I don’t know if we will ever get over the pandemic in America. Even if Biden wins those conservative shitbag trump supporters aren’t going to magically start wearing masks. It would probably take something no less than martial law to enforce the level of social distancing that we would need to pull that off. Nobody in this country is going to want martial law, not the liberals, not the conservatives, nobody. CNN has been polling since the beginning of the pandemic on “how likely are you to take the vaccine?” In May 66% of people were saying “yes”, as of yesterday that number is down to 51%, with 45% saying they wouldn’t take it. Our collective American apathy may have brought us to the point where we accept covid deaths over martial law, over a vaccine. The American’s doing what they’ve done best in the 21st century, shrugging their shoulders and say “oh well, it is what it is”.
Such a large percentage of the population has no ability to determine real information anymore. Pre-pandemic there were studies showing that 45% of Americans got their news from social media. Post-pandemic I can only imagine this number has risen. That’s a steady curated stream of shit they agree with. Of course people are becoming less and less able to think for themselves. With the stream of bullshit, and the total lack of critical thinking will we ever reach a point where enough of the population is willing to get vaccinated? I don’t know that we will.
Is Joe Biden the leader that is going to swoop in and unite us enough to convince people to believe that science and inconvenience is what’s needed? I don’t believe that he is. Don’t get me wrong, I’m actually a fan of Joe Biden, and I think he may even be exactly the kind of president that we need right now. One that’s willing to sit in a room with 20 different perspectives and not leave until they come to consensus. But we’re just so god damn divided and possibly to far gone down the path of misinformation to ever come together ever again.
I think these next few years in America are going to really shape the country that we become, or the end of America. If we are going to avoid collapse, whether it be quick collapse, or prolonged, the decisions we make over the next few years are going to determine if we make it. I gotta say, right now I don’t know that it’s looking good for us.
We’re in a situation where conservatives really have gone too far with their lack of humanity, and disregard for equality, but you only see it if you’re really paying attention. At surface glance the police do not seem like a racist institution. The general public doesn’t understand how voter suppression works. Their refusal to recognize humanities role in climate change is infuriating. The list goes on, these are just a few examples. Liberals that are really paying attention are all kind of losing their shit a little bit, because nobody is listening as we are clearly on the path towards an authoritative fascist state that’s accelerating the destruction of our planet. Then on the other side, most conservatives, even the ones in power, aren’t really paying attention that much either. Their quest for truth starts and ends with the first permission structures they find to feel good about themselves. Then the other 50% of the population that is neither liberal nor conservative is very tired of hearing about all of it, and stopped paying attention like 6 years ago.
What could possibly happen to unite us and really get over this pandemic? Trump definitely isn’t going to do it, and if Biden gets elected, he will at least try to unite us, but I just don’t know that he is the leader to pull it off. We have to change a lot of peoples minds right now to fix this. We need at least 80% buy in on the vaccine and at least 80% of people social distancing until we can get there. That’s the basement buy-in in both cases. I know this all sounds pretty grim but I have an idea. When American exceptionalism is dead, the only value we have left to appeal to is the other truly American value, money.
We need a big enough stimulus with built in incentives to stay home. We need financial incentives to take the vaccine. If America does what it has always done and tries to turn this in to another opportunity for corporations to profit then it will fail for everyone. Corporations can’t come back from this without consumers to spend, consumers won’t spend without money. This creates a situation where corporations can’t come back either. Enough people aren’t going to take that vaccine without incentive to do so, and enough people aren’t going to stay home without incentive to do so. Luckily America learned an important lesson at the beginning of this lockdown.
America has stopped being a labor economy. The only reason businesses still have employees is so they have consumers. We don’t need to have jobs anymore, the work can be done better and more efficiently with technology. We have become a consumer economy. The consumers matter more than the workers, and we are in real time learning the consumers also matter more than the market. If the government pays people to stay home they are also paying them to consume. Consumer spending went up in the first couple months of the pandemic, so did the stock market after the first few weeks. Stock market and consumer spending plummeted after the stimulus bill ran out. The lesson America should have learned from the first stimulus bill is that it works, and it showed how America’s economy could/should work going forward. Which shifts us on the path we need to be on, a path other world leading nations are on, a path towards universal basic income. Not only is this the path we need to be on, it is the only realistic plan to get todays America over this pandemic. We just aren’t going to buy in unless America buys us. We have become too apathetic. Trump has spread too much disinformation, and we have lost our foundation, which was the farcical belief that we had exceptionalism. Without even so much as the facade of exceptionalism there is only money in America.
The only chance america has to get over this pandemic is first electing Joe Biden, then Joe has to buy off the American people, not it’s corporations. With Trump the pandemic will never end, and we will have martial law, food bank lines, tent cities, and become a permanent plague state. I don’t know about you, but I will take some chance over none.