Now is not the time to quibble. Pete Buttigieg allegedly has a “cold.” He may have. In fact, he probably does just have a cold. But I feel given a Corona Virus pandemic is whipping around the globe that the public has the right to independent medical verification of this.
This is not too much to ask. And, given this chart:
We may find ourselves asking this question of the old, older candidates who are now bouncing around the country as well, too. I just want verification of whatever is going on.
It seems rather self-evident that Vice President Mike Pence has been set up to fail. In Trump’s deranged mind, he know’s he needs to ditch Pence to placate the MAGA base, and, as such, in the end, if the Trump Administrator bungles its response to COVID19 – which it will — he can lay all the blame on Pence. That is, when Trump’s blaming liberals and or the Deep State.
Given that there apparently is already evidence of communal transmission in the United States — and we’re effectively not testing for COVID19’s spread — that the only way we’ll know what’s going on is when a lot, and I mean A LOT, of people get sick all at once all over the United States. For a few days, it may get kind of scary.
And the person who will suffer the political blame won’t be Trump, but Pence. And so President Crazypants can simply drop Pence from the ticket and cruise into a second term of bigotry, tyranny and hate. And if you think that’s my “Trump Derangement Disorder” coming out — fuck you, you piece of shit. How simply pointing out that Trump is a hate-filled ignorant tyrant is any type of “disorder” leaves me at a loss. When you think my rage against a tyrant is nothing more than an over-reaction to a policy disagreement, then, well, whoa buddy.
Anyway, it definitely seems as though we’re going to know soon enough one way or another. My gut tells me that COVID19 is spreading like wildfire in the United States and it’s going to get really bad, really soon. The whole thing may be seen as rather dramatic in hindsight. Or not. Maybe I’m overacting without even realizing it. Maybe that’s my own form of confirmation bias.
I do wish that the Trump Administration had the best interests of the nation, not the stock market, at heart. But Trump has plutocrats to placate if he’s going to win re-election and, as such, fuck you America.
As you may know, “Bustle” is a Website for women that has a male publisher. In the identity politics era we live in, this has lead to more than a few raised eyebrows. I thought of this after I got into something of a brief rhetorical tussle with Crooked Media star Erin Ryan on Twitter about my person attempt to give her, as a woman reader, complex female characters. She essentially say, “I don’t like your attitude.” But the issue I was trying to convey — it’s unlikely she would even, really, give me a chance if I did develop the type of female characters she demands still stands. I’m a man — a member of the patriarchy — and as such either she wouldn’t read my novel or I would have to work extra hard to prove to her I really was meeting her extremely high demands. I refuse to come to her as a supplicant in search of validation. Either she takes me for who I am as an artist, or doesn’t.
It became clear that her followers were going to rain scorn down on me for not being a sycophant, so I muted the conversation and decided to use the brief encounter as motivation to buckle down on my goal: prove that a man who fits the heteronormative spectrum can, in fact, write women characters for women as part of a tenpole piece of pop art. The issue is, I refuse to be a “soy boy” who fits the feminist narrative. I’m going to be myself –smelly boy attributes and all — and let the chips fall where they may. I really like Ms. Ryan and she’s really is the exact type of person I want to serve with the novel I’m writing. It would be quite an honor if I could do what appears to be the impossible — be both a man and someone who manages to provide a novel with universal truth that she would enjoy the hard work of.
Yass, Queen.
Or, put another way, I want what every artist — male or female — wants: to be accepted for who I am on my own terms because of my art. It’s extremely rare for that to happen. Phoebe Waller-Bridge is a recent example of that happening. She has both artistic AND commercial success. In a sense, she’s one of my artistic inspirations since Woody Allen has personal baggage I don’t wish to contemplate. (Wink.)
Anyway, all of this plays into my personal anger about how identity politics makes it more and more difficult to provide an audience universal truth in storytelling. The American Dirt controversy is a prime example of this — apparently only each individual little subgroup has the right to tell their story. Of course, at the same time, when someone like Stephen King is openly dubious of the need to tell non-white male stories, there’s outrage as well. So, damned if you do, damned if you don’t. And there’s an ADDITIONAL outrage if you point out the Catch 22. So, in other words, you pick your poison and expect the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. I want to write a modern tentpole and, as such, I want to give the female audience what they seem to be demanding — honest portrayals of the female experience.
