Other than my Wheel of Fortune story a bit ago I’ve largely avoided engaging in this thread, and not because I don’t appreciate all the effort that has gone into making this one of the best resources for COVID on the internet. This whole saga has just really drilled home the impossibility of achieving leftist policy in this country during my lifetime, and I am struggling with that. I’d like to rant a bit.
It should be crystal clear to everyone in this nation the types of policies that could mitigate this disaster and help us prepare for the next one. Universal healthcare, so people can take care of their health without worrying about the bill. National sick leave, so that people can afford to stay home when they’re sick. Reduced incarceration, because our overcrowded jails are going to be destroyed by this outbreak and any other that comes. Increased funding for public education, so that teachers and schools have the funding they need to weather disruptions like this. Free public college, higher minimum wage, protections for contractors and gig workers, rent control, so that young people aren’t spending the first 10 years of their adult life in the red or working multiple jobs to make ends meet. Humane immigration policies, and on and on and on…
This pandemic should be spurring our country to take a hard look at what we are and change for the better, but instead our politicians (in both parties!) just care about the fucking stock market and “the economy” (aka the almighty corporations that rule us). Instead of coming out of this pandemic wiser and on a path towards a more just society, we’re just going to have piles of dead boomers and the same fucking policies that led us to where we are now. If we’re lucky–lucky!–we will have a senile old racist as president next year who happens to have a D next to his name. People will applaud because we’ve moved past Trump, as if he was ever the fucking problem with this country in the first place.
We are so fucking fucked and it is so goddamn depressing to look ahead at the next few decades that we’re building for ourselves, blindly careening down the tracks a single misstep from disaster for the rest of my fucking life. This should have been an opportunity for change but it’s just solidifying how fucked we are.