this is what he'll try to do but events and the conditions driving them are deteriorating even faster. next month, something like 40 million people will get evicted. their landlords have been holding the bag on that unpaid rent so far (I know, I'm making an economic point, not a moral one) and there's no stimulus so far to help them out. retail is practically dead as a sector. much of the rest of service is in steep decline. conditions are rapidly approaching a cliff in the next several months - forget about years.

into this crisis, steps one of the most hard-line austerity liberals. he wanted the stimulus bill to include no checks for the destitute - gave both parties permission to cut it, in fact. and remember, it's not just the working class that needed those checks to go out. those checks amount to an indirect bailout of the lesser bourgeoisie. it's unlikely that with Trump out of office that either the evictions moratorium or stimulus checks are going to go out. if the democrats are not actually just devoid of any and all political sense, they'll minimally provide relief to the petit-bourgeoisie - but this something they've largely not wanted to do so far (the banks and larger businesses stand to make a lot of money on the collapse of the rungs just beneath them).

so we have two movements that are bolstered by this inaction from the top. first, the obvious - the collapse of the petit-bourgeoisie, especially the smaller landlords and retail businesses, will, as it always does, fuel an immediate rise in fascist activity. in fact, we're already seeing this. second, the rebellions that began last summer are only waiting for another catalyst to begin anew. millions of newly destitute and homeless people ensures a very large base of working class resentment to drive them.

the ruling class will, of course, try to channel both movements towards their ends, collaborating with the fascists and recuperating any revolutionary energy that begins to develop in the new round of rebellions. but given how quickly everything looks to be poised to slip, I'm not sure they can do either fast enough to truly dull either threat. there will be much more blood shed in the streets and we will see a much stronger response from security forces, as the "competent" administrators of empire return to helm the same strategies that failed to quell uprisings overseas, against their own subjects.

this conflict is, to me, much more salient in the present moment than what ghoulish policies Biden might enact because it shapes what response from the white house and congress even matters. does it matter if Biden spends all his time destroying social security if his administration's inattention or inability to coherently respond to the deepening crisis allows a sudden collapse of the state or the outbreak of civil war? his penchant for austerity makes him one of the most dangerous administrators possible during this crisis, for the ruling class, for the preservation of the status quo. we will see if his advisors convince him to abandon it or he's otherwise forced to by monied interests, but I don't think so. I think he will blunder into disaster.