As the one-year mark of the lockdown began to approach, I ran through the park and thought about where we were last year at this juncture. It was a very disorienting time: the virus was beginning to tear through New York City, which despite plenty of (or at least some) lead time seemed completely unprepared -- with the mayor and governor fighting about where and how to implement a stay-at-home order, the governor (in addition to asking subordinates to have sex with him) working behind the scenes with lobbyists to ensure that nursing homes were shielded from legal liability in the upcoming storm, the mayor telling people to relax and go out and enjoy themselves while he was sneaking in a final trip to the gym, etc. -- a situation exacerbated by the complete abdication of leadership and clear communication from the federal government. More understandably, the science was still very murky: Could you catch the virus outdoors? Or from touching things? Should you wear a mask or not? Should you sing 'Happy Birthday' once or twice while washing your hands? There were animated videos getting passed around online showing walkers, runners, and cyclists creating trails of danger zones of tens of yards behind them. There was speculation that the virus was a New York City problem, that it would never spread in parts of the country that were less densely populated and basically cleaner: that, if you thought about it, New York City probably deserved it for failing to embody the American suburban dream.
A year later, a few things have changed for the better. We have a pretty good sense of how the virus is transmitted (although it's less clear with variants), we have vaccines that prevent the vast majority of people who receive them from dying from the virus (although, again, variants); we have a national leader who does not seem delighted by the prospect of murdering hundreds of thousands of the country's most vulnerable, exploited people.
But what has not changed are the underlying conditions of a system organized in a way that allows for the death of literally 500,000 people from a mostly preventable disease (as other countries have proved) and an ongoing refusal to acknowledge that a strong government, which provides no-strings-attached care for those in need, is the only coherent way to organize a society. Even after so many deaths, we are pretending that, collectively speaking, we were healthy until this virus descended upon us and that, with a little forbearance, will soon return to the way things were a year ago, when everyone was happily going wherever they wanted, doing whatever they wanted, and buying whatever they wanted, the only constraint being the amount of money one possessed, which given that everyone competed equally in 'the market' was the best (and certainly the most objective) measure of your worth as a human being.
The system could improve. The Democrats may pretend otherwise, but they have the necessary power at the federal level, where it matters. They could reverse the Trump tax cuts; they could provide M4A; they could pass voting reform; they could pass a Green New Deal; they could cancel student debt; they could raise the minimum wage to $15 or $24. There are SO MANY things they could do, things that poll after poll have shown are popular with their Democratic constituents, the vast majority of whom are not 'centrists' or 'moderates' but are people who want and need help (and who, when they don't receive it, become angry Republicans and conspiracy theorists). Why don't these measure unify the politicians in the way they unify the electorate? Could it be that the politicians themselves are financially beholden to corporate interests that are less interested in the kind of structural change the majority of people in the country want? It's one theory. Do they think that the richest government in history can't afford it? Or do they actually believe in the arbitrary tenets of fiscal and moral 'moderation,' of only giving people the barest minimum to survive, of punishing them a little bit for arriving at place where they need help? Somehow this theory seems even worse. Whatever the reason, it's hard to watch the drama and angst from Democrats during the passage of a 'stimulus bill' that contains what would seem to be the barest minimum of help, a few thousand dollars to those who need it most (and god forbid this money gets to anyone who is only mildly desperate), a piece of legislation that, in order to be considered, must be framed in economic terms, as a means of 'stimulating' the economy, instead of, say, a care package, a money-for-basic-survival-in-our-brutal-system package.
The question -- for me, anyway -- becomes how to cope with living in a dysfunctional, doomed world. Next week, if I remember, I'll talk about some strategies on that front.
For now, I want to share a new song I wrote and recorded over the past few weeks. It's called 'When the Major Comes To Town' and it falls pretty squarely into the guitar-oriented, psychedelic 'dream pop' that I've always loved listening to and -- to some extent -- writing.
Here's a link.
And here's a picture of some new green in the winter landscape, a reminder that death -- at least in nature -- offers the possibility of renewal.
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