Surveying the Whirlwind https://t.co/Pit2PvfFmW
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) May 31, 2020
… The country is almost three months into a bewildering and totally unprecedented nationwide public lockdown. Thirty or forty million people have lost their jobs. More than (probably many more than) one hundred thousand people have lost their lives. And – critically – this great civic storm has been borne disproportionately in the nation’s great cities and among its black and hispanic working classes. Meanwhile much of May has been taken up with public discussion and protest about people’s demands for haircuts and freedom from cloth masks. I’m not saying this is because of the pandemic. But it’s certainly the context outside of which none of this can be truly understood…
We are still in the midst of this historical moment in which rising and growing public demands for a more equitable and just society are colliding with a consolidating backlash against them. This is the confrontation that gave us Trumpism and his presidency – inextricably bound up with his brazen and indifferently predatory personality – is only intensifying the conflict. Trump first tried to inflame the violence in his favor. In the last 24 hours, much as he did with COVID, he seems to have gotten tired of the civil conflict and wanted to move onto something more fun – to space launches, judicial nominations, anything. Shortly enough, he’ll return to incitement. It is hard not to look at all of this and not see an escalating gyre of public crises and catastrophes, many of which are not entirely the fault of the President, but all of which are deepened, accentuated and inflamed by his disastrous and cataclysmic presidency.
Living in history is about not knowing the future. As observers and participants all we can do – what we must do – is align our values and the future we would like to live with the reality of the moment and our actions within it and push forward to whatever that future will be.
IT’S NOT A BUNKER IT’S A MAN CAVE https://t.co/ybSx7aq7ZL
— kilgore trout, potato thief (@KT_So_It_Goes) June 1, 2020
Yep.https://t.co/FHEW4MZFGp https://t.co/5YjTfqd5Nd pic.twitter.com/loOX9Ci6Qi
— Definitely Not a Sock Puppet Fred (@LesserFrederick) June 1, 2020
The NYTimes, still insisting ‘we’ should all gobble down that… Shinola:
Late Night Open Thread: Choose Your SidePost + Comments (157)