waxahatchee

stuff

“Never die over stuff. Society can collapse in an instant. Accept the truth, pivot and never look back. It’s the difference between life and death. Never risk death over a stupid china cabinet.”
    -- unknown

Deuteronomic Code

Do you want to shampoo
Do you want to sham pee
Do you want to sit six feet
From me
And watch the news of the plague
On the TV
Or do you want to do do do
Do the Deuteronomy

Deutero, do you know what that means?
It’s Greek — meaning second, or next
And nomos, the law — this law’s wrecked
So, what’s the next law?
Wait and see
Housing all will soon be free
Do do do
Do the Deuteronomy
With me

Who will plant the crops
Who will pick the fruit
Who will bring them all to you
And me for free
The army will
You will see
Do do do
Do the Deuteronomy

Wait indoors for nine months time
The length it takes for a baby to arrive
For a new life to form
For a new world to be born
From these old rooms
From these cocoons
These chrysalides
Let’s do do do
Do the Deuteronomy

    -- Elliot Sperber

we're in good hands

"COVID-19 emergency spending bill: $250 billion for direct payments to Americans, $250 billion for expanded unemployment benefits, $4 trillion to bail out corporations" 

at least we got radar love

culling the herd

the pandemic “...from an entirely disinterested economic perspective, might even prove mildly beneficial in the long term by disproportionately culling elderly dependents.”
    -- Jeremy Warner, economics columnist, Daily Telegraph

I’ve got bad news, haters: Waiting for my generation to die is not a viable political option. Millions of us will still be voting in 11, 12, 15, 20 years, as we lose our last chances to save the planet and prevent economic collapse. This planet’s chances may breathe their last before we do.
    -- Richard Eskow

covid-in-the-web-of-generations

your random downer

.....unless it is abolished, capitalism will not disappear when boom turns to bust.  Instead, energy-starved, growth-less capitalism will turn catabolic.  Catabolism refers to the condition whereby a living thing devours itself.  As profitable sources of production dry up, capitalism will be compelled to turn a profit by consuming the social assets it once created.  By cannibalizing itself, the profit motive will exacerbate industrial society’s dramatic decline.

Catabolic capitalism will profit from scarcity, crisis, disaster, and conflict.  Warfare, resource hoarding, ecological disaster, and pandemic diseases will become the big profit makers.  Capital will flow toward lucrative ventures like cybercrime, predatory lending, and financial fraud; bribery, corruption, and racketeering; weapons, drugs, and human trafficking.  Once disintegration and destruction become the primary source of profit, catabolic capitalism will rampage down the road to ruin, gorging itself on one self-inflicted disaster after another.

    -- Craig Collins

four-reasons-civilization-will-collapse

another blank screen

So yes, I think it’s very possible for Biden to beat Trump. Because for so many people, it doesn’t matter what Biden says or doesn’t say, how incoherent he is, how many outright lies he tells, how atrocious his record is or how diligently he is serving the domineering elites who have blighted our society to such a degree. It doesn’t matter that he has made it clear that he is not going to do anything about climate change, student debt, the healthcare crisis, rampant militarism, police brutality, economic injustice, low pay, ICE, and on and on. What matters is that he is a fresh screen where our most unworthy fears and unrealistic hopes can be projected, for a time; where we can forget, for a time, the massive disasters that are looming ahead and pretend that things can somehow go back to “normal.”

    -- Chris Floyd

as-ye-sow-joe-shall-ye-reap

from Cafe Domenico

The liberal class in America is now highly disturbed and disoriented by the instability of “facts,” the “two sides to every argument” and ”fake news” of neoliberalism’s brave new world. So much so, they will act as if all the error is on the other side, with those who will not listen to science, or reason. Really, though, this betrayal by fact-based, media-propagated “truth” is something we had coming. If liberal society had, after outgrowing religion, kept ears and eyes open to the artists and poets, mystics and prophets, and turned off the microphone on the MSNBC babblers and game players, we would have been better equipped for defending humanity against the increasingly violent forces of dehumanization. As it is now, humanity depends upon each person to be a hero in its defense; and this has to be our cause, over mere survival.
    -- Kim Domenico

liberals-explain-things-to-me-my-soul-rebels

notes from the Biotariat

while reading this poem still won’t be the same
as storming a bank or a parliament
you may yet be reading this poem
to a group of people with whom you will presently
be storming a bank or parliament.
    -- Stephen Collis, excerpt, To the Barricades (2013)

We are fortunate to live in a nation where one of its foundational texts allows for on-going revolution. If we truly believe in the exceptionalism of this country, now surely is the time to act on the opportunity bequeathed to the people of the United States by the Founding Fathers. Is it too soon, in 2020, to anoint Bernie Sanders as the agent of the revolution’s second coming?
-- John Davis

bernie-and-the-biotariat

we are all Russians now

 There’s only so long you can keep pinching your nostrils as you cast that noxious ballot for yet another chest-thumping, business-as-usual Republican from either party, before you suffocate altogether. Or you can join us Russians on the Dark Side. We have vodka on tap, not to mention endless reserves of pessimism to get us through the eternal winter of every American election cycle. We also know a thing or two about how to deal with crowned heads of state.
    -- Jennifer Matsui

masterfully-baiting-the-reds-for-a-dicks-re-election