Letter from America

More Americans have been killed by COVID-19 in two months than were killed in the nine years of the Viet Nam War. – Correspondent in the US

WBT had this conversation with a Californian resident earlier today about the current state of affairs in the US during the Covid-19 Pandemic.
Ian Curr
27 April, 2020

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Q. I wonder how it must feel, having a madman as president, and crony capitalist to boot?

A.

Our guy here is a psychopath completely void of any empathy, so he lacks the capacity to even care about how many people the virus kills.

50,000 plus is just a number.

All he cares about is himself … in terms of money, power, praise etc. Simple stuff for a simple man. He can’t control the virus and doesn’t even seem to be trying very hard because it is irrelevant to him in his sphere of profound stupidity and self absorption.

But he does care about the effect the out-of-control pandemic is having on his precious economy. That matters because he needs to please his wealthy co-conspirators (you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours). Also the health of the economy, be it real or imagined, is crucial to his path to re-election in November…..so he can continued to be powerful and to use the presidency (illegally) to keep feeding his insatiable bank account.

He is an adept con man and continues to get away with it…..to my ongoing surprise because it so transparent to me as it seems to be to so many others (at least half the country if not more). He is not a skillful politician but seems to have an innate ability to con, not just people, but the entire system that is at the basis of how this country works.

He has manged to render the constitution and the system of checks and balances to be largely ineffective in preventing his autocratic nature. Does he achieve this through great skill, foresight, plotting and planning, or does this happen by default through his endless lying, having temper tantrums, stabbing people in the back, surrounding himself with unquestioning arse lickers etc.

The stupid child gets his way by behaving like a spoiled brat. We don’t control the child so his behavior continues to be negative and destructive. He is a successful con man, not because he is so clever, but because we fail stop his antics. Right now we are letting him get away literally with murder … and worse. One of the notches in his gun could easily turn out to be the collapse the world economy. Where will we draw the line and take back control?

Q. Bernie Sanders was a compromise left candidate but he is sounder than Biden. At least Bernie seems capable of thinking things through, don’t you think? In the debate I saw between Biden and Sanders, Biden just didn’t just didn’t get it … at least Sanders saw that they had to attack corporate America.

A.

Yes. One of the big tragedies in all of this, is the realization that Bernie Sanders wasn’t the leader we were hoping him to be. Bernie is, always was, and always will be part of the establishment.

A dose of reality.

Bernie only knows how to, or only wants to, operate within that framework. Therefore he was super easy to control. When push came to shove, Bernie sided with the establishment and now does precisely their bidding with hardly a whimper.

He allowed the establishment to control him and his movement with relative ease. It just took a few phone calls from Obama and he falls completely in line with the DNC’s wishes … after they had mercilessly stabbed him in the back by unleashing the forces that would destroy his campaign and political advantage.

When it comes to real leadership Bernie doesn’t have what it takes. He is a reformist, not a revolutionary. I guess it is impossible for a nice guy to be an effective leader against villains of the caliber that he stupidly thought he could reform.

Bernie endorsed Biden and will campaign for him. Biden’s role in this circus is to allow himself be used as a tool to serve the DNC’s corporate masters. An exact repeat of 2016 except it went more smoothly for the DNC this time around.

Biden is another “Hillary” but he is even weaker than that train wreck of a campaign in 2016. Biden stands for virtually everything Bernie is against (or so we thought).

Yet Bernie now supports Biden without question, out of loyalty to the party (and perhaps loyalty to his old friend…..the enemy). In hindsight, we should have realized where Bernie stood because he was always perfectly clear about wanting to work from inside the establishment to try and reform it. Bernie was never about bucking the system. Foolishly, he thought he could reform the system from within i.e. reform the DNC and the Democratic Party.

He thought voters would support him en mass.

It seems he was kind of naive in that respect or had unreasonable expectations. A stupid miscalculation for such an astute guy with a deep understanding of how politics works through decades of hands on direct experience. Go figure. He didn’t even come close to doing anything close to reform or changing anything. Didn’t even make a dent.

Granted, he managed to make his progressive policies extremely popular but now Bernie is out of the way they can sweep those under the carpet pretty quickly.

Just give it a few months and all that will seem like ancient history. He built a powerful grass-roots movement but has left it leaderless in its ability to effect true change.

It too will try to work from within the system and be rendered largely ineffective because the DNC leadership is good at co-opting any movement toward the Left (Mama Bear, Polozi, et al).

So it is questionable to what extent that wonderful movement will survive and be able to move forward in an effective way again. It may have gone down with the sinking ship? A valiant effort in many ways that is destined to become a small footnote in history. Sigh.

Q. So is the US a failed state?

A.

To put it more bluntly, we were sold out by our leadership (to the extent we had any leadership) and thrown under the bus. Even the progressive Left in the House (AOC and the Squad) appear to have sold out and they are now behaving like puppets doing the bidding of the DNC leadership.

The DNC is clearly a right-wing corporatist party not unlike the Republicans. They are much the same politically and in many respects the Democrats are worse.

Q. So Gore Vidal was right: the United States is a one-party state with two right wings?

A.

Definitely, 100%. The only difference is the Democrats are better at coning their supporters than the Republicans. More smooth talking.

Because we are left with no viable options, I think we will see a period of general strikes and protest in the street.

Q. Trump seems to be able to manipulate the population in places like Michigan.

A.

One thing for sure is there is no democracy here or democratic process. So nothing is going to be changed or be improved through voting. That is a myth that will hang on here for a long time because the average American can not accept or process the notion in their brains that this might not be the greatest democracy on the planet.The situation is probably much the same in Australia……sometimes I think things are even worse there.

I’m convinced the economy is going to crash here. Well, it has crashed already but I mean it wont recover. We are headed for a deep recession and possibly a depression similar to the 1930s.

Comment: Apropos of strikes and protests … I notice that doctors and nurses are striking and protesting in New York hospitals because they lack facilities and have been overwhelmed with cases and are doing 16 hour shifts.

Nearly all the young people I know have lost their jobs or have been stood down and are still waiting for unemployment relief … Morrison should have shut down the country earlier there was no reason for covid-19 to be here at all.