As of this day in history, 27 March 2020, there are this morning 86,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. and over a thousand have died. The Mayor of Boston has stated what is needed is a “Consistent Approach.” When this is over in a couple years, and based on the history of the Spanish Flu it is going to take that long, we will look back and write about it. What is recorded is all that future generations will know. I am not optimistic about the coming months considering how fast the virus is spreading and the character of the American people. If over a million people die most of them will be those sick with some other condition and the elderly. But that will still leave several hundred thousand that cannot be classified as somehow “unlucky and useless.”
It is considered bad form to play the Nazi card but in my view that abomination was the great lesson of history. The Celts would agree with me. They ruled ancient Europe until the Romans exterminated them. In Neoliberalism we find the philosophy of the Nazis in regards to “useless eaters” and those “Lebensunwertes Leben” (unworthy of life) to be closely related. The calls for the population to go back to work regardless of the millions who may die is reminiscent of the gate at Auschwitz.
The Consistent Approach is that human life is sacred. It is above money. The Neoliberal view is, of course, the opposite. We can read the story of the New Deal framed in different ways but for me it is mostly about this idea that human life is more valuable than any system we invent for humans to use in their lives (like money). The way the story goes, again, in my view, is the “free market” collapsed in 1929. The communists and labor unions suddenly became quite powerful and went to FDR, who was a capitalist, and explained the situation to him. Unless he and his wealthy friends did not want to find themselves in the same situation the Russian aristocracy did only ten years earlier, he better make a deal. And that was the New Deal, which today is described as “imbedded liberalism.”
The New Deal used the ideas of Keynesian Economics, which stated the government must strictly regulate the economy. Not control, but regulate, and the two are, despite all conservative arguments to the contrary, different. Simply enforcing laws that keep free market speculators from corrupting the system and causing it to self-destruct is the first part. But there is also a second part, a parachute in case the market fails- also called social safety nets. It must be accepted that greed slowly but surely corrupts regulation and the second part is thus necessary. Unfortunately, what the New Deal did not address was human nature itself, and the sociopathic personalities who gravitate to obscene profit-seeking diligently chipped away at the New Deal for decade after decade. The benchmark usually cited for the end of the New Deal is the Reagan Revolution. The New Deal started to have effects around 1935 and from that year to 1980 when Reagan was elected made America became the greatest nation on Earth. And we helped the Russians destroy the Nazis also.
And here we are, 40 years after the greatest 40 years our nation had.
When wealth is redistributed by the state to the extent necessary to keep the system stable and safety nets are sufficient to deal with any recurring economic crisis, then the nation thrives. That essentially describes what made America great. It is Orwellian to describe Neoliberalism, the toxic ideology that is now actually destroying us, as the cure. When inequality corrodes the alloy of this structure, when stability and safety nets are gone, it then takes very little to restart the cycle of empire, that is, the rise and fall of empires. Ironically, COVID-19 was initially described as only a little problem. See how that works?
This blog is supposed to be about Human Space Flight. The last several entries have made little mention of it and I should explain the reason why. I actually stated it a couple times in previous entries: it has to do with the Survival Imperative. At this point in history the human race has immense resources at it’s disposal. We can accomplish what is necessary to safeguard the species by expanding into space. This may not always be true. If we do not at least make some progress toward directing those resources at space then we may be guaranteeing the extinction of humankind.
Here is the simple explanation to give to conservative acquaintances: You want people healthy enough to work and earn those billions for billionaires? They get medical care paid for by taxes paid by the corporations and billionaires. You want people with the skills and training to work and earn those billions for billionaires? They get education paid for by taxes paid by the corporations and billionaires. You want people not revolting and rioting against the government and the rich when the markets crash? They get unemployment insurance, social security, and job placement from their government- paid for by progressive taxation. This is called imbedded liberalism and was what the New Deal tried to accomplish. It is why those Scandinavian countries are the happiest and have the highest standard of living. We don’t have it because of Neoliberalism- unregulated obscene greed.
The rich want their healthy educated wage slaves with no strings attached and as disposable as paper cups. Unions that negotiate higher wages to pay for health care, education, and financial security, are traditionally attacked by all means legal and illegal. Neoliberals want it all for as close to free as millions in corruption and lobbying can get them. As a rule they invest in manipulation and deception as this generates more profit than fairness and transparency. Any taxes on them are considered a theft of the money their genius earned and they are entitled to it without supporting the government or people enabling that wealth. Neoliberalism is socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor. Everything must generate profit or it is useless and needs to be eliminated. The rich are exalted and the poor punished.
Money is the god of their world. What is interesting to me is consumerism- the service economy now halted by a pandemic. What if people did not spend all that money on shoes and clothes and restuarants and cars and the junk they fill their houses (if they can afford a home) up with? How would those billionaires make their billions? Materialism was at one time considered an alternate lifestyle- food, shelter, and medicine were the primary budget items. Now we prey on each other. An ever-smaller predatory fraction of the population taking wealth from an ever larger mass of prey. It seems to me it is this upward flow of money, to the top and not trickling down, that is theft. Yet the Neoliberals have the Orwellian audacity to call “redistribution of wealth” to the poor from the rich as being criminal. Of course anyone exposing the ravenous sociopathic culture of the rich is immediately branded a communist and a traitor. Of course they are.
In a sense it is like that saying, “High School never ends.” The bullies would terrorize their victims and nobody would do anything about it. Not the teachers, not the students, not the victims. Perhaps it is a deeply buried instinct we obey, to submit to the dominant ones in the group. Perhaps it is sadism originating in that happiness when the hyenas ate someone else who you did not really like anyway. Unfortunately, the universe is an unpredictable place and for whatever reasons the victims sometimes have the last laugh. Even if everybody dies.
Ice on the Moon 