That’s what I’ve been working so hard on for about year now. Whatever the consequences of all that hard work may be, I am prepared for.
The world is burning and the United States remains on Lulz mode. My concern is it won’t event be America that first has an existential crisis from COVID19 in the near term — it’ll be somewhere like Iceland. It could be any number of places connected to American culture because of tourism, but Iceland seems like the sweetspot for a major outbreak for a number of reasons.
Let me note at this point, that I’m nothing more than Brian Fellows when it comes to all of this and you’re free — in fact encouraged — to ignore anything I have to say with extreme prejudice. But the point is: if Iceland (or somewhere similar to it in, say, the Caribbean like Puerto Rico ) is in the crosshairs of a potential significant outbreak of COVID19 for no other reason than many, many people from mainland USA come through it on a daily basis. It seems like Iceland would be in the crosshairs because of all the oblivious — and infected — Americans that would stay there fora few days then leave. The natives who work in the hotel and restaurant industry would be repeatedly infected and when they all collectively got sick from this exposure, it’s likely to be rather dramatic.
And, yet, maybe I’m reading too much into things. Maybe this is all going to fizzle out and I can go back to working on my novel. That’s what I hope will happened. I really don’t want to have to fight for survival instead of developing a novel. The entire global order is on the cusp of collapsing and that would suck. It would not fun. It would not be exciting. It would suck.
There’s way too much fear porn on Twitter right now. But one thing that isI do know — all the data points are pointing towards a major outbreak in a place very connected to the United States. I think there’s a good chance a shadow pandemic is happening in the States and it would be somewhere like Iceland that felt the brunt of that shadow pandemic if I’m right.
I have no idea what I’m talking about.Shelton Bumgarner
Shelt Garner @sheltgarner
So, let’s pace this out. If the reason the States hasn’t had any noticeable uptick in WuFlu cases is they’re not getting picked up because of a combination of societal and general government screw up, how would we know that Corona Virus was actually here?
Well, what’s so chilling about the conditions of that scenario is how bad things would have to get before we realized what was going on. A few things would likely tip us off.
One, popular vacation spots for Americans in the general North America area would faceplant one by one.
Two, notable elderly people would begin to die an alarming rate, which would make news.
Yikes!
Three, people whose job it was to be somewhere — say, TV anchors — wouldn’t show up to work
Lastly, so many people would be really, really sick that it would be difficult for us not to notice that something was up. The frightening thing about this it would make us realize that our entire medical infrastructure had failed us on a massive scale. By the time we realized what was going on, a huge, deep swath of the population would have been infected multiple times by multiple people.
It would be the biggest crisis in American history that history would mention in the same breath with the Civil War and World War II. I only suggest this is even possible because WuFlu is whipping around the globe at an alarming rate and, yet, to date, there have not been any major flair ups in the States.
I’m simply struggling to understand what’s going on. What I layout out above is one of several possible options. It’s the absolute worst case scenario, which is my thing.
After was all said and done, of course, then we’d struggle to figure out how it happened. Maybe the person who should be blamed — Donald J. Trump — would be blamed. Maybe he wouldn’t. Maybe I’ll be in an ICE Camp re-education camp after the pandemic, maybe I won’t.
If Trumplandia had a motto, it would be, “Cruelty is the point.” I have come to believe that the Religious Right supports Trump not because they think he’s Jesus Christ, but because they think he’s the anti-Christ and, as such, will bring back Jesus. That particular theory may be put to the test if we pretty much have the end of the world and….Jesus STILL DOESN’T COME BACK.
But the issue is — how bad, really, would a pandemic have to get before Sean Hannity would crawl out of Trump’s butt? Far worse than you could possibly imagine. I figure at least 10 million people would have to die before Fox News might re-think its support for the Dear Leader. Or, put another away, America could be brought to its knees economically directly because of Trump’s dumb policy decisions regarding pandemic and it would be a lulz by Fox News. In a sense, America’s political system is now run by a death cult.
