For some on the left the fight against right wing authoritarian rule, centered in the White House and Republican Party, ranks for the time being a notch or two below the struggle against neoliberalism, represented by the Democratic Party “Establishment” — read moderate and liberal Democrats — and its candidates. Only after the Democrats chose their nominee will the struggle against Trump and the extreme right show up on their radar screen.

In this strategic rendering, the immediate terrain of struggle is the Democratic Party presidential primary and the overarching task is to support the democratic socialist Bernie Sanders for the nomination, while scorching neoliberal Joe Biden and his corporate controlled party. Only when Democrats choose their presidential candidate at their convention in July and move on to the general election will attention of this grouping on the left turn to the task of defeating Trump and his right wing enablers in the Republican Party. This may sound radical and cutting edge, even like common sense, but it’s none of these.

A strategic approach to defeating Trump and the political bloc gathered around him doesn’t preclude struggle within the Democratic Party. But its main emphasis at EVERY phase of the election process is on unity and cooperation among the diverse groups opposing Trump and the Republican candidates. Any failure in this regard only makes the overriding challenge of defeating Trump more difficult.

Watching Trump at these daily briefings is mental and hair pulling torture. When asked a question he can’t answer, with no shame or hesitation, he makes things up, invents reality, attacks the press. It’s not simply scary. It’s criminal in the first place.

To think that we spent so much time studying the internal contradictions and crisis tendencies of global capitalism —there are books, studies, and papers galore by many scholars and think tanks — and then, to the surprise of nearly all of us, the triggering mechanism of a global economic crisis turns about to be a lethal and transmittable virus that is undetectable to the human eye.

Life, as we are finding out once again, surprises, or said differently, takes very unexpected turns. And that should be a warning against closed systems of thinking and acting. At this moment, we find ourselves in a wholly unimaginable situation. And it will entail some altogether new ways of understanding, interacting, and changing if we hope to escape it and live in a livable, egalitarian, and sustainable world.

“There is no road, no simple highway between the dawn and the dark of the night.” A Great Song that the Greatful Dead brought into our lives, or at least some of us.

We could easily become an example of Naomi Klein’s “disaster capitalism” on a grand scale in the coming months and maybe longer as the predatory nature of capitalism attempts to turn a pandemic and human misery into a profit windfall.