...apparently Americans are too stupid, too self centered and too undisciplined to embrace basic hygiene tactics against a virus.
I feel like this errs a bit too close to victim-blaming for a systemic problem, as if the US economy were even remotely democratically planned. Plenty of US workers have been taking most or all measures necessary to slow the spread, but have been forced to go back to work in order to prop up the profits of the big capitalists, the small business assholes, and the landlords who demanded the reopening of nonessential sectors and who smacked down most measures which would have provided additional economic support for continued social distancing (e.g. monthly UBI-esque "stimulus checks", further extensions to additional unemployment insurance income) because such measures get in the way of their continued rent-seeking.
Attempts by the PMC-technocrat wing of the ruling class to impose some sense of discipline and solidarity were almost immediately shut down by the ongoing class conflict. The "supported" part of "supported isolation" in the TTSI doctrine was inevitably quarter-assed (maybe more like eighth-assed) in such a way that allowed the rent seekers to reframe the choose-only-two trilemma of public health, working-class incomes, and capitalist profits as a false dilemma between public health and "the economy".
The cult of the selfish consumer, to the extent that it exists, is downstream from the same dictatorship of capital that's always held us down and cost us millions of preventable deaths every year. Same goes for antivaxxers and other mostly ridiculous conspiracy theory groups, rooted mostly among the exurban petty bourgeois. This isn't mass suicide, it's mass murder-suicide.
Am I one of the few people here who still thinks US workers might still be mostly salvageable if we could just get a socialist movement or even a workers' party off the ground? I get the desire to see the US empire collapse - removing the biggest boot off the necks of global south workers is a net positive for global socialism - but we're also seeing an acceleration of the post-2008 trend towards increasing proletarianization of at least some of the temporarily-embarrassed and highly-educated professionals, increasing income inequality, older workers getting their pensions decimated after every crash, etc.
Objective conditions continue to be beyond rotten-ripe, and increasing shares of working-class US-Americans are interested in some form of socialism (or social democracy, which some might think is socialism because the GOP has called everything to the left of the Clinton administration socialist for the past 30 years), critical of or opposed to unregulated capitalism, and correctly believe both the Democrats and Republicans suck and don't represent their interests.
The covid crisis also forced the ruling class to reveal to essential workers that their labor is essential to keeping the economy running and the most proletarian US workers are increasingly aware of their leverage. We're still far behind where we should be w.r.t. the subjective factor - we still don't even have a social democratic workers' party yet! - but general class consciousness is much better than it's been since before the Cold War ended, and there's no reason to believe US workers are checking out and going to brunch like their privileged PMC counterparts. We had people out on the streets calling for defunding or abolition of police this year, which would've been unheard of even a year ago! I see no reason to be completely blackpilled yet. The Dems will try to contain the current incarnation of the workers' movement like they always do but they can't possibly completely contain it anymore, not after they went mask-off this year and stopped just short of endorsing the covid death cult.
You're absolutely right about that, working class have no good options in this pandemic. But there are probably 10s of millions of people who are acting like a death cult on top of this.
I feel like this errs a bit too close to victim-blaming for a systemic problem, as if the US economy were even remotely democratically planned. Plenty of US workers have been taking most or all measures necessary to slow the spread, but have been forced to go back to work in order to prop up the profits of the big capitalists, the small business assholes, and the landlords who demanded the reopening of nonessential sectors and who smacked down most measures which would have provided additional economic support for continued social distancing (e.g. monthly UBI-esque "stimulus checks", further extensions to additional unemployment insurance income) because such measures get in the way of their continued rent-seeking.
Attempts by the PMC-technocrat wing of the ruling class to impose some sense of discipline and solidarity were almost immediately shut down by the ongoing class conflict. The "supported" part of "supported isolation" in the TTSI doctrine was inevitably quarter-assed (maybe more like eighth-assed) in such a way that allowed the rent seekers to reframe the choose-only-two trilemma of public health, working-class incomes, and capitalist profits as a false dilemma between public health and "the economy".
The cult of the selfish consumer, to the extent that it exists, is downstream from the same dictatorship of capital that's always held us down and cost us millions of preventable deaths every year. Same goes for antivaxxers and other mostly ridiculous conspiracy theory groups, rooted mostly among the exurban petty bourgeois. This isn't mass suicide, it's mass murder-suicide.
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Am I one of the few people here who still thinks US workers might still be mostly salvageable if we could just get a socialist movement or even a workers' party off the ground? I get the desire to see the US empire collapse - removing the biggest boot off the necks of global south workers is a net positive for global socialism - but we're also seeing an acceleration of the post-2008 trend towards increasing proletarianization of at least some of the temporarily-embarrassed and highly-educated professionals, increasing income inequality, older workers getting their pensions decimated after every crash, etc.
Objective conditions continue to be beyond rotten-ripe, and increasing shares of working-class US-Americans are interested in some form of socialism (or social democracy, which some might think is socialism because the GOP has called everything to the left of the Clinton administration socialist for the past 30 years), critical of or opposed to unregulated capitalism, and correctly believe both the Democrats and Republicans suck and don't represent their interests.
The covid crisis also forced the ruling class to reveal to essential workers that their labor is essential to keeping the economy running and the most proletarian US workers are increasingly aware of their leverage. We're still far behind where we should be w.r.t. the subjective factor - we still don't even have a social democratic workers' party yet! - but general class consciousness is much better than it's been since before the Cold War ended, and there's no reason to believe US workers are checking out and going to brunch like their privileged PMC counterparts. We had people out on the streets calling for defunding or abolition of police this year, which would've been unheard of even a year ago! I see no reason to be completely blackpilled yet. The Dems will try to contain the current incarnation of the workers' movement like they always do but they can't possibly completely contain it anymore, not after they went mask-off this year and stopped just short of endorsing the covid death cult.
You're absolutely right about that, working class have no good options in this pandemic. But there are probably 10s of millions of people who are acting like a death cult on top of this.
Very well said, the distinction is important