5cleveland.com:
As for the move to what would be an almost all vote by mail primary LaRose said "the possibility of transforming Ohio's election system to exclusively vote by mail brings with it many logistical challenges not the least of which are getting a printer that could prepare massive numbers of ballots, creating the opportunity for that to be postage paid because if the only option is vote by mail we cannot require Ohioans to pay for that."
"I worry that such a scenario would disenfranchise Ohioans and if there are two things that I'm unwilling to do it would be to jeopardize health or to disenfranchise Ohioans," he said.
This is what Republicans do anytime they face common-sense reform. They throw up their hands and pretend that the State of Ohio — the 7th most populous state in the country — could not find a printer in the year 2020 to handle printing enough ballots.
That’s complete horse shit, as is the notion that he’s not willing to disenfranchise Ohioans. He has overseen voter purges that included 20% of active voters.
Politicians like him lie to the press because they will never be challenged on it. They know their lies will be parroted by local media who are afraid to be called “liberal” because they pointed out that yeah, LaRose has objectively disenfranchised thousands of voters in his two-year career.
THE DEFINITION OF DISASTER CAPITALISM
Homage sucks. I used to enjoy their clothes because I’m a soft-brained idiot, but so is anybody that falls for shit like this.
Companies like Homage have money to donate to shelters of at-risk youth and keep it moving. Real ones do their charity in silence.
Instead, Homage uses crises like *checks notes* global pandemics to create half-baked graphic t-shirts with the note that proceeds will go to a good cause.
Please do not fall for this. These people do not actually care about at-risk youth. They are simply using a pandemic as a free advertising platform, because they know local media companies will portray them as humble heroes who are simply trying to good in the world when in fact their actual goal is getting their company name out in front of a new audience.
“Not all heroes wear capes!” That’s what they came up with. It’s literally one of the most cliche jokes on Twitter. That’s how these vampires decided to honor the heroic work of Dr. Amy Acton and the Ohio Health Department.
I’m embarrassed I ever bought one of their shirts, even if the last time that happened was over a decade ago. I am proud that I saw through them as soon as they started peddling Steelers-branded shirts.
EVERYONE IS ARMED TO THE TEETH NOW, BY THE WAY
Thank you to ambiguous language from the dead enslavers who founded this country and 60 years of lobbying by the gun industry, America is one of the easiest places in the world to purchase murder machines.
During normal times, this means any random asshole can purchase an AR-15 and use it to butcher civilians in public.
In the worst of times, it means that there are millions of weapons on the street in a time when civil unrest could start popping off at any moment.
From Rachel Dissell and Ginger Christ (lol what a name) of cleveland.com:
CLEVELAND, Ohio — Asked Monday evening if business had picked up, Todd Bedocs, the owner of BMT Firearms in Seville quipped, “That’s putting it mildly.”
His showroom was packed.
On a normal Monday the store might a total of six or seven firearms, he said by phone, raising his voice to be heard over customers.
By 6 p.m., with his showroom still packed, he had already sold 100.
Gun sales appear to be surging across the country. Photos posted on social media showed long lines at stores from California to Georgia this week.
God save America? Buddy, at this point, I’m not sure even He is capable of that.
THOSE WMDs. How to be a good neighbor right now… How to get serious about social distancing… Medical company threatens to sue volunteers that 3D-printed valves for life-saving coronavirus treatments… How to support local bookstores during the coronavirus… They went off the grid, and they came back to the coronavirus.