So it appears that one bitter enemy of the working folk and the marginalised of the world has been replaced with yet another. So much was clear from at least April. The challenge for those of us who stand with all of those who lack agency will be to avoid repeating the last four

decades of humbug and brutality with its ugly climax in 2016 but instead build the vehicles needed to rewrite governance in America and elsewhere as an instantiation of informed collective agency manifest in policies that maintainable meet the human need.for wellbeing in all
the senses covered by the famous Maslovian Hierarchy. As things stand, governance is at the pleasure of the 0.1%. The current ‘choice’ of the common folk is to choose their preferred modalities of misery and risk. This reflects the absence of any vehicle through which other
claims can be put onto the agenda. In America, neither human safety nor biological need are assured for most people and so whatever we create must begin with addressing those fundamental needs around physical wellbeing. Too many go hungry and lack shelter, have limited effective
access to basic health care, have to pay too much for pharmaceuticals. Clearly, policies of securing access to quality public housing and health care should be key discriminators of the worth of any new political formation that arises from the wreckage of the last 40 years.
The DNC has repeatedly shown its incapacity to address such matters and so the time has come to prise its cold clammy fingers from the necks of rational and communitarian folk and to caucus with those who see these as key. There is no ‘lesser evil’ that ignores such matters.
Equally though, humanity currently faces two existential crises both of them touching us all today. Most obviously on short timelines there is #Covid19 which is cutting a swathe through human populations (including but not limited to) those of the richest countries on Earth.
America has suffered roughly 237k Covid deaths since January of 2020 — nearly five times as many Americans killed as it lost killing 2 million or so in the war on Indochina of the mid-60s and 70s. Some time next year America may have lost a further half a million or so.
Losses on this scale utterly dwarf the losses in past disasters on US soil, yet even this understated the problem because as these lines are written there is no evidence that humans can acquire enduring immunity to the virus and even those who survive are blighted in ways likely
to prejudice seriously their quality of life and longevity. Halting community transmission is an existential challenge and the burden of this challenge must not be settled significantly on the three lowest quintiles of the population. This is a challenge that the richest 40%
of the populace must embrace as their own and compel the infamous 1% to implement because sadly, they are going to be with us for some time. We ought to have a far more equal society and Covid, which is like a barium meal highlighting social dysfunction forces us to look on them.

More from Politics

I think a plausible explanation is that whatever Corbyn says or does, his critics will denounce - no matter how much hypocrisy it necessitates.


Corbyn opposes the exploitation of foreign sweatshop-workers - Labour MPs complain he's like Nigel

He speaks up in defence of migrants - Labour MPs whinge that he's not listening to the public's very real concerns about immigration:

He's wrong to prioritise Labour Party members over the public:

He's wrong to prioritise the public over Labour Party
My piece in the NY Times today: "the Trump administration is denying applications submitted to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services at a rate 37 percent higher than the Obama administration did in 2016."

Based on this analysis: "Denials for immigration benefits—travel documents, work permits, green cards, worker petitions, etc.—increased 37 percent since FY 2016. On an absolute basis, FY 2018 will see more than about 155,000 more denials than FY 2016."
https://t.co/Bl0naOO0sh


"This increase in denials cannot be credited to an overall rise in applications. In fact, the total number of applications so far this year is 2 percent lower than in 2016. It could be that the higher denial rate is also discouraging some people from applying at all.."

Thanks to @gsiskind for his insightful comments. The increase in denials, he said, is “significant enough to make one think that Congress must have passed legislation changing the requirements. But we know they have not.”

My conclusion:

You May Also Like

Great article from @AsheSchow. I lived thru the 'Satanic Panic' of the 1980's/early 1990's asking myself "Has eveyrbody lost their GODDAMN MINDS?!"


The 3 big things that made the 1980's/early 1990's surreal for me.

1) Satanic Panic - satanism in the day cares ahhhh!

2) "Repressed memory" syndrome

3) Facilitated Communication [FC]

All 3 led to massive abuse.

"Therapists" -and I use the term to describe these quacks loosely - would hypnotize people & convince they they were 'reliving' past memories of Mom & Dad killing babies in Satanic rituals in the basement while they were growing up.

Other 'therapists' would badger kids until they invented stories about watching alligators eat babies dropped into a lake from a hot air balloon. Kids would deny anything happened for hours until the therapist 'broke through' and 'found' the 'truth'.

FC was a movement that started with the claim severely handicapped individuals were able to 'type' legible sentences & communicate if a 'helper' guided their hands over a keyboard.