living in end times

"All master-workmen in manufactures, especially such as belonged to ornament and the less necessary parts of the people's dress, clothes, and furniture for houses, such as riband-weavers and other weavers, gold and silver lace makers, and gold and silver wire drawers, sempstresses, milliners, shoemakers, hatmakers, and glovemakers; also upholsterers, joiners, cabinet-makers, looking-glass makers, and innumerable trades which depend upon such as these;—I say, the master-workmen in such stopped their work, dismissed their journeymen and workmen, and all their dependents." daniel defoe. a journal of the plague year.

do i believe this is the "end time"? no ( betting some do though ) however apple, nordstrom's kohl's, j c penney, neiman marcus, bergdorf goodman, sak's fifth avenue, macy's might...they are all retailers that have closed over covid-19...ostensibly for the safety of their customers and work forces...however i have to ask just how much shopping traffic they were experiencing prior to their closures and if a reverse cash flow ( read labor costs ) and "lackluster sales" had them hemorrhaging profits at an unacceptable level...one assumes their stock values had already taken a hit and revenue loss was the icing on the cake of closure...

the shoppers have fled elsewhere in what can only be termed as overreaction through media hysteria...the one thing that stands out is that the idea of "necessary" would seem to have shifted from cosmetics and new shoes to paper and cleaning products...perspective has changed and on surmises the retailers are 1) not happy about it and, 2) fervently hope it is a temporary shift in frame of reference...they certainly don't want their core consumerist worshipers to even begin to realize that shopping and material goods are not all they have been led to believe ( and shoppers do have doubts..."buyers remorse" sound familiar to anyone? )...if the shift becomes permanenet...

this kind of thing may continue and that would have a serious impact on the hegemons' wealth and that would make them very unhappy...a paradigm shift due to a virus would be something i would think, at least, possible...changing the hegemonic culture form inside is nearly impossible...the institutions are not monolithic but they are deeply ingrained and structured to resist change ( this, by the way , is why there is an electoral college...the framers were nothing if not of the elite..and no one inimical to their interests was going to hold the office of president )...they probably would not collapse of their own weight without an external shove to show how shaky they had become in the face of their denial of a multitude of realities ( climate change say ) and the diminishing returns of BAU ( have a shufti at joseph tainter's "the collapse of complex societies" for a primer on diminishing returns )...this could be the sort of shove that makes people reassess what they view as "necessary" and begin to question why they consume what they do...and find that it is mostly habit not need that drives it...along with the operant conditioning provided by the media..we could do without a lot of the stuff we have...but "the system" couldn't do without us wanting/buying/having it...i have no desire to see people expire of this virus...however they are...and no one..not even "the system" has any sort of clear idea where this is going...the president is no help...congress is considering throwing money at people to keep them consuming...i am laid off for two weeks ( see plague blog for my assessment of that ) so there is time to ponder what could happen..trying to ferret out reality from the news is a challenge that may take some thought.

you're telling me?

“war is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking into the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent.” george orwell. 1984_______________________________today's new york times book review section reviews three books under the banner headline" barely afloat in america"...that rubric covers, "give people money: how a universal basic income would end poverty, revolutionize work, and remake the world", "squeezed: why our families can't afford america", and "the war on normal people: the truth about america's disappearing jobs and why universal basic income is our future"...this seems to be a nest of utopians in these trumpist times..i cannot deny that there is a concerted effort to drive the general population into debt penury...there is a war on, if not in exactly orwellian terms then one with the same end...to deny the polity of any comfort...to keep them on edge...worried..harried..unable to think clearly about the political mechanism used to control them because of the stress of every existence...worrying about a sitter...or a new water pump...or the price of a gallon of milk/gasoline...or the looming "back to school" income drain...or health care costs...or "what if" there is some catastrophic expense..if you are thinking about all that you don't have time to educate yourself about what the political slime is up to much less formulate plans to somehow resist..that "too intelligent stuff orwell is on about...i cant help but think that Ms. quart( squeezed ) ms. lowrey ( give people money ) and mr. yang ( the war on normal people) must have written these as primers for those members of the elite that have any concern over the mass of us...everyone who works for an hourly wage already knows what's going on ...they don't need to be tutored about the concerted actions of the elite to debase their lives or the need for money to access goods and services...they have a wealth of empirical knowledge...enough even to satisfy david hume that they know of what the speak..they need a breathing space to think about what they can do in response...a space a guaranteed universal income might provide...which is why it doesn't stand a snowball's chance in hell of being enacted...it would be labeled "debilitating charity" by the faux calivinist fucks that run things and be subject to "shattering to pieces" with every smear tactic that politicians ( read bought whores ) can muster and, given the tenor of these trumpist times those would be many and foul...antonio gramsci's "prison notebooks" and the assessment of the intricacies of hegemonic culture and how it invades, pervades, and controls our daily life...the depths of its indoctrination...might serve as a better start to resistance than pipe dreams from the liberal left.