In his 1992 book The Culture of Contentment, a series of essays that ring very true today, the late economist John Kenneth Galbraith wrote that “individuals and communities that are favored in their economic, social and political condition attribute social virtue and political durability to that which they themselves enjoy. That attribution, in turn, is made to apply even in the face of commanding evidence to the contrary.”
This is the exact problem we face now: a favored class that sees its own comfort as a sign that everything’s fine. As a result, the members of the Church of the Contented Establishment—from the White House to Jha and his Brown colleague Emily Oster, to David Leonhardt at The New York Times and Leana Wen at The Washington Post, to even infectious-disease doctors like Monica Gandhi at the University of California San Francisco—are pushing a narrative about Covid and our public health that, thanks to its influence within elite circles, is more subtly corrupting and poisonous than anything that outright Covid denialists like Ron DeSantis have come up with.
Can't wait for the Plague 2.0 to cripple us again. Without anything even close-to-resembling a zero transmission plan, it will mutate again, and eventually, hard enough to beat our vaccines again. My bet is by 2040, the contiguous US states will have a new moniker: the Plaguelands.
I've read about how the 1918-20 flu pandemic was made worse via spread/mutation in WW1 battlefields. Under modern crapitalism, everyday life is the hostile battlefield generating new super-strains.
Despite becoming popularly known as the Spanish flu, the influenza pandemic likely originated in the United States at a Kansas military base, eventually infecting about one-third of the global population and killing at least 50 million people worldwide, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
I'm not sure that study is relevant for tracking the rise of US fascism since the map of disproportionate deaths from covid is just a map of where non white people live
The Adults Are In The Room Now.
Can't wait for the Plague 2.0 to cripple us again. Without anything even close-to-resembling a zero transmission plan, it will mutate again, and eventually, hard enough to beat our vaccines again. My bet is by 2040, the contiguous US states will have a new moniker: the Plaguelands.
I've read about how the 1918-20 flu pandemic was made worse via spread/mutation in WW1 battlefields. Under modern crapitalism, everyday life is the hostile battlefield generating new super-strains.
There were "Long Spanish Flu" symptoms, as well as disabilities, that I believe to be the first victims of the Nazi euthanasia programs. The phrase Life Unworthy of Life was coined in 1920.
EDIT: I forgot about the study showing Spanish Flu deaths led directly to Nazi support.
this is not good for my Fort DeTrick
e: aw fuck me
Haha, I never get tired of telling that to people who talk about cHiNa CoViD
I'm not sure that study is relevant for tracking the rise of US fascism since the map of disproportionate deaths from covid is just a map of where non white people live
By 2040 it's very likely agriculture will have been impossible for a decade so probably not