It’s the election

  • May 7, 2020

Trump, in Arizona, said yesterday: “Will some people be affected badly? Yes. But we have to get our country open and we have to get it open soon.”

What drives this push to reopen in face of a pandemic that is still raging? In a few words, it’s Trump’s reelection hopes. He’s falling in the polls and his calculus is that a locked down economy for any extended time will seal his reelection fate in November. And if the only way to change that outcome is to prematurely restart and gin up the economy — profits, consumer spending, and, not least, employment — even if it means over the bodies of many more covid-19 victims, he is more than willing to pay that price. In fact, for Trump, it’s a No Brainer, not something that he would lose a wink of sleep over.

The other explanation for his actions, I have seen, is that Trump is simply acting at the behest of the captains of industry and finance who, seeing their profits drop (or surplus value dry up in the language of marxism) are in his ear, insisting that he jump start the economy and, as a consequence, allow them to resume their profit taking.

I’m sure that his favorite corporate executives are in his ear, That’s what they do. And I’m also sure he doesn’t dismiss what they have to say. After all, he’s a capitalist too, and they’re his friends.

But it’s not their voices that matter most to him for now. It’s the voices of his pollsters. And they are telling him that his reelection chances are tanking. In reaction to this gloomy news, Trump has decided that he has to immediately open up the economy and bring down exploding unemployment numbers if he is to win a second term in the November elections. The price of this decision will spike the number of lives lost to the pandemic. It could also set back a sustainable rebound of an imploding economy. But that’s a price that Trump is more than willing to pay.

In short, it’s politics in the first place, not profit making, not unfreezing the flow of surplus value that concentrates Trump’s mind and determines his decisions.

 

 

Amazing

  • May 7, 2020

I finally read this NYT editorial, and it’s amazing. It makes me think that a coalition is taking shape across the country that goes beyond well beyond the “movement” as we understand it. I could cite other examples of a similar kind to buttress my point. Obviously, the movement, if it is smart, will adjust to this new reality. It would be a mistake not to. More could be said, but the sky is blue, the sun is out, and it’s time for my daily walk.

 

Short term calculus

  • May 7, 2020

If Trump had to make a choice between reducing employment levels and restoring corporate profitability in the short term, that is, between now and November, I suspect he would chose the former over the latter. Why? Because lower unemployment rates, which was one of his claims to fame before the pandemic, are probably essential if he is going to win reelection in November, Even his billionaire backers, I suspect, would go along with this trade off, knowing that it is temporary and that nothing will be better for their bottom line than 4 more years of Donald in the White House.

Hunger

  • May 7, 2020

Hunger is swelling across the country, reports the NYT. But the Republicans could care less. Let our children starve, they say. While Democrats want to expand the Food Stamp program for the duration of this awful pandemic and economic implosion, McConnell and gang resist.

If anybody is operating on the assumption to “never waste a crisis,” it is this gang. It is strikingly evident in the negotiations around stimulus packages addressing a cratering economy, massive unemployment, and human hardship on an unimaginable scale.

Exacts revenge

  • May 7, 2020

The planet needs stewards who understand we are an interwoven (and to a degree contingent) part of the web of life and then act accordingly. But the pandemic is a forewarning that ecological mutuality and dependence isn’t yet our lodestar. This cognitive deficit, if it continues, will make the present pandemic nothing but the first act of a real life drama in which nature will become the main protagonist and exact its revenge on humanity in ways that are unimaginably deadly and disruptive.