When “the end” comes (at least in the short term) they are likely to make good on all those threats against people like me. Trump will go completely fucking insane, do everything he was planning on doing in his second term, only counted in days instead of months and years. I guess what I’m saying is — the bad guys are a lot more organized than the good guys going into what may be a short-term armageddon. By the time the ship of state is righted, Trump will be even more powerful than he was before. I just don’t see Democrats having the wherewithal to impeach Trump AGAIN over his criminal mishandling of a pandemic. Prove me wrong, Speaker Pelosi.
But you have to admit, it would be ironic if someone so loved by the Religious Right was ultimately brought down by an “act of God.” One could make the case that Trump maybe wasn’t QUITE as loved by the big guy upstairs as MAGA would have us believe. And, remember, it would be difficult to impeach-and-convict Trump for negligence in the middle of a pandemic. He would otherwise be removed through the 25th Amendment, but lulz. Any Congressional trial of Trump over a massive pandemic screw up would be happen long after the event itself was over –say 2022-2023. Trump would be even more powerful and the massive clusterfuck he was directly responsible for would have faded, the economy would have bounced back and Mt. Rushmore would have a new face on it.
In fact, I would say you really would have to have a “Gray Plague” for MAGA to lose its potency. If 10-20 elderly people died then that’s a few less angry white men who will march to the polls no matter what for Trump. I generally believe we’re more likely to go dystopia or division than any type of renewal. This is an example of how the narrative of history isn’t written until after the fact — by the winners.
Imagine if instead of Dec. 1941, WW2 had started in, say, February 1940. That’s where we stand with WuFlu. I just don’t see the 2020 campaign lasting past the first big outbreak of WuFlu in the States. Retail politics is, by definition, social and if you aren’t supposed to be in the same room with someone because they might make you sick, well, how the fuck can you campaign?
Only one or two journalists on Twitter are beginning to take WuFlu seriously as a political and national security issue in the States. That may — or may not — change in time for when the Pearl Harbor or 9/11 sized strike by WuFlu happens in the States within the next 28 days. We are so fucked for so many reasons, one of them being that the stewarts of the public interest — public intellectuals on Twitter — are so busy giving us hot takes about Campaign 2020 that they’re totally overlooking the huge iceberg that is headed straight towards us.
We. Are. So Fucked.
I mean, Italy is about to faceplant. South Korea is about to faceplant. And Iran is having a disturbingly high number of deaths. And fucking Japan may implode in stealth mode. Meanwhile Slate and Vox are bitching about Bernie Sanders in his underwear with Soviet apparatchiks 40 years ago. What we need is all the brand name nattering nabobs of negativism on Twitter to tell us not only what WE should do but what THEY are doing on a practical level to save themselves. That would be a way to alert people of how serious what about to happen really is.
A pandemic in the States would be equal to WW2. And Americans are so inward looking that we just don’t care. I got shithead MAGA people sniping at me about Bernie being the presumptive Democratic nominee when we should pause and think about how, in the end, we’re all Americans who bleed the same colored blood.
I don’t know what to tell you. It’s going to be mass chaos whenever the Kraken of pandemic finally arises from the US population. We’re totally unprepared. Totally flatfooted. We have no leadership and whatever leadership we do get will do find will be from the ground up, the “sheep,” if you will. Or, it will come from some unexpected places. I think Jon Stewart would be a great person to be the “Rudy” of our coming pandemic crisis. He has the skill set necessary.
Given what I know right now, it seems as though when the history of the WuFlu pandemic is written — if we’re still around as a nation (or a race) for it to be written — this weekend will be seen as significant because it’s when we reached another tipping point. America is collectively not only oblivious to its impending doom, we don’t even have enough of a collective response in place to know we’re doomed even if we wanted to be pro-active.
Only three States have WuFlu testing kits. So, it’s possible that people are getting sick and dying of WuFlu (or soon will be) and that metric would read a false negative because it wouldn’t register in the medical system. I have seen a study that there’s no discernable uptick in deaths in general in the States, so maybe people are being misguised with “the Flu” but not dying — yet.
