Factual Dispatch #52 - Still Happening

Time is the fire in which we burn. ~Delmore Schwartz

If you watched the debate, first, I’m sorry. Secondly, you saw our gentry-stocked stable of talking heads sling game theory on voter persuasion and viability, as if we had resolved the species-threatening calamities we’re facing. Especially if you listened to The Diseased Interrupter or consume GOP social media. This is an Onion-filled reminder to the powers that be, navel gazing from gated communities, of assorted problems we’re still coping with as a species that they might want to get back to actually solving. Or, in a depressing number of instances, just fucking implementing the solution we’ve already found.

• To the surprise of 0.00% of our epidemiologists, “opening up” the country directly into a splash pool of disease, has somehow not fixed the pandemic. To beat that drum over and over, this carnage remains entirely needless. When you hear Americans bring up Europe having “waves” of new cases, France’s peak daily deaths hit 164, 155 in Spain, 136 in Italy. Because the UK has a more Trumpy government, their spike was larger, cresting to 249 deaths a day, with America’s DAILY AVERAGE being 4x that. The USA continues to rack up 1,000+ death days, and the per capita death or case comparisons remain abysmal. America sacrificed 291,557 lives in combat during WWII, the sacrifice of the Allies to beat Nazis and the march of fascism across the world. When the USA sacrifices its 291,558th civilian to COVID-19, what will they have died for? 290,000 Confederate soldiers died in combat during the Civil War, which means if we make it to 300k dead from COVID-19, two of the deepest wounds we’ve ever suffered as a nation were self inflicted.

• The economic impact of burying our heads in the sand is uneven. Continuing unemployment numbers will dropped from 10mill earlier in the year to under 8mill this month. Not because the economy is getting better, but due to more people running out of benefits. People use the phrase “K-shaped recovery” in response to a “V-shaped recovery” that Trump pines for. A V-shaped recovery is when the economy gets smacked and bounces back. K-shaped, is when recovery looks different depending on your economic class. Stop me if you’ve heard this one.

• The entire live event & hospitality industry remains out of work. Full stop. Not, we’re all working remotely. Not, we’re seeing a reduction, but things are looking up in Jan. Broadway is dark until June 2021. Live music, general admission shows, dance clubs, shoebox galleries, theater, the industry that fed the creators making every piece of art you’ve consumed over the last nine months, has gotten zero relief. None. These artists, engineers, technicians, union workers, and scrappy small business owners didn’t have safety nets in the first place, and were largely shut out of the PPP due to the irregular nature of their income.

• It’s not just in the USA, as the chart of “% of Australian businesses open by sector in April 2020” indicates. The industry that was expected to gross $30 billion in revenue this year has been reduced to ashes. If you wanted to start a music label right now, I wouldn’t even know how to advise you (Brassland label founder does though) South Korea got BTS from its national investment in culture and the arts, and K-Pop & BTS now delivers around $3.5 billion in tourism and arts related income to the South Korean government annually. What could we get for the cost of a single F-35A? Until we fund this, buy your waitress/catering, creator, stage hand, opera singer and DJ friends a drink, yea? 

• This is why the pearl clutching about “opening up” from the usual suspects in real estate, finance, and the GOP is falling on deaf ears. It’s difficult to convince the working class NYC is dying when your evidence includes a $3000 drop in median rent in Manhattan, and emptying out of the places of the city that were largely already empty after 6pm anyway.

• Homelessness in the USA is up 3% since last year, for the 3rd year in a row. As homelessness is down ~12% from 2007 (the first year data collection occurred nationally) this isn’t getting any oxygen, but the stock of affordable housing in most major cities has dramatically decreased. In NYC, the lack of 2/3s of usual commuting traffic and the plutocrats leaving the most expensive neighborhoods, contributed to the arrival of Hoovervilles (CuomoCamps, deBlasioDwellings, TrumpTentCities). While startling to the transplants, yuppies, and people who don’t remember New Kids on the Block, the conditions that allow this aren’t new, they are in every major metropolitan area, and they've gotten a shot in the arm now that social service budgets have been clipped.

