General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: can any of you recall such widespread stupidity and/or ignorance! [View all]PatrickforO
(14,573 posts)had an interesting take. He believes unemployment will go up around 30-35%, and much of the leisure/hospitality industry will fall apart. He lives in a world-class downhill ski-town, and he wonders how the new season will look with social distancing. How lift lines will look. How the restaurants will look.
As to national politics, he said that the national government's response has been so weak that it endangers this very nation.
The safety nets have purposely been sabotaged (his word) so they do not work well. They are hard to apply for, hard to get and the difficulties are engineered in so that people fall off the rolls. He said unions have been destroyed in this country and there's no real labor party that represents workers - and pointed out that Clinton hurt her campaign by not going to the big labor states in the rust belt in an effort to swing Texas, but still conceded that she did win the popular vote by three million.
He said he's tired of old white guys governing the country and that he'd like to see a woman in the presidency. Like me, he felt Warren was the smartest candidate at the table, and supported her in the recent primary. He will vote for Biden but is not excited about him. Sorry, but that is what he said.
He will not be surprised if Trump tries to delay or cancel the election illegally, and failing that, blame the governors. It is possible, he went on, that Trump might convince most people that it is the democratic governors who have done the most damage, and that people might fall for it unless we're aggressive in getting out our message.
Finally, he wondered if the republic would survive or if the national government will fail of its own inertia and either do the Colin Woodard thing and split into eleven separate nations, or go to a city state kind of thing. Or, if we're really, really lucky, we will save the republic.
It didn't cheer me up much because he's right in too many ways. I've been in federally funded programming for 30+ years, and I've watched Republicans purposely sabotage eligibility, crucify us on crosses of data validation, and basically make it harder for people to apply for services, hard to get the services and too easy to drop off due to bullshit punitive regulations. It really is true that the Republican neoliberal 'invisible hand trickle-downers' honestly don't want good government. They believe that everything but defense should be devolved on states and local governments, and that we should privatize, deregulate and gut all the social safety net programs.
So there you have it. Another fucked up COVID day thanks to the death demon Trump.