But here are some things to keep in mind.
Economic Hollywood and the newspaper industry are now dead men walking. If no one goes to the movies for six months and all entertainment production halts for the same amount of time, well, lulz? It’s likely that next year — or whenever we reached the post-pandemic era — what used to be the greater Hollywood industry will be nothing more than a barren post-apocalyptic hellscape, with”immersive media” not-so-slowly replacing it. The traditional print newspaper industry will die because no one will leave their home for the same amount of time. I have a hunch drones are going to become ubiquitous far, far sooner than any of us could have ever imagined if there really is a pandemic. It’s also possible that the American — and global — economy could tank in a way even worse than the Great Recession if places like China, South Korea and Japan have to be written off for three to six months. We might have a brief, but extremely deep depression in late 2020, early 2021.
Political This one is kind of touchy. A whole slew of elderly people are very powerful in the States and the death rate for WuFlu among the elderly is pretty brutal. So, lulz? If you wiped out a big chunk of the American political establishment over the course off amount six months, then, yikes. And if it happened in the right — or wrong — sequence of events, then MAGA would say it was a “deep state conspiracy” and start killing anyone they didn’t like. Like me! Or, put another way, if things get as bad as I fear, there may not been much of a 2020 Campaign for us to fight over. Or the end result could be significantly more surreal than anything we could possibly imagine. There are also no assurances that the “good guys” will “win.” Or, if they do “win” the cost of that victory could be so huge, so tragic, that we aren’t exactly happy it at the price we had to pay to get it.
Media The issue for me is, if we actually did find ourselves in the grips of a real live pandemic, inditally it would be marketed as something like 9/11 Redux. That is, of course, until is lingered for weeks and months. Then it wouldn’t be “fun” or “exciting” anymore. It would just be a grim state of existence for millions of people. I fear that Trump would suspend the Constitution at some point and simply arrest anyone — like me! — who wouldn’t simply nod and smile at his tyranny.
National Security If there really is a pandemic, we could see at least three major regional wars occur at the same time. Israel – Iran, DPRK – ROK and India – Pakistan. And it’s at least within the realm of possibility that the DPRK might lob a few H-Bomb tipped ICBMs towards North America which, of course, will greatly increase the number of deaths associated with the the general pandemic event. Also, given how divided the United States is, I don’t really believe we’d make it. I think we’d descend into mass political violence chaos and, if we’re lucky, split into two different nations. One center-Left, one center-Right. If we’re lucky. If we’re not lucky, we get American Killing Fields! Lulz!?
In general, I still can’t make an education opinion as to our fate. Maybe this is going to blow over. Or maybe it won’t. Lulz?
Only once in the post-WWII era has living through history lived up to its hype — the fall of Communism. That was kind of “fun-interesting.” Few people got hurt and it was a made-for-TV moment of hope that happened out of nowhere.
And now we have a potential pandemic in the guise of the WuFlu outbreak in Wuhan. I’m seeing a lot of “giddy” people wallowing in fear porn about the prospect of, well, the end of the world and these people are, to say the least, rather misguided. There’s a reason why the phrase, “May you live in interesting times” is a curse. Living through history sucks. When history wakes up like during, say, a war, it sucks on an human, practical level. The narrative of the history books can be extremely disturbing as it’s happening in real time.
Hence, if whatever is stopping people dying from WuFlu changed rather abruptly, it would suck. It would not be fun. It would be an process, not an event that would cause a huge amount of global instability for months with aftershocks that would last years and decades. It would be referred by future generations the same way WWII has been referred to for the last three generations: the moment when everything changed.
We’re just not prepared on a practical level for something that’s not a day-long event like 9/11 was, but a process that is measured in days, weeks, and months. Empires of various sorts — political, technological and otherwise — would rise and fall by the time it was all over with.
My guess is if the worst happened — which I neither believe will happen, nor want – things like Hollywood and the newspaper industry would collapse and we’d have a few years of us all struggling to figure out what just happened and how we were going to adjust to the new normal where VR, AR, MX and everything Elon Musk has been working on suddenly were the core part of life.