• The perfect storm of mass unemployment, cheap fentanyl analogs, and forced isolation, parried the meager progress that some states made combating the opiate epidemic over the last few years. As it’s evident the human cost of the opiate crisis is something the nation plainly doesn’t care about, the economic cost is reaching a particularly stunning level. For what we’ve spent pretending to treat opiate addiction using guilt and Jesus, we could’ve pretended to bring freedom and democracy to another country in the Middle East:

• I was browbeaten by white dudes for 18 months about how Trump would bring the troops home. So much so that I went “Four Lights” with it and started forgetting myself. Much to the glee of the military-industrial complex, a second generation of soldiers are fighting…something in Afghanistan? Though we are now in the Pandemic Era, we’ve never actually put the War on Terror to bed. You remember the War on Terror, that $6,000,000,000,000 boondoggle that injured or killed over 60,000 American service members (20 9/11’s or about 1/4 a COVID-19), and delivered PTSD to 83% of the 2.7 million service members who deployed almost 5,400,000 times in total. The Onion joked about the sons of veterans fighting in the same place their fathers did back in 2017, while Task & Purpose details the real versions of the Army puff pieces in 2011, 2013, and 2018.

• There was significant appetite to review “we’re gonna free the shit out of you” as foreign policy, while Trump was knocking around the Zodiac Killer, Little Marco, and Jeb! But any chance for a frank conversation about America’s place in the world went out the window by the time “shithole countries” hit the PR wire. Now you have leftists & realpolitik commentators deploring Biden’s foreign policy, but clamoring to vote for him anyway. They prefer the enemy they know to the one they don’t. During the Trump Administration, we’ve brought the War on Terror to Africa, droning the shit out of Al-Shabaab, the Kylo Ren of Islamic Terror groups. While we might reduce our use of SpecOps in Africa under Biden, I have no faith that the VP of Barack “Hellfire Daddy” Obama will drone differently.

• Speaking of angry males, after the UK Trumpalos yelled about activist lawyers helping migrants, they got their own stochastic terror plot yesterday, while on this side of the Atlantic Boogaloo Bois have been charged with inciting violence during the George Floyd protests back in May. Literally. From the charging documents:

• The litany of abuses committed by ICE is too horrible to even recount, and I can only hope a Nemesis with more Grace than I, will punish those responsible. But remember ICE didn't even exist when Columbine happened, INS was a thing. We’re still separating children from families, we’re still forcing hysterectomies, we’re still medically abusing women, and we’re still refusing to administer flu vaccines or enforce social distancing to stem the spread of COVID in these camps. May the Lord have mercy on our souls.

• Going what we heard at the debates, climate change is not only solved but fracking water seems to have Folic Acid, Ginkgo Biloba & Vitamin C in it. Now that more people work at Best Buy than the whole coal industry and unsubsidized renewable energy is cheaper than most fossil fuels, if we rename the Green New Deal the “McConnell Conservation Corps” can we get it passed in the next session of Congress?

• This one doesn’t seem to matter as much in light of everything else on the list, but the president continues to lie like he heard telling the truth causes your teeth to fall out. As he “rounds the corner” on 20,000 lies personally told by him during his administration, there is now a 50ft wall in Bushwick where you can review them by color code. I know we’ve all gotten used to this, but this is not something that we should ever accept from any government official at any level:

• Everyone you know is still stressed, exhausted, and emotionally wrung out. Brandy Jensen’s “Dear Fuck Up” column handles this expertly when she explains why a friend won’t text them back. This one is hard for me, as ADHD can make it hard to differentiate between “they’re not texting because you are not the focal point of their existence” and “they’re not texting because they hate me.” To be clear, if you’re agitated your friends are still “affected” by this year and are still having a hard time of it, that might be a privilege thing on your end to work out.

Our orbiting space station remains a nice reminder of what we could be working on if we stopped fucking around. Taken from the ISS above Chicago:

Poem of the Dispatch: We Are Not Responsible, by Harryette Mullen:

This is not for you to despair, this is for you to remember that you have been betrayed by those with power, those who have sworn oaths on holy books and signed contracts stating they would do the opposite. Those betrayals are still happening. And the people are not standing for it. Since 2017, 30 governments have succumbed to the protests that have broken out in 100 countries. George Floyd protests occurred in 350 cities this year, Indonesian sex workers are outing MPs in response to a law curtailing worker rights, and the Thai monarchy just buckled. A better world is possible, so I will close with the most hope inducing image I've seen in years, from Oct 23rd TV:

You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.

T