Anyway, as I keep saying, something dramatic has to happen. It’s out of our hands, too. WuFlu is all over the world at this point. For some reason, only people in Wuhan itself have a real risk of actually dying. If you’re outside of that city, then, you may get sick from WuFlu, but your chances of actually dying from it are actually pretty low.
What — to date — has made WuFlu different in Wuhan remains a mystery to me. But to go back to the point — while I would be concerned and informed about WuFlu, it’s looking like it’s going to fizzle out by April as predicted.
If it doesn’t it’s going to suck. The basics of life may be put in danger for months and existing governments of major nations like China, Russia and, yes, even the United States may fall to be replaced by new, unexpected styles of government altogether. I wouldn’t sleep on the idea that the United States is going have a revolution – civil war — division in months, not decades, if there was a pandemic. America’s political system is extremely taunt and we’re already in the Fourth Reich. A pandemic might push us into something far darker.
The point is, please refrain from indulging in fear porn on Twitter. This is real. This is real life — and death.
A good chance exists that WuFlu is going to be seen as something of a dud by verified Twitter liberals. A million Chinese people could get sick or die and Vox would somehow poo-poo the concern of people like me in 2020 over WuFlu by pointing out no one cared during the Great Leap Forward or Cultural Revolution, either.
But how should we common folk look at what’s going on? What should people without a blue check on their Twitter account measure things? I have three metric that I use to get a sense of things.
Perception Response Fatalities
Let’s look at Japan and how it’s our firebreak going forward.
I feel it is now beyond our control to prevent a pandemic. Either it’s going to happen or it’s not. The main question is, of course, what about Wuhan makes it so special that that’s where the vast majorities deaths have occurred? Was the Wuhan outbreak an “event” and what’s going on around the world simply a side effect of that event, or, what? I’m not one to ascribe to conspiracy theories, but I do think a tipping point has come whereby we need to start asking that question — the fate of humanity may rest on it.
But back to Japan.
Japan is important because it’s a Western-style liberal democracy that couldn’t go China’s End Times route when it comes to WuFlu without us at least knowing why. And, Japan has a lot — a lot — of old people. Wuflu has a pretty brutal fatality rate for the elderly, enough that I say it has the potential to be The Gray Plague.
Not good.
So, if, for some reason, whatever is happening in Wuhan began to happen in Japan, we would at least know why. We would at least have some sense of what is really going on. The reason why that is so important is either Wuhan is a unique outbreak and is completely separate from what is going on around it, or it’s present is our future. That’s rather chilling because, well, I find it unlikely you could lock people in their homes like the CCP is doing in Wuhan in, say, Alabama, without some pretty serious consequences. And if they started doing that in Japan, then their social contract is strong enough that they would be screaming at the top of their lungs to explain why they felt forced to do it. It wouldn’t be some sort of surreal, mysterious over-reaction like it is in Wuhan.
Let’s look at Japan using my metrics.
Perception Right now, our perception is the Japanese have everything under control. While, yes, their numbers are growing concerning, to the outside world it’s still a lulz. Vox is still more concerned about telling writers like me to NEVER “fridge” a female character for ANY REASON.
Response The Japanese seem to be doing a decent job of responding to where things stand with WuFlu in their nation. The few, brief, times I’ve been in Japan, they seemed to be extremly professional and polite in everything they did and so they’re just the type of people you want on your front lines as the fate of Mankind begins to be potentially put at risk.
Fatalities There are few, if any, fatalities in Japan right now. If a lot of people get sick, but don’t die, then we’re ok. Japan has one of the oldest populations in the world and if they get sick and don’t die, then we, again, will know Wuhan is “special” for some reason and things just aren’t going to get as bad as we may have initially feared.
Something dramatic is going to have to happen for me to get all that worried about WuFlu. There’s a good chance that WuFlu — until a vaccine comes out sometime next year — will be seen in the global consciousness as something like lyme disease — a bad illness, but not the end of the world.
I would definitely keep an eye on Japan, though. We’ll know one way or another soon enough. WuFlu is all over the globe right now, but people just aren’t getting sick that much and even fewer are dying. If that should happen to change sometime soon, that’s a different matter altogether.
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